Exploring the Lived Experiences of Gig Workers from the Perspective of Compensation: A Colaizzi Phenomenological Approach

Document Type : Original Research

Authors
Alireza Moradi 1
naeim shokri 2
1 tehran university
2 Tarbiat Modares university
Abstract
Gig workers represent a segment of the workforce engaged in non-permanent employment, without fixed contracts, operating on a freelance, part-time, or flexible basis for one or multiple organizations and employers. Amid the growing reliance on such workers by employers, coupled with compensation structures that diverge from traditional regulations, significant challenges have emerged in payment systems and remuneration practices for human resource management—and, crucially, for gig workers themselves. This study aimed to  gain a profound understanding of the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of gig workers' compensation. Employing a qualitative strategy grounded in descriptive phenomenology, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 15 purposefully selected gig workers active in fields such as content creation, programming, user interface design, online sales, blogging, accounting, and digital marketing. The narrated data were organized, structured, and analyzed using Colaizzi's seven-step phenomenological process. Findings were synthesized into four primary categories and 15 subcategories. The primary categories include: (1) absence of fringe benefits, encompassing four subcategories—lack of welfare facilities, absence of health insurance, lack of retirement benefits, and absence of holidays and leave; (2) lack of equity, with four subcategories—payments below market norms, absence of wage equity, wage theft, and feelings of deprivation; (3) identity formation, comprising three subcategories—building communication networks, presence of peripheral benefits, and the paradox of judgment; and (4) prioritization of relationships over formal rules and skills over credentials, including four subcategories—relationship-dependent wages, skill-oriented compensation, absence of defined work relations, and employer-centric pay structures.

 

Keywords

Subjects

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[22] Neschen, A. (2023). How Digital Technology Shapes Self-Consciousness in Work Relationships? Reference to Hegel. Philosophy of Management.
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[26] Schor J (2020). After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[27] Shubham Agrawal, Amy M. Schuster, Noah Britt, Jessica Liberman & Shelia R. Cotten (2022) Expendable to essential? Changing perceptions of gig workers on Twitter in the onset of COVID-19, Information, Communication & Society, 25:5, 634-653.
[28] Shapiro A (2020). Dynamic exploits: calculative asymmetries in the on-demand economy. New Technology, Work & Employment 35(2): 162–177.
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[31] Tran M, Sokas RK. The Gig Economy and Contingent Work: An Occupational Health Assessment. J Occup Environ Med. 2017 Apr;59(4):e63-e66. doi: 10.1097/JOM.0000000000000977. PMID: 28244887; PMCID: PMC5374746.
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[33] Umer Zaman, Shahid Nawaz, Areesha Javed & Tareq Rasul | Pantea Foroudi (Reviewing editor) (2020) Having a whale of a time: Linking self-determination theory (SDT), job characteristics model (JCM) and motivation to the joy of gig work, Cogent Business & Management, 7:1.
[34] Vallas S, Schor JB (2020) What do platforms do? Understanding the gig economy. Annual Review of Sociology 46: 273–294.
[35] Wood AJ, Graham M, Lehdonvirta V, et al. (2019) .Good gig, bad gig: autonomy and algorithmic control in the global Gig economy. Work, Employment & Society 33(1).
 
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[12] Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approach (5th ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.
[13] Duggan, J, Sherman, U, Carbery, R, McDonnell, A. (2020) Algorithmic management and app-work in the gig economy: A research agenda for employment relations and HRM. Hum Resour Manag J. 2020; 30: 114– 132.
[14] European Commission (2010). Report on the application by Member States of the EU of the Commission 2009/385/EC Recommendation (2009 Recommendation on directors´ remuneration): COM (2010) 285. Publications Office of the European Union.
[15] Friedland, Julian, Balkin, David B. (2022). When gig workers become essential: Leveraging customer moral self-awareness beyond COVID-19, Business Horizons, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2022.05.003.
[16] Freelance statistics )2023.( https://blog.gitnux.com/freelance-statistics. The Most Interesting Facts & Trends.
[17] Harpur, P., Blanck, P. Gig Workers with Disabilities: Opportunities, Challenges, and Regulatory Response. J Occup Rehabil 30, 511–520 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-020-09937-4.
[18] Jabagi, N., Croteau, A.-M., Audebrand, L.K. and Marsan, J. (2019), "Gig-workers’ motivation: thinking beyond carrots and sticks", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp. 192-213.
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[21] Meijerink, J., & Keegan, A. (2019). Conceptualizing human resource management in the gig economy: Toward a platform ecosystem perspective. [HRM in the gig economy] Journal of Managerial Psychology, 34(4), 214-232.
[22] Neschen, A. (2023). How Digital Technology Shapes Self-Consciousness in Work Relationships? Reference to Hegel. Philosophy of Management.
[23] Putra, I.N.S.K., and N.W. Mujiati. )2022(. The effect of compensation, work environment, and work motivation on employee productivity. European Journal of Business and Management Research 7 (2): 212–215.
[24] Pungas, L. Invisible (bio)economies: a framework to assess the ‘blind spots’ of dominant bioeconomy models. Sustain Sci (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01292-6.
[25] Rajaei, Z., Banihashemi, S.A. & Khalilzadeh, M. (2023). Identifying and Prioritizing Service Compensation Factors Influencing Nurses’ Motivation: Application of Hybrid Fuzzy DEMATEL-BWM Method. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 16, 63–88
[26] Schor J (2020). After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[27] Shubham Agrawal, Amy M. Schuster, Noah Britt, Jessica Liberman & Shelia R. Cotten (2022) Expendable to essential? Changing perceptions of gig workers on Twitter in the onset of COVID-19, Information, Communication & Society, 25:5, 634-653.
[28] Shapiro A (2020). Dynamic exploits: calculative asymmetries in the on-demand economy. New Technology, Work & Employment 35(2): 162–177.
[29] Sundler, A., Lindberg, E., Nilsson, C., & Palmer, L. (2019). Qualitative thematic analysis based on descriptive phenomenology. Nursing Open, 6(3), 733–739.
[30] Tanford, S., E. Hwang, and S. Baloglu. )2018(. Evaluation of reward programs based on member preferences and perceptions of fairness. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management 27 (1): 106–126.
[31] Tran M, Sokas RK. The Gig Economy and Contingent Work: An Occupational Health Assessment. J Occup Environ Med. 2017 Apr;59(4):e63-e66. doi: 10.1097/JOM.0000000000000977. PMID: 28244887; PMCID: PMC5374746.
[32] Turner, B. (2023). Digital working lives: worker autonomy and the gig-economy. Contemp Polit Theory. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-023-00619-3.
[33] Umer Zaman, Shahid Nawaz, Areesha Javed & Tareq Rasul | Pantea Foroudi (Reviewing editor) (2020) Having a whale of a time: Linking self-determination theory (SDT), job characteristics model (JCM) and motivation to the joy of gig work, Cogent Business & Management, 7:1.
[34] Vallas S, Schor JB (2020) What do platforms do? Understanding the gig economy. Annual Review of Sociology 46: 273–294.
[35] Wood AJ, Graham M, Lehdonvirta V, et al. (2019). Good gig, bad gig: autonomy and algorithmic control in the global Gig economy. Work, Employment & Society 33(1).