Talent management in the emerging gig economy

Abstract

The gig economy has emerged rapidly as a form of service delivery that challenges existing business models, labour management practices, and regulations. The purpose of this study is to contribute theoretically to understanding of embeddedness and conceptually to the understanding of platforms in the digital world with specific reference to gig economy. Therefore, the study is purely conceptual and secondary data was followed from the existing body of knowledge relevance to talent management issues in emerging gig economy. The ways in which platforms companies transact with workers, in particular has created a public interest but has yet to give rise to corresponding academic literature. When platforms take the role market intermediaries of economic ties are thin and the gig workers are left to their own devices, in a form of “disembeddedness” becomes a compelling tool to describe the social structures that frame economic action, including the power imbalances that characterised digital labour in the global economy. The gig economy is demanding a fundamental shift in the typical talent management philosophy that historically focused on full time employees to talent portfolio management which represents both internal and external talent. The research has organised the literature around the concept of the gig economy in terms of gig workers, gig work, and digital platforms, and draw several interesting insights from the literature. Important gaps have been identified by the researcher in the existing literature on working in the gig economy and provided guidance for future research