Humanistic Management in the Gig Economy: Dignity, Fairness and Care

Gig-workers are often not regarded as employees by the platforms they work with. Yet they do not always have all the freedoms enjoyed by independent contractors. The world of work is changing, and this is one area in which the new realities need to be better understood in order to promote human dignity, protect the vulnerable and foster flourishing. To achieve this, justice and fairness need to be researched and innovatively translated into new forms of work in diverse ways and in various cultures. This edited collection explores and examines ways in which the humanistic management and fairness considerations help to humanise the way gig-workers are treated, with particular attention paid to economies in the global south.

Countries represented in the case study section are Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Kenya, Nigeria, South Korea, and Uganda, and both traditional and innovative lenses of fairness and ethics are applied to these new forms of work. The book will be of great interest to scholars and students of work and employment, digital business, human resource management and business ethics.

Kemi Ogunyemi is Professor of Business Ethics at Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria, where she also teaches managerial anthropology, self-leadership and sustainability management. She was for many years the director of the Christopher Kolade Centre for Research in Leadership and Ethics as well as the academic director for the School’s Senior Management Programme. Her consulting and research interests include personal ethos, work-life ethic, social responsibility, sustainability, governance and anti-corruption risk assessment.