ABSTRACT
The study of digital labour platforms provides an opportunity to check and illustrate the relevance of the authority-based conception of the firm. Digital Labour Platforms question the nature, hence the concept, of the firm, claiming that they are not firms but intermediaries and that their activity does not involve exercising authority over the service providers. Indeed, Digital Labour Platforms differ from conventional firms in that they involve isolated, not collective and interdependent, work. The kind of power they exercise over workers thus differs from managerial authority as understood in the book. The chapter examines the governance of Digital Labour Platforms and argues that their economic activity is precisely the activity, or functions, performed by authority in conventional firms. But in platform firms, it takes the form of algorithmic management. The chapter ends by showing that Digital Labour Platforms are institutionally shaped, not technologically determined, and that the recommendation for codetermination also applies to them.
