The role of organizational settings in social learning: An ethnographic focus on food-delivery platform work

Abstract

How do organizational settings influence learning mechanisms and their outcomes? Based on a 26-month online and offline ethnography, the article specifically analyses couriers’ learning in the context of food-delivery platform work, marked by the heterogeneity of the working crowd, the gig nature of the job and the digitally mediated, individualized and automated management apparatus. Drawing on social learning theory, and in particular on communities of practice (CoPs), the results of the study unpack how the digital nature of online peer discussion groups enables three interrelated learning mechanisms (sharing, symphonizing and shaping). The digitalness of CoPs indeed allows for a high degree of responsiveness in exchanges and a commutativity of shared knowledge that overcome the structural barriers to social learning inherent in the low-skilled platform context. The present study finally challenges the widespread approach that views online worker groups as a potential locus for resistance; its findings suggest that they also indirectly contribute to maintaining power relations through the social learning processes they enable.