The platformization of space-time. Notes for a theory of organizational relativity

Abstract

This contribution looks at the organizational innovations introduced by digital platforms from a broader reflection, which is positioning them within the historical depth necessary to understand their underlying logic. From this perspective, they emerge not simply as the outcome of the new potentials offered by digital technologies, but as the result of more articulated social dynamics. In tracing the evolutions of the various organizational models that have taken place in the industrial sphere (from Fordism to network capitalism to the rise of digital platforms) what will be highlighted is how these transformations respond to social and political logics having the same goal: the control of labor. Thus, digital platforms appear as the final piece of these transformations, capable of a disruption of space/time coordinates of production that while on one hand allow them to emerge as leader in the global market, on the other provides them increasingly pervasive and effective labor disciplining devices. Despite this, platforms do not appear to be the sole owners of their destiny. The most recent transformations underscore how the mobilization experiences we have seen rising from riders and drivers are succeeding in affecting both the formal dimension of law and the organizational substance of platforms.

Keywords

• digital platform
• organizational models
• labor organization
• labour rights