Formation of personal competencies in the context of algorithmic organization of platform employment
https://doi.org/10.24290/1029-3736-2026-32-3-291-311
Abstract
Platform employment, which has gained significant traction in the context of society’s digital transformation, represents a complex socio-economic phenomenon. On one hand, it brings to the forefront historically rooted forms of informal, contract, and casual labor; on the other hand, it acquires qualitatively new features through technological platforms that act as intermediaries. This study focuses on the central paradox of this phenomenon: while being an institutionalized form of precarity, platform employment demonstrates a high level of subjective satisfaction among its workers.
This paradox is revealed through the analysis of a fundamental contradiction: digital platforms do not create fundamentally new labor issues but rather reinterpret and exacerbate traditional labor market imbalances (information asymmetry, competition, economic instability), masking them under the rhetoric of freedom, flexibility, and entrepreneurship. The methodological foundation of this work is a qualitative content analysis of a large volume of user reviews collected from open internet platforms. This allows for a shift from abstract models to empirically grounded typologies of key actors.
Algorithms, being the technological core and key advantage of platforms, simultaneously act as the main source of new forms of dependence and alienation. They do not so much solve the old problems of labor relations as translate them into the plane of individual responsibility and adaptive competence of each participant. Platform employment, therefore, marks not a break, but a profound transformation of the traditional logic of work, where the burden of managing risks and uncertainty is redistributed from institutions (government, corporations) onto the shoulders of an individual who is forced to constantly prove his competitiveness in an algorithmically controlled market.
About the Author
A. S. BarkovaRussian Federation
Barkova Anna S., Senior Lecturer at the Department of Communication Systems Sociology, Faculty of Sociology
Leninskiye Gory, 1-33, Moscow, 119234
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Review
For citations:
Barkova A.S. Formation of personal competencies in the context of algorithmic organization of platform employment. Moscow State University Bulletin. Series 18. Sociology and Political Science. 2026;32(3):291-311. https://doi.org/10.24290/1029-3736-2026-32-3-291-311
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