Naslov
Financialisation, Labour and Algorithms: The Case of Google

Autori
Bilić, Paško

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, ostalo

Skup
37th International Labour Process Conference

Mjesto i datum
Beč, Austrija, 24.04.2019. - 26.04.2019

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Financialization, Labour, Algorithms

Sažetak
GAFAM companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook) have established oligopolistic control over digital markets with the use of complex technical systems, algorithms and artificial intelligence. Financialisation plays a major role in the rapid development and global deployment of their products and services. The rise of financialisation as the driver of capitalist accumulation started in the 1980s. It created a superstructure to the productive base of capitalism (Magdoff & Sweezy, 1983) which was fast becoming independent and uncontrollable (Sweezy, 1994). Financialisation is closely linked with managerial ideologies of creating shareholder value (Froud et al., 2000 ; Lazonick, 2000), and restructuring of labour (Thompson, 2003 ; Martin, Rafferty & Bryan, 2008 ; Bryan, Martin & Rafferty, 2009 ; Sotiropolous & Lapatsioras, 2014). Many tech companies offer financial incentives and stock awards, along with short-term and flexible contracts to skilled labour. That creates new hierarchies between highly skilled workers, and low-skilled workers performing repetitive micro-tasks (Mosco & McKercher, 2009). Tech companies also deploy crowdsourcing strategies as a way of further reducing labour costs. Crowdsourcing is, in many regards, nothing more than the continuation of corporate restructuring through outsourcing (Huws, 2017). In this presentation, I will analyse the close entanglement between production and finance among GAFAM companies by looking at their respective R&D expenditures, labour incentives such as stock-based compensations, stock dividend payments, and stock buybacks in the period between 2005 and 2017. Corporate management strategies differ among the analysed companies. Changes often depend on key turning points in company development such as major acquisitions, changes in key management positions, and so on. The focus of the presentation will be on the labour management strategy of Google. In particular. I will look at: (1) their financial incentive programs for managers and highly skilled workers ; and (2) the deployment of search quality raters (Bilić, 2016, 2018) who perform repetitive, albeit essential, tasks for Google's machine learning algorithms. Algorithmic systems are discursively presented as autonomous and automated, while the labour input necessary for their development is often framed as a computational problem (Irani, 2015). By cutting down labour costs and maximizing shareholder value, financial capital creates new class structures and divisions of labour.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Sociologija

POVEZANOST RADA