2182: Performance Implications of Gig Workers’ Reactions to Daily Paradoxical Experiences (17666)

As a novel form of contemporary jobs, gig work emerges from a highly dynamic and complex organization environment. Thus, gig work is inherently filled with plurality of stakeholders, change in daily work, and scarcity of resources, which are exactly three typical sources of paradoxes. Nevertheless, little scholarly attention was paid to the paradoxical side of gig work. Drawing on paradox theory, the present paper proposes a model linking gig workers’ paradoxical experiences and their service performance. We focus on emotional exhaustion as a key underlying mechanism to explain why gig workers fail to address tensions in some circumstances. Furthermore, we hypothesize that paradox mindset acts as a protective factor in gig workers’ coping process on paradoxical experiences. To examine our model, we conducted a 14-day diary study with a sample of food delivery workers. Our results found that gig workers with low paradox mindset were more prone to experience emotional exhaustion under salient paradoxical tensions in their daily work, which further weakened their service performance in dealing with food orders. Our research sheds light on gig work by identifying its paradoxical nature and implying its downstream consequences as well as the preventing approach.

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