Governing the Gig Economy: Strategic Incentives and Ethical Alternatives in Investor-Owned and Cooperative Platforms

Hannah  Altman; Morris Altman

doi:10.1080/00346764.2026.2651740

Governing the Gig Economy: Strategic Incentives and Ethical Alternatives in Investor-Owned and Cooperative Platforms

Hannah Altman
, Morris Altman (Lead / Corresponding author)

Business Office

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Abstract

We examine how ownership and governance structures shape incentives, power relations, and strategic interaction in gig economy platforms. Using an institutional game-theoretic framework, we employ stylised games as a comparative heuristic to show how alternative governance arrangements stabilise different classes of outcomes, rather than serving as predictions under universal rationality assumptions. Investor-owned platforms tend to stabilise power-skewed, low-compensation outcomes that are individually rational given unilateral rule-setting authority, yet collectively inferior in terms of effort, service quality, and worker well-being. Repeated interaction can sustain conditional cooperation, but such outcomes remain institutionally fragile in fragmented, algorithmically managed labour markets. By contrast, cooperative and participatory platforms reshape the strategic environment by endogenising rule-setting, surplus allocation, and monitoring, while more democratically oriented investor-owned firms may provide a lower-risk avenue for gig workers for participation and equitable outcomes. The analysis contributes to debates on platform governance, economic democracy, and digital labour.

Original language	English
Journal	Review of Social Economy
Early online date	15 Apr 2026
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/00346764.2026.2651740
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 15 Apr 2026

Keywords

Platform cooperatives
distributive justice
economic democracy
gig economy
strategic governance

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics

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10.1080/00346764.2026.2651740Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Final published version
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, dis-tribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed,or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscriptin a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Final published version, 985 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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AB - We examine how ownership and governance structures shape incentives, power relations, and strategic interaction in gig economy platforms. Using an institutional game-theoretic framework, we employ stylised games as a comparative heuristic to show how alternative governance arrangements stabilise different classes of outcomes, rather than serving as predictions under universal rationality assumptions. Investor-owned platforms tend to stabilise power-skewed, low-compensation outcomes that are individually rational given unilateral rule-setting authority, yet collectively inferior in terms of effort, service quality, and worker well-being. Repeated interaction can sustain conditional cooperation, but such outcomes remain institutionally fragile in fragmented, algorithmically managed labour markets. By contrast, cooperative and participatory platforms reshape the strategic environment by endogenising rule-setting, surplus allocation, and monitoring, while more democratically oriented investor-owned firms may provide a lower-risk avenue for gig workers for participation and equitable outcomes. The analysis contributes to debates on platform governance, economic democracy, and digital labour.

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Governing the Gig Economy: Strategic Incentives and Ethical Alternatives in Investor-Owned and Cooperative Platforms

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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