Cecilia_Manzo, Autore presso Weplat

I servizi offerti in questo ambito sono sempre più erogati attraverso piattaforme digitali. La digitalizzazione di questi servizi non è neutrale, ma costituisce una opportunità di produrre innovazione sociale e organizzativa, perché il welfare aziendale, se utilizzato con criterio, è una modalità contemporanea di rispondere ai bisogni non solo economici ma anche relazionali delle persone, delle famiglie e delle comunità e quindi può rappresentare un collante sociale importante, soprattutto in questi tempi difficili.

Perché ciò sia possibile, occorre però consapevolezza da parte di tutti i soggetti coinvolti. A questo proposito, è in corso un importante progetto di ricerca promosso dalla Fondazione Cariplo sulle piattaforme di welfare: Weplat. Questa ricerca riguarda non solo le piattaforme di welfare aziendale ma in generale tutte le piattaforme di servizi di welfare in Italia e si articola in tre fasi:

la mappatura delle piattaforme digitali di welfare e l’individuazione delle variabili organizzative che caratterizzano i diversi modelli di piattaforma di welfare, coordinata da Ivana Pais, ordinaria di Sociologia economica nella facoltà di Economia dell’Università Cattolica, studiosa dell’economia e del lavoro di piattaforma;
l’analisi del modello di servizio e delle modalità di accesso da parte degli utenti/clienti, a cura di Martina Visentin, ricercatrice presso l’Università di Padova.
l’elaborazione di linee guida per progettare piattaforme che rispondano in modo adeguato alle esigenze di tutti i soggetti coinvolti, fase coordinata da Marta Maineri, fondatrice di Collaboriamo!

Questo progetto di ricerca, il primo mai realizzato finora nel nostro Paese, consentirà di poter usare ancora meglio la tecnologia, per fare in modo che le piattaforme digitali di welfare siano uno strumento davvero solidale.

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Leggi l'articolo completo: https://www.it/innovazione/come-i-fringe-benefit-possono-diventare-unoccasione-di-innovazione-sociale/

by Cecilia_Manzo

INDL (International Network on Digital Labor) - Scientific Conference

3 -5 novembre 2022, Atene, Grecia

Features and futures of digital labor

Nell'ambito della conferenza, il team di ricerca di Weplat ha presentato il paper:

Platform as an institutional logic: the case of welfare platforms

Abstract:

The extensive literature on platforms has mainly analyzed them as infrastructure (Plantin et al. 2018), as a marketplace (Kirchner and Schüßler 2019), and as a mechanism for matching supply and demand for goods and services (Möhlmann et al 2021). The study of the platform as an organisational model has received less theoretical attention (Eurofound 2018; Stark and Pais 2020) and has promoted less empirical analysis. This paper aims to fill this gap by proposing an organisational analysis of welfare platforms.

The scholarly attention paid to platforms tend to analyze them as a homogeneous corpus. Cansoy et al. (2020) have already questioned this presumed homogeneity, analyzing the heterogeneity of workers; we intend to propose a similar analytical exercise by examining the organizational model.

Our hypothesis is that the platform is an institutional logic, which is declined differently in the encounter with other institutional logics of a given organizational field. Hence, it follows that the platform model is not neutral with respect to goods/service they intermediate.

The paper presents the first results of the WePlat research project (Welfare systems in the age of platforms: drivers of change for users, providers and policy makers, https://www.weplat.it/). The choice to analyze the welfare is dictated by the importance of the relational dimension of platform-mediated interactions in this sector (Ticona, Mateescu 2018; Huws 2020; McDonald, Williams, Mayes 2021). We have mapped the welfare platforms present in Italy, identifying and analysing about 100 of them and we are carrying out the case study of 9 platforms.

As organization scholars have increasingly claimed, technologies and artifacts play an active role in structuring and shaping organizational fields (Pentland and Feldman 2008; Alaimo 2022). According with this hypothesis, we empirically investigated how the adoption of digital affordances (Autio et al 2017; Bucher and Elmond 2017) underlying the platform logic take on the features of institutionalized myths (Meyer and Rowan 1977). Initial results show that adopting platform logic reinforces isomorphism between digital welfare platforms and platforms in other sectors while increases heterogeneity within the welfare sector. This slows down the process of institutionalizing the organizational field of welfare platforms. Moreover, institutional complexity related to the adoption of platform logic seems not to be transitional, but balances can change over time. Case studies show different strategies for managing institutional complexity: the emergence of one logic at the expense of others, the compartmentalization of logics or the creation of new professional figures.

This research can bring several contributions to digital labor studies. First, it contributes to the elaboration of the very definition of digital labor. Jarrett (2022) identifies three categories that fall under this conceptual umbrella: user labor, platform-mediated workers, formal worker. If the work in some of the welfare platforms we analyzed undoubtedly falls into the platform-mediated workers category, other platforms digitize existing services while maintaining the pre-existing labor contract. Thus, they are "formal workers" but with very different characteristics from those analyzed in the literature. Previous research on welfare platforms (McDonald, Williams, Mayes 2021) has excluded this category due to paucity of empirical cases. In our empirical field, by contrast, these are prevalent. Secondly, Marxist approaches have been a dominant feature of existing studies of digital labor. The analysis of cases in which platform organization is not associated with an employment condition of precariousness and instability makes it necessary to adopt other interpretive approaches, which can bring an original contribution to digital labor studies.

Autori:

Francesco Bonifacio, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Cecilia Manzo, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Ivana Pais, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Qui il programma completo del convegno: LINK

by Cecilia_Manzo

Milano Digital Week

14 novembre 2022, Digital Week Milano

Nell'ambito dell'evento Martina Visentin ha presentato il paper:

Innovare il Welfare: Le piattaforme digitali e l'esperienza di WEMI

Qui il link all'interno programma: LINK

by Cecilia_Manzo

SASE (Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics) - Scientific Conference

9–11 luglio 2022, Amsterdam, Paesi Bassi

Fractious Connections: Anarchy, Activism, Coordination, and Control

Nell'ambito della conferenza, il team di ricerca di Weplat ha presentato il paper:

Platform Welfare: From Isomorphism to Heterogeneity

Abstract:

The emergence of digital platforms is related to thorough transformations in every sector of the economy, as well as other societal domains such as – to name but a few – education, energy, the media and personal services. The birth of several ad hoc notions like “platform logic” (Schwarz, 2017), “platform society” (van Dijck et al., 2018), “platform capitalism” (Langley & Leyshon, 2017; Srnicek, 2017) or “platform economy” (Kenney & Zysman, 2016) signals a focus on platform-related transformations at the macro level, while another area of research concerns the working conditions and representation of platform workers (Lehdonvirta, 2018; Casilli 2018; Schor 2020).
The study of the platform as an organisational model has received less theoretical attention (Eurofound 2018; Stark & Pais 2020) and has promoted less empirical analysis. This paper aims to fill this gap by proposing an organisational analysis of welfare platforms. The scholarly attention paid to platforms tend to analyze them as a homogeneous corpus. Schor (2020) have already questioned this presumed homogeneity, analyzing the heterogeneity of workers; we intend to propose a similar analytical exercise by examining the organizational model.
Our hypothesis is that the platform is not neutral with respect to goods/service they intermediate and that the provision of welfare services has specific features that require the construction of organizational models at least in part ad hoc for the sector (Fosti 2016; Dupret 2017; Ticona, Mateescu 2018; Flanagan 2019; Huws 2020; Casula et al. 2020).
The paper presents the first results of the WePlat research project (Welfare systems in the age of platforms: drivers of change for users, providers and policy makers, https://www.weplat.it/). We have mapped the welfare platforms present in Italy, identifying and analysing 67 of them and we are carrying out the case study of 9 platforms: 3 with direct access by users, 3 with indirect access and 3 with mixed access.
Analysis is based on interviewing managers and operators, shadowing, and etnographic analysis in relation to: governance, market positioning, business models, data policies, complexity of tasks, workers’ autonomy, labor organization, relationship between user and operator, algorithmic management.
From the initial evidence, it emerges not only a heterogeneity of welfare platforms compared to platforms operating in other sectors, but also an organizational heterogeneity within the welfare platforms. The paper questions the origins of this field heterogeneity, taking into consideration the role of ‘institutional complexity’ (Greenwood et al. 2011), the relevance of ‘institutional entrepreneurship’ (Battilana, Leca and Boxembaum 2009), the practices of ‘translation’ (Czarniawska & Joerges 1996) and the presence of ‘islands of homogeneity’ (Greeve 1996) determined by the territorial embeddedness of welfare platforms and by the role of bounded communities of practices. In this analysis, particular attention will be paid to the difference between platforms that are created as start-ups and platforms promoted as part of a digital transformation strategy of already established enterprises.

Autori:
Cecilia Manzo, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Ivana Pais, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Qui il programma completo del convegno: LINK

by Cecilia_Manzo

Piattaforme cooperative| Workshop

13 maggio 2022, Bologna, Italia

PIATTAFORME COOPERATIVE. Visioni, imprese e politiche per lo sviluppo

All'interno del workshop Flaviano Zandonai ha fatto un intervento su:

Una modellizzazione delle piattaforme a partire dalla loro infrastruttura

Qui il link all'interno programma: LINK

by Cecilia_Manzo

ISIRC - 13th International Social Innovation Research Conference

8 settembre - 10 settembre 2021, Milano, Italia

Nell'ambito della conferenza, il team di ricerca di Weplat ha presentato un documento intitolato:

Digital welfare: web-based platforms and personal social services use

Abstract:

The presentation aims to investigate if “welfare platforms” a new and specific type of platform. The spread of web-based platforms is transforming the traditional model of distribution and use of welfare services, both in public and in private sector (occupational welfare / at-firm-level welfare), all this means working on coordinates of access to alternative services compared to traditional ones (Colarusso, Visentin, Lodigiani & Pesenti, 2021) It is necessary, therefore, to further study digital welfare analyse: - the transformation of services to digital; - the use of digital interfaces to facilitate service provider-user relationships - the impacts on the use of digitized services (Coles-Kemp et al., 2020).

Autori:
Luca Pesenti, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano
Simona Colarusso, Università degli Studi di Padova

Qui il programma: LINK

by Cecilia_Manzo