Institutionalising crowdwork as a mode of employment: the case of crowdworkers in Nigeria

Crowdwork is one type of crowdsourcing enabled by digital platforms of work and the global widespread of Internet connectivity. While employers find it a model of sourcing temporary labour to perform specific tasks with light employment obligations, recent statistics show that workers increasingly adopt it as a model of fulltime long-term employment. This study examines workers lived experience to uncover how workers adopt crowdwork as a model of fulltime employment. It does so in the context of a developing country in Africa; Nigeria, where international organisations and governments particularly find it holding potentials to reduce the serious unemployment problems in these countries. Through inductive research process, the theoretical lens of institutional work emerges as a plausible explanation of the research findings. It shows that crowdworkers in the context of Nigeria create a fulltime long-term employment of crowdwork through five interlinked strategies that mediate between the constrains of their existing institutions and their need to sustain crowdwork employment. Contribution to theory and practice is then discussed.