Having their cake and eating it too? Online labor platforms and human resource management as a case of institutional complexity

Previous studies have shown that online labor platforms want to their cake and eat it too by implementing human resource management (HRM) activities control gig workers who ought be autonomous in work. Our empirical study shows using HRM creates institutional complexity explores the strategies adopted platform firms address this complexity. Based on case of two meal-delivery Netherlands (Uber Eats Deliveroo), we identify freelance-related create tensions between market corporation logics. We show rely response integrate/balance, rather than rule out competing logics, including creating novel forms outsourcing, devolution, covert implementation while simultaneously upholding freelance status. Furthermore, these are enabled information technologies marketplaces create, allowing for more experimental dynamic approaches so far theorized. The main implication findings is source of, solution to, associated with controlling workers.