Neither Employee nor Contractor: A Case Study of Employment Relations between Riders and Platform-Based Food-Delivery Firms in Taiwan

There have been numerous legal battles in Western countries concerning employment relations between platform-based food delivery firms and their riders; however, no such legal battles have occurred in Taiwan. This qualitative case study applies the theory of institutional logics to examine the reaso...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWork, employment and society Vol. 38; no. 1; pp. 122 - 139
Main Author Lee, Bo-Yi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.02.2024
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Case studies
Companies
Convergence
Developmentalism
Employees
Employment
Entrepreneurs
Food
Motivation
Profitability
Stakeholders
Taiwan
platform workers
platform-based food-delivery
platform economy
employment relations
Taiwan
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Summary:There have been numerous legal battles in Western countries concerning employment relations between platform-based food delivery firms and their riders; however, no such legal battles have occurred in Taiwan. This qualitative case study applies the theory of institutional logics to examine the reason such legal action is absent in Taiwan, focusing on how different stakeholders apply different logics to employment relations in Taiwan’s platform-based food-delivery sector. Through this investigation, this article shows that most stakeholders in this sector quickly came to a consensus that the ‘quasi-employee’ hybrid logic should be applied to riders, and that this was due to a convergence of worker and capitalist theories of profit, motivation to maintain the profitability of these platform firms (who are regulatory entrepreneurs performing symbolic compliance) and the techno-developmentalism of the Taiwanese government.
ISSN:0950-0170
1469-8722
DOI:10.1177/09500170221103147