There are four million voluntary attritions a month in the US. Many of these people choses to become freelance consultants (gig workers) working through digital gig platforms for better work-life balance. At the same time organizations requires a more flexible access to skills and competences to cope with an ever more dynamic business environment. This trend is also apparent in Europe. As people with the necessary skills and abilities is increasingly found on digital gig platforms, organizations must turn to these platforms to find needed competence. The act of hiring these digital gig workers through digital gig platforms are called crowdsourcing. The risks of crowdsourcing have mostly been studied from the perspective of gig workers and platform operator and there is a lack of understanding regarding the risk with crowdsourcing from the perspective of hiring organizations.       Our aim is to understand what risks organizations perceive with digital gig platforms and digital gig workers, and how organizations could mitigate the perceived risks by using a risk management framework. We conducted a qualitative case study around crowdsourcing as a process. Seven semi-structured interviews with mangers in organizations of various seize and industries were made. These interviews were supplemented with a document study of digital gig platform policies as these policies can reflect common concerns expressed by hiring organizations. Findings shows that there are several perceived organizational risks in crowdsourcing digital gig workers from digital gig platforms. The perceived risks can be categorized as HR, financial, market, operational, technological and supply chain types of risk. These types of risks can be either internal, external, or voluntary risks. The discussion revolves around where the different perceived organizational risks would fit within a risk management framework. The risks can be connected to all components of existing risk management frameworks. Our risk management model of crowdsourcing can be used as a heuristic tool for practitioners and contributes to theory by creating understanding of the risks with crowdsourcing from the perspective of organizations.

This essay explores the early experiences of Bangladeshi blue-collar service workers in digitalising their livelihoods. It is a qualitative study that surveys and interviews service-providers in Dhaka who use the business aggregator platform Sheba.xyz, an online service marketplace, and seeks to understand what brought these self-employed micro-entrepreneurs, previously outside the digital economy, to adopt an ICT-enabled solution. The study is guided by Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory, one of the historically dominant paradigms in the field of communication for development (C4D). The overarching research question is, “Why did blue-collar service-providers in Dhaka adopt and use a digital business aggregator platform?” The aim is to explore what motivated/discouraged and enabled/hindered innovation adoption among a group of users previously marginalised from digital and financial inclusion. The findings suggest that adoption of Sheba.xyz among service-providers was not driven so much by a desire to digitalise one’s business per se, and as a means of mitigating a previous inability to do so. Rather, the factors that emerge from the qualitative data are other perceived relative advantages of the solution – of increase in customers, income, and opportunity. Survey respondents and interviewees also displayed strong affiliation with, and trust in, the platform provider; an alertness for fair treatment; and a drive to prosper, suggesting that they embraced a comprehensive concept and altered life situation where belonging, respect, and self-fulfilment matters, rather than narrowly adopted a new mobile application.