Black Box or Hidden Abode? The Expansion and Exposure of Platform Work Managerialism

This Special Issue holds that managerialism is not an abstract, trans-historical category (Eagleton-Pierce and Knafo 2019), and this article argues that neither is it hidden within an impenetrable black box. An important new form of managerialism is being revealed which is specific to what Moore and Joyce argue to be a very observable, and also widely contested, platform management model (PMM). Marx’s “hidden abode” is a more appropriate metaphor than a black box, thus, given empirically demonstrable cases of control and resistance. Drawing on insights from labor process theory, the article reveals how control methods are at work, and transversally, how platform managerialism generates considerable levels of worker and union resistance. Despite its seeming inevitability and invincibility, platform managerialism is as knowable and as contestable, indeed, as contested, as other forms.