The human capital hoax: Work, debt and insecurity in the era of Uberization
Abstract
Human capital theory – developed by neoclassical economists like Gary Becker and Theodore Schultz – is widely considered a useful way to explain how employees might enhance their value in organizations, leading to improved skill, autonomy and socio-economic wellbeing. This essay argues the opposite. Human capital theory implies that employees should bear the costs (and benefits) of their investment. Highly individualized training and work practices are an inevitable corollary. Self-employment, portfolio careers, the ‘gig economy’ and on-demand business models (including Uber and Deliveroo) faithfully reflect the assumptions that inform human capital theory. I term this the radical responsibilization of the workforce and link it to growing economic insecurity, low productivity, diminished autonomy and worrying levels of personal debt. The essay concludes by proposing some possible solutions.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Algorithmic scheduling may facilitate the implementation of an organizational strategy towards zero-hours contracts, resulting in lower job stability.
“Similarly, algorithmic scheduling may facilitate the implementation of an organizational strategy towards zero-hours contract (Fleming, 2017;Moore & Hayes, 2017, 2018), resulting in lower job stability.”
From Algorithms as work designers: How algorithmic management influences the design of jobs (2022) · cites this paper as Fleming, 2017
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Duggan, J., Sherman, U., Carbery, R., & McDonnell, A. (2020) · Human Resource Management Journal · doi:10.1111/1748-8583.12258 · Cited by 1,050 · see citing works
The sharing economy and digital platforms: A review and research agenda
Sutherland, W., & Jarrahi, M. H. (2018) · International Journal of Information Management · doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.07.004 · Cited by 725 · see citing works
Algorithms as work designers: How algorithmic management influences the design of jobs
Parent-Rocheleau, X., & Parker, S. K. (2022) · Human Resource Management Review · doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2021.100838 · Cited by 512 · see citing works
Braganza, A., Chen, W., Canhoto, A., & Sap, S. (2021) · Journal of Business Research · doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.08.018 · Cited by 431 · see citing works
Working on my own: Measuring the challenges of gig work
Caza, B. B., Reid, E. M., Ashford, S. J., & Granger, S. (2022) · Human Relations · doi:10.1177/00187267211030098 · Cited by 249 · see citing works
‘My Life Is More Valuable Than This’: Understanding Risk among On-Demand Food Couriers in Edinburgh
Gregory, K. (2021) · Work, Employment and Society · doi:10.1177/0950017020969593 · Cited by 208 · see citing works
Huang, Y., & Ye, W. (2024) · Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies · doi:10.1177/13548565231211117 · Cited by 37 · see citing works
Bloom, P., & Śliwa, M. (2022) · Human Relations · doi:10.1177/0018726721996763 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
'The plan is just survival': Data Work in Kenya and the Regime of Entrapment
Kapania, S., Yang, T., Abdelkadir, N. A., Scheuerman, M. K., Miceli, M., Taylor, A. S., & Fox, S. E. (2026) · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3772318.3791097 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
“This dynamic becomes especially visible in what many describe as the “uberization” of work [2, 34, 61], where employment is reorganized around individualized arrangements that cast workers as micro-entrepreneurs [47].”
- Authors
- Fleming, P.
- Affiliations
- City, University of London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Fleming, Peter
- ORCID
- Fleming, Peter
- Venue
- Organization Studies
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2017-01-24
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 691-709
- ISSN
- 0170-8406 (ISSN-L)
- 1741-3044
- OpenAlex
- W2580351931
- Cited by
- 473
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 32 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 60 · 2023: 61 · 2022: 94 · 2021: 68 · 2020: 52 · 2019: 34 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 2 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 77.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Organization Studies (publishedVersion)
- City Research Online (City University London) (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Economy and Work Transformation
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Employment, Labor, and Gender Studies
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Industrial relations › Legal and Labor Studies
- Keywords
- human capital theory, gig economy, Uberization, personal debt, economic insecurity, employee autonomy, responsibilization, self-employment, portfolio careers, on-demand work, low productivity, employee training, neoliberalism
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
