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Dr. Delia Bădoi

Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romanian Academy of Science

Delia Badoi

Motivations, Flexibility and Digital Algorithms: The Digital Platformisation of Labour in the Food-Delivery Sector

Under a new digital business model, the platform-based food delivery sector navigates multiple dimensions of flexibility, insecurity and precarious work. My project concerns the emerging digital transformation of the working conditions of the workers who provide services in the collaborative food delivery sector. I employ the concept of ‘the platformisation of labour’ as a new societal issue related to the direct consequences of flexible capitalism’s technological changes. Future of work literature considers food delivery labour platforms as a new workforce that depends on new technologies. I ask how the delivery platform workers’ motivations of platform labour interplayed in dependent strategies and coping methods to deal with life uncertainty and precarious working situations. I argue that working through platform-based food delivery generates new interdisciplinary knowledge on how flexibility mediated by algorithmic management produces changes in the norms of work and increases unpredictability over the quality of life.
My project develops an integrated methodology based on policy analysis, narrative qualitative research and thematic analysis of how workers experience the spectrum of algorithmic control in their daily working life and its implications for the future of work in local labour market digital transformation in Romania and Germany.
As expected outcomes, I plan the preparation of a publication in peer-reviewed journals and presentations of practical results at international conferences.

Main Research Topics

  • Global Labour Studies (precariousness, informalisation, flexibility)
  • Politics of new technology at work and platform economy
  • Algorithmic Management
  • Job Satisfaction and Motivations
  • Professional and Life Trajectories

Research Results

My fellowship project focused on innovative strategies to address the challenges of the digital transformation of workplaces, particularly regarding how platform workers perceive the new demands stemming from algorithmic management models. During my fieldwork, I integrated recent scholarship on labour platforms through the lens of food delivery platform companies’ regulation, reconceptualising the interconnectedness of the platform characteristics, labour rights, and normative usages of algorithmic management towards an organisational paradigm. My findings went into the socio-technical foundations to elucidate digital narratives of how workers perceive the spectrum of work flexibility and ethical control. I discovered that their labour process stems from shifts in variance and measurement through the ongoing development of bonus systems and strategies designed to increase the platform’s profits. Vulnerable workers are motivated to pursue employment in delivery services due to the promise of primary income and additional bonuses, as labour platforms offer flexible scheduling and minimal legal requirements. Platform labour affects workers’ well-being, with the pressure of expedited delivery, tight schedules, and continuous work. My research highlighted the critical importance of platform labour’s attributes on the ethical implication of work control and the need for formal regulations. After completing my research at CAIS and drawing on my previous fieldwork, I am preparing a book proposal and drafting the initial chapters.

Conference presentations:

  • Delia Badoi (2024) “Digital microentrepreneurs and food delivery labour platforms in Germany under the EU Directive”, Paper presentation at the Regional Conference “Platform work in the age of AI – Future of Work Revisited”, 22-23.05.2024, Belgrade, Serbia.
  • Delia Badoi (2024) “Digital micro-entrepreneurs and food delivery labour platforms in Germany and Romania: Applying Hirschman’s Exit-Voice-Loyalty Framework”, Paper presentation at the Workshop “Work and Employment: Emerging Themes and Trends”, 11-12.07.2024, Center for Advanced Internet Studies, Bochum, Germany.
  • Delia Badoi (2025) “Networked society, digital microentrepreneurs and crowd labour platforms: dynamics of flexible work and algorithmic management in Romania and Germany”, Paper presentation at the International Conference “The Future of work: technical progress, artificial intelligence and working times, 22-24.01.2025, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Media coverage (Blog articles):

Recent publications (based on my previous research)

  • Delia Badoi, Ana Maria Preoteasa (2024) ‘I don’t know what awaits me.’ Understanding Uncertainty and Spatiotemporal Flexibility among Platform-based Food Delivery Couriers in Romania, Sociologia – Slovak Sociological Review, 56, 6, 369-388. https://doi.org/10.31577/sociologia.2024.56.6.19

Curriculum Vitae

  • Research Fellow, Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romanian Academy of Science (2017- present);
  • Research Associate, Competence Centre on the Future of Work, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Brussels, Belgium (2021-2022);
  • Fellowships: Visiting Research Fellow, Monitoring Society and Social Change Department, Centre for Excellence Women and Science, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, Cologne, Germany (2019); Visiting Researcher, HIVA Research Institute for Work and Society, KU Leuven, Belgium (2018);
  • Lecturer, Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest (2015- 2023);
  • Ph.D in Sociology, Centre d’études sociologiques et politiques “Raymond Aron”, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France (2015).

Publications and Presentations

Publications (selection)
  • Badoi, D. (2023) Mapping Platform Economy in Romania and Belgium, Factsheets. Brussels: FES Future of Work;
  • Sabanova, I. and Badoi D. (2022) Online platforms and platform work, The Complex European landscape. Brussels: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Library, ISBN 978-3-98628-190-8;
  • Badoi, D. (2021) Change and continuity in precariousness: labour market policy, gendered pathways and COVID-19 crisis. Quality of Life Review, 32, 3, 1-21. doi.org/10.46841/RCV.2021.03.04;
  • Voicu, M. and Badoi, D. (2020) Fertility and the COVID-19 crisis. Do gender roles really matter? European Societies, 23 1, 199-214. doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2020.1822537.
Presentations (selection)
  • Badoi, D. (2022) Platform-based food-delivery as ‘essential labour’ during pandemic crisis: new risks, temporal changes and digital algorithms, Conference “Capitalism in Global Crisis: economic transformations, new authoritarianism, and resistance”, University of Valencia, Spain, 22-26.01.2022;
  • Badoi D. (2022) Delivery Platform Workers, Precarious Work, and COVID-19: an Ethnographic Approach, Conference “Challenging Inequalities”, VeranstalterInstitut für Sozioökonomie, Universität Duisburg-Essen, 21-23.07.2022;
  • Badoi, D. (2021) Platform-based food-delivery in Romania: digital algorithms, economic insecurity and flexible work, the 19th ILERA World Congress “Making and Breaking Boundaries in Work and Employment Relations”, Lund, Sweden, 21–24.06.2021.

Dr. Delia Bădoi

Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romanian Academy of Science

Fellow at CAIS from October to December 2023

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