CAN YOU SEE OPPORTUNITY KNOCKING? AN EXAMINATION OF TECHNOLOGY-BASED POLITICAL SKILL ON OPPORTUNITY RECOGNITION IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES FOR MTURK WORKERS
In a forthcoming paper in Internet Research, our team examines how political skill shapes an individual’s ability to identify lucrative tasks on gig-work platforms.
Political skill has emerged as a concept of interest within the information systems literature to explain individual performance outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to adapt political skill to technology-mediated contexts. Specifically, we seek to understand political skill’s role in shaping microtask workers’ opportunity recognition when utilizing online communities in microtask work environments. We tested our research model using a survey of 348 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers who participate in microtask-related online communities. MTurk is a large, popular microtasking platform used by thousands of microtask workers daily, with several online communities supporting microtask workers. Technology-based political skill plays a critical role in shaping the resources microtasking workers rely upon from online communities, including opportunity recognition and knowledge sharing. The ability to develop opportunity recognition positively impacts a microtask worker’s ability to leverage online communities for microtask worker performance. Tenure in the community acts as a moderator within the model. The study makes several contributions. First, we adapt political skill to an online community to account for how microtask workers understand a community’s socio-technical environment. Second, we demonstrate the antecedent role of political skill for opportunity recognition and knowledge sharing. Third, we empirically validate the link between online communities and microtask worker performance.
The paper is co-authored with Paul DiGangi (University of Alabama-Birmingham), Charn McAllister (Northern Arizona University), Jack Howard (University of Alabama-Birmingham), and Gerald Ferris (Florida State University).
Recommended Citation: DiGangi, P., McAllister, C., Howard, J., Ferris, G. and Thatcher, J.B. (Forthcoming). “Can you see opportunity knocking? An examination of technology-based political skill on opportunity recognition in online communities for MTurk workers.” Internet Research.