If You Love Your Agents, Set Them Free: Task Discretion in Online Workplaces

References

• Afèche P, Sarhangian V (2016) Rational abandonment from priority queues: Equilibrium strategy and pricing implications. Research paper, Columbia Business School, New York.Google Scholar
• Aksin Z, Armony M, Mehrotra V (2007b) The modern call-center: A multi-disciplinary perspective on operations management research. Production Oper. Management 16(6):655–688.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Aksin OZ, Karaesmen F, Örmeci EL (2007a) Workforce cross training in call centers from an operations management perspective. Nembhard DA, ed. Workforce Cross Training (CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL), 211–240.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Allon G, Bassamboo A, Cil E (2012) Large-scale service marketplaces: The role of the moderating firm. Management Sci. 58(10):1854–1872.Link, Google Scholar
• Allon G, Bassamboo A, Cil E (2017) Skill management in large-scale service marketplaces. Production Oper. Management 26(11):2050–2070.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Anagnostopoulos A, Kontoyiannis I, Upfal E (2005) Steady state analysis of balanced-allocation routing. Random Structures Algorithms 26(4):446–467.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Baccara M, Lee S, Yariv L (2020) Optimal dynamic matching. Theoretical Econom. 15(3):1221–1278.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Bagnoli M, Bergstrom T (2005) Log-concave probability and its applications. Econom. Theory 26:445–469.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Bassamboo A, Randhawa R (2010) On the accuracy of fluid models for capacity sizing in queueing systems with impatient customers. Oper. Res. 58(5):1398–1413.Link, Google Scholar
• Bimpikis K, Markakis M (2019) Learning and hierarchies in service systems. Management Sci. 65(3):1268–1285.Link, Google Scholar
• Bimpikis K, Papanastasiou Y (2019) Inducing exploration in service platforms. Hu M, ed. Sharing Economy, Springer Series in Supply Chain Management, vol. 6 (Springer, Cham, Switzerland), 193–216.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Cachon GP, Daniels KM, Lobel R (2017) The role of surge pricing on a service platform with self-scheduling capacity. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 19(3):368–384.Link, Google Scholar
• Chandra NK, Roy D (2001) Some results on reversed hazard rate. Probab. Engrg. Inform. Sci. 15(1):95–102.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Chevalier P, Shumsky RA, Tabordon N (2004) Routing and staffing in large call centers with specialized and fully flexible servers. Working paper, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.Google Scholar
• Chod J, Markakis M, Trichakis N (2021) On the learning benefits of resource flexibility. Management Sci. 67(10):6513–6528.Link, Google Scholar
• Chou MC, Chua GA, Teo CP, Zheng H (2010) Design for process flexibility: Efficiency of the long chain and sparse structure. Oper. Res. 58(1):43–58.Link, Google Scholar
• Chung J, White KP Jr (2008) Cross-trained vs. specialized agents in an inbound call centre: A simulation-based methodology for trade-off analysis. J. Simulation 2(3):162–169.Crossref, Google Scholar
• COM (2001) 313: Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions—Employment and social policies: a framework for investing in quality. Date of document 313: 21/06/2001, European Commission, Brussels.Google Scholar
• Cullen Z, Farronato C (2020) Outsourcing tasks online: Matching supply and demand on peer-to-peer internet platforms. Management Sci. 67(7):3985–4003.Link, Google Scholar
• De Groen WP, Maselli I, Fabo B (2016) The digital market for local services: A one-night stand for workers? An example from the on-demand economy. Report, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.Google Scholar
• Ding Y, Park E, Nagarajan M, Grafstein E (2019) Patient prioritization in emergency department triage systems: An empirical study of canadian triage and acuity scale (CTAS). Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 21(4):723–741.Link, Google Scholar
• Dong J, Ibrahim R (2020) Managing supply in the on-demand economy: Flexible workers, full-time employees, or both? Oper. Res. 68(4):1238–1264.Link, Google Scholar
• Dua A, Ellingrud K, Hancock B, Luby R, Madgavkar A (2022) Freelance, side hustles, and gigs: Many more Americans have become independent workers. McKinsey. Accessed March 20, 2023, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/sustainable-inclusive-growth/future-of-america/freelance-side-hustles-and-gigs-many-more-americans-have-become-independent-workers.Google Scholar
• Einav L, Farronato C, Levin J (2015) Peer-to-peer markets. NBER Working Paper No. 21496, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
• Fay S, Xie J (2008) Probabilistic goods: A creative way of selling products and services. Marketing Sci. 27(4):674–690.Link, Google Scholar
• Finnegan F (2019) Asana’s workload tool aims to prevent worker burnout. Accessed March 20, 2023, https://www.computerworld.com/article/3429556/asana-s-workload-tool-aims-to-prevent-worker-burnout.html.Google Scholar
• Fradkin A (2017) Search, matching, and the role of digital marketplace design in enabling trade: Evidence from Airbnb. Working paper, MIT Sloan, Boston.Google Scholar
• Gallie D, Felstead A, Green F (2003) Skill, task discretion and new technology. Trends in Britain 1986-2001. L’Année Sociologique 53(2):401–430.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Garg N, Nazerzadeh H (2021) Driver surge pricing. Management Sci. 68(5):3219–3235.Link, Google Scholar
• Garnett O, Mandelbaum A (2000) An introduction to skills-based routing and its operational complexities. Technion, Israel. http://iew3.technion.ac.il/serveng.Google Scholar
• Garnett O, Mandelbaum A, Reiman M (2002) Designing a call center with impatient customers. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 4(3):208–227.Link, Google Scholar
• Girotra K, Netessine S (2013) Liberate your employees and recharge your business model. Harvard Bus. Rev. Case Rep. (27 March).Google Scholar
• Graves SC, Tomlin BT (2003) Process flexibility in supply chains. Management Sci. 49(7):907–919.Link, Google Scholar
• Gurumurthi S, Benjaafar S (2004) Modeling and analysis of flexible queueing systems. Naval Res. Logist. 51(5):755–782.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Gurvich I, Ward AR (2014) On the dynamic control of matching queues. Stochastic Systems 4(2):479–523.Link, Google Scholar
• Gurvich I, Armony M, Mandelbaum A (2008) Service-level differentiation in call centers with fully flexible servers. Management Sci. 54(2):279–294.Link, Google Scholar
• Gurvich I, Lariviere M, Moreno-Garcia T (2016) Operations in the on-demand economy: Staffing services with self-scheduling capacity. Working paper, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
• Hackman J, Oldham GR (1976) Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organ. Behav. Human Performance 16(2):250–279.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Hassin R (2016) Rational Queueing (CRC Press, New York).Crossref, Google Scholar
• Horton J, Chilton LB (2010) The labor economics of paid crowdsourcing. Proc. 11th ACM Conf. Electronic Commerce (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 209–218.Google Scholar
• Hu M (2019) Sharing Economy: Making Supply Meet Demand, Springer Series in Supply Chain Management (Springer, Cham, Switzerland).Crossref, Google Scholar
• Ibanez MR, Clark JR, Huckman RS, Staats BR (2018) Discretionary task ordering: Queue management in radiological services. Management Sci. 64(9):4389–4407.Link, Google Scholar
• Ibrahim R (2018) Managing queueing systerms where capacity is random and customers are impatient. Production Oper. Management 27(2):234–250.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Ibrahim R (2019) On queues with a random capacity: Some theory, and an application. Hu M, ed. Sharing Economy, Springer Series in Supply Chain Management, vol. 64 (Springer, Cham, Switzerland), 279–316.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Iravani SMR, Kolfal B, Van Oyen MP (2007) Call-center labor cross-training: It’s a small world after all. Management Sci. 53(7):1102–1112.Link, Google Scholar
• Janakiraman G, Nagarajan M, Veeraraghavan S (2018) Simple policies for managing flexible capacity. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 20(2):333–346.Link, Google Scholar
• Jordan WC, Graves SC (1995) Principles on the benefits of manufacturing process flexibility. Management Sci. 41(4):557–594.Google Scholar
• Karesek R, Theorell T (1990) Healthy Work: Stress, Productivity and the Reconstruction of Work Life (Basic Books, New York).Google Scholar
• Kaufmann N, Schulze T, Veit D (2011) More than fun and money: Worker motivation in crowdsourcing—A study on Mechanical Turk. Proc. 17th Amer. Conf. Inform. Systems (Curran Associates, Red Hook, NY), 3012–3022.Google Scholar
• Kittur A, Nickerson JV, Bernstein MS, Gerber E, Shaw AD, Zimmerman J, Lease M, Horton J (2013) The future of crowd work. Proc. 2013 Conf. Comput. Supported Cooperative Work (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 1301–1318.Google Scholar
• Koole G, Pot A, Talim J (2003) Routing heuristics for multiskill call centers. Proc. Winter Simulation Conf. (IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ), 1813–1816.Google Scholar
• Köszegi B (2006) Ego utility, overconfidence and task choice. J. Eur. Econom. Assoc. 4(4):673–707.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Leshno J (2022) Dynamic matching in overloaded waiting lists. Amer. Econom. Rev. 112(12):3876–3910.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Mandelbaum A, Zeltyn S (2013) Data-stories about (im) patient customers in tele-queues. Queueing Systems 75:115–146.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Martin DB, Hanrahan BV, O’Neill J, Gupta N (2014) Being a Turk. Proc. 2014 Conf. Comput. Supported Cooperative Work (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 224–235.Google Scholar
• Morgan P (2006) Increasing task engagement using preference or choice-making: Some behavioral & methodological factors affecting their efficacy as classroom interventions. Remedial Special Ed. 27(3):176–187.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Peters ML, Zelewski S (2007) Assignment of employees to workplaces under consideration of employee competences and preferences. Management Res. News 30(2):84–99.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Pinker EJ, Shumsky RA (2000) The efficiency-quality trade-off of cross-trained workers. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 2(1):32–48.Link, Google Scholar
• Richa AW, Mitzenmacher M, Sitaraman R (2001) The power of two random choices: A survey of techniques and results. Combin. Optim. 9:255–304.Google Scholar
• Riquelme C, Banerjee S, Johari R (2016) Pricing in ride-share platforms: A queueing-theoretic approach. Working paper, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
• Sisselman ME, Whitt W (2005) Empowering customer-contact center agents via preference-based routing. SeatLink white paper. http://www.seatlink.net/.Google Scholar
• Sisselman ME, Whitt W (2009) Value-based routing and preference-based routing in customer contact centers. Production Oper. Management 16(3):277–291.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Stanford D, Grassmann WK (1993) The bilingual server systems: A queueing model featuring fully and partially qualified servers. Inform. Systems Oper. Res. 31(4):261–277.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Theorell T (1998) Job Characteristics in a Theoretical and Practical Health Context (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK).Crossref, Google Scholar
• Wallace RB, Whitt W (2005) A staffing algorithm for call centers with skill-based routing. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 7(4):276–294.Link, Google Scholar
• Ward AR, Armony M (2013) Blind fair routing in large-scale service systems with heterogeneous customers and servers. Oper. Res. 61(1):228–243.Link, Google Scholar
• Whitt W (2006) The impact of increased employee retention on performance in a customer contact center. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 8(3):221–234.Link, Google Scholar
• Witt LA, Andrews MC, Carlson DS (2004) When conscientiousness isn’t enough: Emotional exhaustion and performance among call center customer service representatives. J. Management 30(1):149–160.Google Scholar