RMIT International University Vietnam

BUSM 4561 – Work in Global Society

Group Number Group 3

Team Name: Team 15

Location & Campus RMIT Vietnam , HCMC

1. Phan Dang Huu Dang – s3678479

2. Do Le Hoang Oanh – s3678487

3. Ho Thao Vy – 3700015
Student names &
students number: 4. Doan Thuy Phuong Doan – s3681407

5. Le Nguyen Phuong – s3634682

6. Dao Tran Kim Chi – s3836371

Teacher Name: Hung Nguyen

Date of Submission: 4 September 2020

Word Count: 3080

 Table of Contents

I. Introduction - Vy Ho and Chi Dao 2

II. Interview and Analysis of Mr. Quan - Dang Phan 2

III. Interview and Analysis of Mr. Tuan - Oanh Do 3

IV. Interview and Analysis of Miss Vy - Doan Doan 4

V. Interview and Analysis of Mr. Nhan - Phuong Le 5

VI. Interview and Analysis of Mr. Phuc - Vy Ho 6

VII. Interview and Analysis of Ms. Thanh - Chi Dao 7

VIII. Conclusion - Dang Phan and Oanh Do 8

IX. References - Doan Doan and Phuong Le 8

X. Appendix 11

1
 I. Introduction - Vy Ho and Chi Dao
Since 2018, more than half the world's population are using the internet (Schlein
2018). The development of digital platforms has not only changed the form of traditional
work but also given the chances for Internet users to employment opportunities through the
internet. This rise indicated as gig work, ‘is distinct from traditional employment in that it is
mediated through an online platform’ (Dunn 2020). Gig economy is a market system where
independent workers engage in a project for a short period of time (Rouse M 2016).
Statistically, by 2020, over 40% of the US labourers are in the gig economy (Gresham 2019).
For that reason, this report is conducted to examine the nature of work, the main themes of
the gig economy and how it has affected people's life using the data collected from findings
based on interviews and qualitative research.

II. Interview and Analysis of Mr. Quan - Dang Phan

The interview reveals the impacts of the gig economy on the life of a Grab driver, Mr.
Quan. The data from the interview has indicated that the nature of work has changed in the
gig economy. Gig workers have more flexibility and autonomy in their work. Mr. Quan
stated “I really like this job because I can work at any time I want. I can take the day off
without permission from the company, I just need to turn off the app on my phone […] I can
pick up my children from school every day because of the flexible working schedule”. The
data showed that the changing nature of work in the gig economy has positive impacts on the
work-life balance of workers. The flexible working schedule able workers to spend more time
with their family and enhance their well-being.

The nature of work has changed in the gig economy, it enables flexible work
arrangements (Burtch, Carnahan & Greenwood 2018). The flexible working hours play an
important role in impacting the decision to participate in the gig economy of workers and the
lives of workers. Many drivers in the gig economy indicated that they chose flexible working
hours to have greater autonomy that might improve their well-being. Besides, flexibility and
autonomy which improved work-life balance are the reasons they participate in this economy
(Berger et al. 2019). Flexible working hours of gig work can improve the work-life balance
of gig workers. According to Shagvaliyeva & Yazdanifard (2014), flexible working practices
can enhance the morale of workers that have positive impacts on work-life balance.
Furthermore, one of the best activities to improve the well-being of workers is the flexible

2
working arrangement because it gives them more time to deal with responsibilities outside
work. According to Allen, Shockley, Johnson and Kiburz (2013), flexible scheduling can
reduce the work-family conflict. Work-family conflict occurs when one role drains the time
and resources of the other role (Allen et al. 2013). For instance, the work-life conflict will
increase if workers spend more time working than time with family. The flexible work
arrangements of the gig economy will enable workers to adjust the schedule to involve in
family and dependent care activities and reduce the time spent on working. Therefore, the
changing nature of work in the gig economy has affected the lives of workers. Due to the
flexible working schedule, it improves the work-life balance and reduces the work-life
conflict. Workers will have more autonomy to manage their time for working and for family.

III. Interview and Analysis of Mr. Tuan - Oanh Do

I conducted an interview with a freelance writer working in a gig economy named

Nguyen Minh Tuan. The conversation was performed on the morning of the first of
September in The Cafe, and it took one hour to get through eleven questions. Mr. Tuan was
born in 1996 and has 2 years experience in this job. As a freelance writer, he is required to
write research papers, advertisements, and website articles for different clients.

Via the interview, I found a significant affection of the gig economy on the workers in
terms of changing the perception of work-life balance. Due to the characteristic of flexibility
in work, the participant felt normal to integrate work and personal life. Mr. Tuan has full
control in setting his working hours; however, he can not separate clearly between work and
non-work. The interviewee believed that his current work arrangement has a non-negative
effect on the work-life balance.

Mr. Tuan: Freelancer is an interesting job that allows me to work anytime and
anywhere. I can work and travel with my family at the same time without making a vacation
leave like the traditional employee. […] I usually start working from late morning to evening
or sometimes midnight. It depends on the deadline and the length of tasks I received. […] If I
want to have some break, I just simply don’t accept the task offers. […] It’s fine for me to
work while eating or hanging out with friends.

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Field and Chan (2018) did research on the boundaryless nature between work and life of
flexible knowledge workers. Their study found that these workers perceive the fuzzy
boundary between work and non-work because of the lack of physical boundaries when they
work at home. The role strain theory predicts a possible conflict may happen by the
disagreement in the demands of multiple roles (Greenhaus & Beutell, cited in Field & Chan
2018). For instance, the work-life conflict appears when there is a dispute in the role of an
employee and a parent. It is argued that flexible working time can decrease the work-life
conflict due to the ability to arrange working hours to fit the family and work requirements.
In addition, the self-control in work arrangement allows the flexible workers to balance their
work and family (Field & Chan 2018). My findings also showed the integration of gig
workers in work and life. Mr. Tuan expressed clearly his satisfaction with his current job as it
provides great opportunities for him to meet different demands. Both of the research results
in the boundaryless perception of flexible workers in the gig economy and the change in their
consciousness of work-life balance. Although clear segmentation between work and life was
a norm in the past, integration is a way to keep the balance of flexible workers in this digital
age (Field & Chan 2018).

IV. Interview and Analysis of Miss Vy - Doan Doan

For the purpose of this report, I made an interview with my friend who joined the gig
economy to share about how this economy affects her. The interview was conducted on
Sunday at a coffee shop in District 1 and took about 10 minutes. My friend, Vy is a college
student and is currently working as a freelance translator. “More flexibility and financial
freedom” are the main reasons she joined the gig economy. She stated that “I make my own
decisions about working hours and location I want to work from. All that matters is to
complete your job before the deadline [..] I gained so much experience and knowledge from
this job”. Another key theme mentioned in the interview is technological advancements. Vy
said she relies heavily on digital platforms to source jobs and connect with other translators
and potential clients.

The interview’s responses were further explained by conflict theory. According to

Brummelhuis et al (2010), flexibility mainly has positive impacts on single self-employed
workers which resolves their work-life conflicts effectively. Many studies showed that
flexible working style will boost productivity and job satisfaction from employees (Omondi

4
et al 2018). In this case, working with no fixed hours allows Vy to do her job effectively
whenever she doesn’t have classes and also avoid the work pressure. Although there are some
tight deadlines, she revealed that “a feeling of personal control over schedule and work
environment increases my job satisfaction”, which is supported by the study of McNall,
Masuda & Nicklin (2009).

In the current technological age, anywhere that can access the internet can be
transformed into a workspace. The growth of digital gig economy platforms builds a wide
network of contacts (Malik et al 2017). Work can be sent and received much easily through
language platforms, such as LanguageWire, in which connect customer’s demand and
translator’s methods of skills efficiently. Besides, digital gig economy platforms encourage
workers “to renew existing skills through practice, to discover and utilise latent skills and to
develop specialist skills” (Barnes et al 2015). For instance, professional translators can
communicate and join forums to share information, experience and lessons.

On the other hand, the competitive market in language pairs and highly skilled
workers on demand as well as the improvements in technology and the low barrier to entry
influences work opportunities and wages (Martin et al 2016). Freelance translators have to do
both self-promotions and recruiting clients by themselves while competing with other high-
quality professional translators. Vy understands that this is not a stable source of income but
now she needs the experience to create a reputational profile.

V. Interview and Analysis of Mr. Nhan - Phuong Le

The interview was conducted with the marketing coordinator of Le Phuong Trang
Company. According to the interview's responses, in the current 4.0 eras, it is easier to utilize
technology to find occupations and bring more job opportunities for him when he works in
leisure time to many different companies to increase income. In addition, he is flexible in
their working time to arrange their own work schedule, even when he becomes burnt-out at
work he can take a few days off and get back on work aiming to complete before the
deadline. This supports him to complete the job more efficiently and reduces the work
pressure. However, the disadvantage of participating in the gig economy does not work
security. To be more specific, the convenient connection between recruiters and gig workers
leads to a high level of job competition with inadequate wages. Recruiters can find out

5
numerous employees for the job requirements and wage competition will be lower. Therefore
he perceives he does not have income security such as minimum wage and income stability.

The Internet is developing which makes the employees participating in the gig
economy explode in the future. The gig economy is becoming a global trend and growth
shows no signs of slowing (Emilia Istrate et al 2017). The applications of technology to
teleworking, flextime, and flexplace have increasingly attracted the workforce to join the gig
economy (Lehdonvirta, V 2018). This brings the employee's convenience and independence
in the arrangement between work and life. Employees can flexplace work at home, coffee
shops, and offices to work more efficiently; they also use their leisure time to look for
different jobs in order to increase their income. Furthermore, digital platforms have the
potential to reshape how workers look for work and who gets these jobs (Miranda Watkins,
2019). It helps recruiters and workers easily connect with each other, from there, employees
can find occupations that match their abilities, and employers also quickly catch employees
who meet their job requirements. However, the ease of finding jobs through online platforms
means high levels of competition for jobs and disproportionate wages as well as unstable
income. Gig workers are free to select their jobs more than traditional workers but this also
means that securing a stable job with a stable salary is no longer guaranteed (Jim Chappelow
2020). Linking with the interview section, the gig economy is becoming more and more
developed in the 4.0 era when technology is developing rapidly; employees are forced to
change in order to be more consistent with the current speed of social development.
Employers have been changing the way they find employees and the level of occupation
competition in the gig economy based on performance and wages is one of the main reasons
employees are forced to improve their own skills to bring better quality work efficiency to
compete on the occupation.

VI. Interview and Analysis of Mr. Phuc - Vy Ho

During the interview stage, the data collection approach is utilized to conduct answers
for qualitative research (Gill et. al 2008). Semi-structured fashion is also applied as the
additional questions will be given to the interviewee to clarify for the previous questions
during the interview (Longhurst 2003). The interviewee who fulfils two factors, which are
having a social relationship with the interviewer and acknowledging the information is given.
For that reason, the interviewee will be in a comfortable situation in providing answers. Phuc
is a 24-year-old graduate of RMIT Professional Communication and is currently a freelancer

6
as a videographer, editor. Due to the nature of work, his workload is temporary and giving
him flexibility time to work in multitasks. Three main aspects are found based on his answers
in terms of the gig economy. The three aspects are flexibility, job security, and technology.

According to McKinsey’s study (2016), the level of satisfaction of the gig workers is
higher than traditional workers, and workers are attracted by its autonomy and flexibility in
this type of platform. The gig economy offers greater flexibility efficiencies to gig workers, it
opens for everyone and does not need the skill equivalent to the services that they offer. Phuc
said that, since he becomes a gig worker, he can employ more tasks from different clients and
manage the workflow by himself. However, the gig platform lacks the protection and a sort
of “stamp of approval" of an established organization and the branding power of that
organization. Phuc revealed one of the biggest disadvantages of being freelancers that lack
job security, in which not having health insurance, long term contracts with organizations,
and retirement schedule. Emmenegger (2009) stated that full-time workers tend to have more
job security than part-time workers, in some cases, lack of job security can be understood as
the probability of being fired. In addition, the utilization of the access economy, in which
using digital platforms to provide goods and services to fulfil the customer's demand, creates
a relationship between consumers and contractors workers. In this way, there will be a shift
of risk from businesses to gig workers. The final theme is technology. For the consumers, the
biggest challenge would often be the fact that it is much harder to have the quality of the
service preemptively ensure, which would lead to uncertainty in employing the service of
providers, it can sometimes be considered a bit of a gamble on how the quality of the task
would turn out to be. For gig workers, De Stefano (2015) supported the idea that “once a
worker decides to work and accede to the app or platform she is subject to far-reaching
control and invasive monitoring of her performance, similar to those who are applicable upon
traditional employees''.

VII. Interview and Analysis of M Thanh - Chi Dao

The interview that I conducted with Ms. Thanh involves her opinion about the Gig
economy and its effect on her student life. She is a student from Design Studies of RMIT
University, a 22-year-old student. And she has been studying in RMIT for about 3 years.
Moreover, she has been Grab's loyal customer since she started learning at college. Thanh
believes that multi-platform technology applications play a key role in people's lives,

7
particularly in her case. Gig economy has significantly been trying to create the best living's
condition for people living in the technology era.

More specifically, Thanh says that “ I feel less stressed when finding a solution for
my flexible learning hours. The Gig economy not only impresses me on learning exclusively,
but also in multitasking benefit ”. She had the intention to complete multitasking when she
entered university. Then she thinks because of the flexibility of the Gig economy in
numerous ways, it absolutely creates job opportunities for students like her to join.

Through experience in terms of the Gig economy, statements surrounding mainly two
aspects of the Gig economy were illustrated, those two aspects indicate flexibility and job
insecurity.

The Gig economy provides workers with flexibility in their job. To illustrate that, she
mentioned two main applications of the Gig economy flexibility in working hours as well as
workplaces. Thanh stated that the Gig economy generally represents a flexible lifestyle,
which is predicted to be more popular in the future. According to Robin Madell (2020), Gig
workers usually have multi-jobs in a day working.” They might have a day job where they
work a traditional 9-to-5 job, then a second “gig job" from 5-to-9 at night”. That reflects
workers are believed to have better management for their work-life balance. On the other
hand, the Gig economy attendants benefit a lot from flexible workplaces. In Thanh's case,
while joining university classes, she simultaneously administrates a page on Facebook. Based
on the research of Million for Work Flexibility, with collaboration tools connected to wifi,
people can work from a farther distance, not necessarily lock themselves in one place. Hence,
the worker's dream as the cohesion of work-life is better achieved. Thanks to that reality, it
can be said that the Gig economy will probably thrive in the Vietnamese economy early.

Despite several benefits of the Gig economy, Thanh points out the negative aspect of
the Gig Economy, which is about the job's insecurity. In fact, with laws for protecting labour
workers, there is still no mention of employees for the unique free working environment.
Furthermore, customers tend to give feedback for using services through their opinion instead
of their equal observation of employee's performance (De Stefano 2016). Therefore, the
insecurity in this working area comes from both a lack of protection and inadequate personal
bias of customers.

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VIII. Conclusion - Dang Phan and Oanh Do

In conclusion, interviews with gig workers and people who utilize gig economy
applications have indicated various changes in the nature of work in the gig economy. The
changes have an effect on the lives of gig workers. All interviews emphasized the strong
impact of flexibility on work-life balance and job satisfaction. The flexible work schedule
allows the workers to choose the days and time that are convenient and suitable for them. It
enables them to adjust the time to balance work and life. Additionally, the flexibility has
changed the perception of gig workers which is integrating work and family will keep work-
life balance. Some interviewees have admitted that flexibility is the main reason for them to
participate in the gig economy. Besides, there are negative impacts including low job security
and low wages due to the numerous participants in the gig economy. It is essential for these
workers to develop their skills to differentiate themselves from others. Furthermore, the
digital labour market has increased due to the low barrier to entry of the gig economy. Hence,
employers have more choices to recruit gig workers. The changing nature of work in the gig
economy has improved the work-life balance, well-being of workers and created more job
opportunities.

IX. References - Doan Doan and Phuong Le

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flexible work arrangements: Deconstructing flexibility', Personnel Psychology, vol. 66, no. 2,
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Barnes, SA, Green, A & Hoyos, M 2015, ‘Crowdsourcing and work: individual factors and
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Berger, T, Frey, CB, Levin, G & Danda, SR 2019, 'Uber happy? Work and well-being in the
‘gig economy’', Economic Policy, vol. 34, no. 99, pp. 429-477.

Brummelhuis, T, Lieke, L & Lippe, T 2010, ‘Effective Work-life Balance Support for
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Burtch, G, Carnahan, S & Greenwood, BN 2018, 'Can you gig it? An empirical examination
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Chappelow, J 2020, ’Gig Economy’, The Investopedia, 13 April, viewed 1 September 2020,
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X. Appendix

INTERVIEW SCHEDULE
NO. DATE START END APPLICANT NAME OCCUPATION CONDUCT LOCATION
TIME TIME ED BY

1 31/08/2020 11:00 AM 11:15 AM Bui Nam Quan Grab driver Phan Dang Main gate of RMIT
Huu Dang University

2 1/9/2020 10:00 AM 11:00 AM Nguyen Minh Tuan Freelance Writer Do Le The Cafe
Hoang Oanh

3 30/8/2020 6:00 PM 6:10 PM Nguyen Tong Thuy Vy College Student/ Doan Thuy Starbucks
Freelance Translator Phuong
Doan

4 31/8/2020 4:00 PM 5:30 PM Le Trong Nhan Marketing coordinator Le Nguyen The coffee house
Phuong

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5 31/08/2020 10:00 AM 10:30 AM Luu Nguyen Phuc Freelancer Ho Thao Vy Application's house

6 1/9/2020 9:00 AM 11:00 AM Tran Kim Thanh Student Dao Tran RMIT University food
Kim Chi hall

13