A new GLO Discussion Paper tries to understand the Chinese gig economy by studying how employee motivation and retention are managed by the mobile app-based, multiple payment platform enabled, car-pooling Chinese giant DiDi.

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GLO Discussion Paper No. 805, 2021

Your Driver is Didi and Minutes Away from Your Pick-Up Point’: Understanding Employee Motivation in the Gig Economy of China – Download PDF
by Mukhopadhyay, Boidurjo & Chatwin, Chris

GLO Fellow Boidurjo Rick Mukhopadhyay

Author Abstract: In recognition of the importance and expansion of the gig economy, largely in developed and BRICs economies, along with the growing literature surrounding it, this research contributes towards an empirical and conceptual understanding of how employee motivation and retention are managed by the mobile app-based, multiple payment platform enabled, car-pooling Chinese giant DiDi. Both the exponential usage and evidently a diversified range of services offered by Didi has not only transformed the Chinese perception of using cabs, over their personal vehicle, in the 1.4 billion demographics but also invites emerging research in learning the tools for employee retention of a company that has a high regional scale of operations across all provinces in China. While the company employs over a million people at various contractual levels, the objective of this paper is to evaluate how levels of employee motivation, in a gig economy setting, largely affects employee effort and performance of DiDi drivers working long hours in major Chinese cities. The objective of this research is to qualitatively investigate the nature and effectiveness of Didi as a customer customiser using a thematic analysis and a conceptual framework, while also adding contextual knowledge on how a relatively new transport company retain employees in a leading BRICS economy, that is embedded with many faces of the gig economy.

GLO Discussion Papers are research and policy papers of the GLO Network which are widely circulated to encourage discussion. Provided in cooperation with EconStor, a service of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, GLO Discussion Papers are among others listed in RePEc (see IDEAS,  EconPapers). Complete list of all GLO DPs – downloadable for free.

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