From Flexible Accumulation to Algorithmic Governance: AI, Platform Capitalism, and the Revaluation of Work

• In Event: Economic Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 3: AI and Algorithms

Abstract

This paper argues that the rise of AI-mediated platform capitalism represents not merely an extension of post-Fordist flexibility but the institutional consolidation of a new regime of algorithmic governance that redefines the value of work. Drawing on a large-scale bibliometric analysis of 1,573 Web of Science publications, the study traces how scholarly debates have shifted from early narratives of collaborative consumption toward contemporary concerns with algorithmic management, precarious labor, and programmable control. Rather than treating AI as a technological tool, the paper conceptualizes it as an infrastructural mechanism that structures visibility, allocates opportunity, and governs labor through computational metrics. The findings reveal a hierarchical intellectual architecture in which digital labor scholarship has progressively displaced post-Fordist categories with frameworks centered on datafication, infrastructural power, and automated evaluation. This transition signals a broader transformation in how work is measured, disciplined, and valued. By situating AI within the longer historical trajectory from Fordism to platform capitalism, the paper demonstrates that contemporary labor regimes are increasingly defined by algorithmic valuation systems that fuse flexibility with intensified control. The study contributes to debates on AI and the value of work by providing empirical evidence of the epistemic consolidation of programmable labor as a dominant organizational paradigm.

Authors

• Nelson David Lay, Universidad Andres Bello

• Juan Felipe Espinosa, Universidad Federico Santa María