INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE (IJRISS)  
ISSN No. 2454-6186 | DOI: 10.47772/IJRISS | Volume IX Issue XI November 2025  
The Rise of the Gig Economy and Its Implications for Organizational  
Structures and Leadership  
Ahmad Faiz Mohd Ezanee1, *Nomahaza Mahadi2, Siti Azreen Habeeb Rahuman2  
1
Hospital Sultanah Bahiyah  
2Azman Hashim International Business School (AHIBS), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia  
*Corresponding Author  
Received: 04 December 2025; Accepted: 10 December 2025; Published: 18 December 2025  
ABSTRACT  
The gig economy is changing the way organisations work, and the shift is becoming too significant to ignore.  
This paper explores how the rise of flexible and independent work arrangements is reshaping leadership  
approaches and traditional organisational structures. The discussion looks at how technology, worker  
expectations, and market demands have opened the door for project-based work that gives people more freedom  
but also brings new challenges for businesses. Using Self Determination Theory as a guide, the paper highlights  
how autonomy, competence, and a sense of connection are important in keeping gig workers motivated,  
especially when they operate with limited security and little attachment to one employer. The review of recent  
literature shows a mix of opportunities and concerns. There is potential for organisations to gain more agility  
and access to specialised skills, but there are also issues linked to regulation, wellbeing, and fair treatment. This  
paper concludes that organisations need to adapt by rethinking leadership styles, strengthening collaboration  
between mixed workforces, and investing in continuous learning for everyone involved. Those willing to adjust  
and embrace the reality of gig work will be better prepared for the future of employment.  
Keywords: Gig economy, organisational structure, leadership, worker motivation, flexible work arrangements  
INTRODUCTION  
The gig economy's growth is changing the face of traditional work, with profound effects on leadership,  
organisational culture, and management education (Caza, 2020; Thomas, 2022). Globalisation, technology, and  
changing labour demands are some of the causes causing this change (Agrawal, 2022; Scully-Russ, 2020).  
Therefore, further study is required to comprehend how the gig economy affects several facets of employment,  
such as dedication, job satisfaction, and human resource development.  
The structure of the workplace has undergone seismic alterations from what began as little waves of change.  
There are now more options available to both employers and employees for providing value to the market. It is  
only a question of time if you have not personally noticed these changes.  
Although the phrases "gig economy" and "sharing economy" are frequently used synonymously and have  
quickly entered common business discourse, they differ greatly from one another in several aspects. In the gig  
economy, the emphasis is on work related flexibility. Utilising an asset to start a job is common in the sharing  
economy. Two prime examples include renting out a house or room for a brief period or utilising a car for delivery  
or other transportation services.  
The traditional "organization man" function that served as the basis for most of the modern theory and practice  
is gradually disappearing from the roles of managers and subordinates (Barley et al., 2017; Whyte, 1956). The  
complexity of the "gig" category, which encompasses several jobs, independent contracting, temporary labour,  
and many other types of employment interactions, further complicates our understanding efforts (Keith et al.,  
2019). Since the primary characteristic of gig labour is not having a typical job, each gig experience is different  
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ISSN No. 2454-6186 | DOI: 10.47772/IJRISS | Volume IX Issue XI November 2025  
(Spreitzer et al., 2017), and each one has its own set of advantages and disadvantages (Ashford et al., 2018). As  
others have previously noted, basic research is necessary to advance existing management theory (Ashford et al.,  
2018; Best, 2017; Bucher et al., 2019; Duggan et al., 2019; Kaine & Josserand, 2019). Employment law is  
lagging behind (Bimman, 2019; Gonzales, 2019). For instance, as noted by Ashford et al. (2018), the majority  
of structural changes associated with gig work, such as increased autonomy, instability, uncertainty, transience,  
and separation, have a significant impact on people's sense of self, sense of security, sense of agency, and  
interpersonal relationships (Bellesia et al., 2019).  
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how leadership and organisational structures are being reshaped by  
the rise of gig-based labour, focusing on both the opportunities and challenges emerging from flexible,  
technology-mediated work arrangements. In extending this purpose, the review examines how gig work  
reconfigures organisational design, redistributes managerial authority, and alters expectations placed on leaders  
managing fluid, nontraditional workforces. It also draws on Self-Determination Theory to understand how  
autonomy, competence, and relational attachment shape motivation and continuity among gig workers who  
navigate unstable, high-autonomy employment systems with limited organisational belonging. In doing so, the  
paper evaluates the shift from fixed hierarchies to hybrid workforce models, considers how leadership styles  
must adapt to sustain commitment and performance, and interrogates the psychological conditions underpinning  
engagement and well-being in modern gig-enabled employment.  
Theory Overview  
One theory that best relates to the topic of the rise of the gig economy and its implications for organizational  
structures and leadership is the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) by Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan  
(Ryan and Deci, 2000). Self-Determination Theory emphasizes people's internal drive as well as their  
fundamental psychological demands on competence, relatedness, and autonomy. SDT may assist in the  
explanation of how businesses might promote the motivation and wellbeing of gig workers in the setting of the  
gig economy, wherein individuals have more freedom and influence over their working conditions.  
SDT can aid in the explanation of how businesses might promote the motivation and wellbeing of gig workers  
in the setting of the gig economy, wherein individuals have more freedom and influence over their working  
conditions.  
Firstly, SDT is emphasize on autonomy. In the gig economy, employees have a great deal of freedom when it  
comes to selecting their projects, creating their own timetables, and picking their workspace. By giving gig  
workers, the freedom to decide for themselves and encouraging a sense of control and ownership over their work,  
organisations that uphold SDT values may empower these individuals.  
Secondly, SDT is emphasize on competency. SDT focuses a strong emphasis on how crucial it is for people to  
feel capable and productive at work. By offering chances for skill development, training, and feedback to  
improve performance and self-assurance, employers may boost the competency of gig workers.  
Thirdly, SDT is emphasize on sense of relatedness. Even while gig work may appear isolating, companies can  
help gig workers feel more connected by encouraging a positive work environment, assisting team members in  
communicating and working together, and providing chances for networking and social interaction.  
Considering the gig economy's changing dynamics, Self-Determination Theory provides insightful guidance on  
how businesses may create work environments, leadership styles, and organizational structures that promote gig  
workers' intrinsic motivation and well-being. Although SDT offers insightful information, it does not cover each  
component of the gig economy. For instance, it does not specifically address the difficulties that many gig  
workers confront in terms of job security and benefits. It's crucial to consider other elements when examining  
worker motivation in the gig economy, such as financial strain and economic reality. All things considered, SDT  
provides a useful foundation for comprehending employee engagement and motivation in the context of the gig  
economy. Businesses could create a more appealing and effective work environment for gig workers by  
concentrating on meeting their psychological requirements. This rising workforce segment can be served by  
these initiatives.  
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LITERATURE REVIEW  
Research on the gig economy has expanded rapidly, driven by intersecting debates on technological disruption,  
labour flexibility, economic precarity, regulatory ambiguity and shifting cultural expectations of work. Digital  
platforms remain the principal accelerator of these transformations, as advances in mobile applications and  
online marketplaces allow labour to be transacted globally and instantaneously, forming what has been labelled  
the “platform,” “on-demand,” or “gig” economy (Minifie and Wiltshire, 2016; OECD, 2019; Prudential, 2018).  
Within this mediated infrastructure, work is no longer anchored in continuous employment but organised through  
task-specific assignments, algorithmic matching and customer-driven scoring systems (US Bureau of Labour  
Statistics, 2018). This shift foreshadows the motivational volatility and relational detachment explored in the  
Discussion, where autonomy, competence and relatedness are no longer institutionally guaranteed but  
structurally conditional.  
Flexibility remains the dominant attraction for both workers and organisations. Gig workers value self-  
determined scheduling, while firms benefit from reduced fixed labour commitments and rapid talent scaling. Yet,  
this autonomy is regularly undercut by irregular hours, income instability and extended availability demands  
that intrude on sleep patterns, family arrangements and psychological well-being (Tucker and Folkard, 2012).  
As later examined through Self-Determination Theory, the tension between volitional autonomy and economic  
vulnerability becomes central to explaining why intrinsic motivation weakens despite nominal freedom.  
Autonomy in gig work thus diverges from traditional motivational theory: reduced managerial oversight coexists  
with intensified platform dependency.  
Economic pressures further shape gig participation. Many workers enter platform labour not as a lifestyle  
preference but as a strategic response to financial uncertainty, underemployment or wage stagnation. While firms  
leverage global skill access, workers experience emotional turbulence—oscillating between independence and  
insecurity—which is highly documented across creative freelancers, rideshare drivers and independent  
contractors (Malin and Chandler, 2017; Butler and Stoyanova Russell, 2018; Petriglieri et al., 2019; Grandey  
and Gabriel, 2015). This emotional oscillation aligns with SDT’s claim that competence without stability and  
autonomy without security fails to produce sustained engagement. The gig model therefore heightens  
adaptability while diluting identity continuity.  
Regulation remains one of the most destabilising domains. Employment classification—whether workers are  
categorized as employees or independent contractors—determines access to social insurance, benefits, legal  
safeguards and collective bargaining (Donovan, Bradley, and Shimabukuro, 2016). Labelling workers as  
contractors enables cost flexibility but displaces relational belonging, structured development and welfare  
entitlements, reinforcing the relational deficit highlighted in the Discussion. Calls for portable benefits, platform  
accountability and taxation clarity reflect not only economic justice but the psychological need for predictable  
security, conditions SDT identifies as essential for sustained motivation rather than episodic participation.  
From an organisational lens, the gig model has become both a cost strategy and a governance experiment. Firms  
increasingly deploy dual labour systems, combining core full-time employees with contingent digital labour  
pools to achieve agility and scale. Emerging arrangements—worker cooperatives, platform unions, modular  
training ecosystems—anticipate the distributed leadership, adaptive coordination and e-leadership competencies  
required in hybrid workforce systems (Tug, 2023). These models confirm the structural turn discussed later:  
organisational identity is no longer contained within hierarchical boundaries but diffused across platform-  
mediated contributors who lack conventional organisational membership yet fulfil critical operational functions.  
Boundaries between gig and full-time roles thus blur, producing new expectations of leadership presence without  
physical proximity, cultural reinforcement without co-location and motivation without traditional belonging.  
Taken collectively, the literature demonstrates that the gig economy is not merely a labour alternative but a  
systemic realignment of work, authority and identity. While it promises autonomy, mobility and organisational  
agility, it simultaneously intensifies structural inequities, motivational fragility and relational thinning. This  
intersection sets the foundation for the paper’s Discussion, where SDT’s psychological conditions and  
contemporary leadership frameworks become essential to explaining why gig work remains economically  
efficient yet motivationally unstable and organisationally unanchored.  
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METHODOLOGY / REVIEW APPROACH  
This paper adopts a structured literature review approach in which relevant studies were located through Google  
Scholar, Emerald, ScienceDirect and Scopus, reflecting both multidisciplinary breadth and indexed publication  
quality. Searches were conducted using key terms including “gig economy,” “platform work,” “digital labour,”  
“hybrid workforce,” and “algorithmic management,” covering the period 2015–2024 to capture the accelerated  
expansion of technology-mediated flexible work systems. Only peer-reviewed journal articles and reputable  
institutional reports were included, while dissertations, non-refereed commentary pieces and non-indexed  
materials were excluded to ensure scholarly rigour. The selected literature was then synthesised through thematic  
mapping to identify conceptual intersections between organisational restructuring, leadership adaptation and  
worker motivation, with specific attention to how Self-Determination Theory explains gig workers’ experiences  
of autonomy, competence and relatedness within precarious yet flexible employment settings.  
DISCUSSION  
The accelerating expansion of the gig economy requires organisations to reconsider not only how work is  
structured but how motivation, authority and belonging are sustained when labour is decentralised, digitally  
mediated and individually fragmented. Self-Determination Theory provides a critical interpretive lens for this  
shift because the gig model disrupts the three psychological conditions which are, autonomy, competence and  
relatedness, that underpin intrinsic motivation and long-term work commitment.  
Gig work is commonly framed as autonomy-enhancing, yet SDT clarifies that this autonomy is conditional rather  
than sovereign. Workers choose when to log in, but their earning stability is governed by platform algorithms,  
dynamic pricing, customer ratings and constantly shifting task allocation systems. The outcome is apparent  
independence under economic insecurity. Autonomy therefore becomes transactional: flexibility enables  
scheduling control, but the absence of guaranteed income, portable benefits and predictable task flow steadily  
erodes the sense of volitional agency that SDT identifies as the foundation of self-directed motivation.  
Competence follows a similar paradox. Gig workers continuously acquire platform-specific know-how, micro-  
interaction skills and digital customer management abilities, yet these capabilities remain fragmented across  
assignments, applications and industries. Competence grows in tactical bursts rather than holistic progression,  
creating what may be described as functional capability without identity consolidation. Without organisational  
mentorship, structured development pathways or leadership-driven reinforcement, skill acquisition is episodic  
rather than developmental, weakening the motivational payoff SDT associates with mastery.  
Relatedness is the most structurally compromised SDT pillar. Platform environments replace collegial  
interaction with numerical visibility such as, ratings, completion scores, customer reviews and algorithmic  
matching functions. Work becomes a sequence of transactions rather than relational exchanges, and workers  
engage more with platforms than with people. Limited social contact, absence of supervisor dialogue and  
negligible peer community create relational detachment, reducing affective belonging, psychological safety and  
long-term loyalty. In this sense, gig work redefines labour participation as performance without interpersonal  
anchoring.  
This psychological restructuring is inseparable from the organisational transformation occurring simultaneously.  
The rise of gig labour signals not just labour flexibility but an architectural shift from vertically integrated  
hierarchies to hybrid, networked workforce ecosystems where permanent and contingent workers interact  
without traditional boundaries. Project-based models, digital task allocation, algorithmic management systems  
and flatter structures reduce managerial proximity, requiring new leadership competencies and governance forms.  
Leadership responses must therefore transition beyond classical supervision. Adaptive leadership becomes  
essential because leaders must navigate fluctuating workforce composition, temporal project cycles and uneven  
worker commitment. Transformational leadership, previously tied to internal culture-building, must evolve to  
inspire discretionary effort among contributors who are organisationally peripheral yet operationally central.  
Distributed leadership is increasingly relevant as authority and task ownership are dispersed through platforms  
rather than imposed through fixed line-management roles. Finally, e-leadership emerges as a dominant  
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requirement: communication, monitoring, feedback and culture transmission now occur through digital systems  
rather than physical managerial presence.  
Algorithmic management intensifies these leadership challenges by transferring supervisory functions like, task  
allocation, performance monitoring, behavioural nudges, from human managers to platform logic. Leadership,  
therefore, becomes interpretive rather than directive, focused on enabling inclusion, negotiating fairness,  
supporting wellbeing and stabilising motivation rather than commanding physical teams. What organisations  
gain in agility, they risk losing in continuity, identity formation and psychological attachment.  
Taken together, SDT and contemporary leadership theory demonstrate that the future of organisational  
effectiveness will depend not merely on digital efficiency but on moral and motivational stewardship. If gig  
workers are to remain productive contributors, organisational systems must reconstruct autonomy as stability  
rather than exposure, competence as cumulative rather than episodic, and relatedness as meaningful connection  
rather than platform-mediated anonymity. Where leadership shifts from control to facilitation and structures shift  
from hierarchy to collaborative ecosystems, the gig economy may evolve from precarious flexibility into  
sustainable participation.  
CONCLUSION  
The rise of the gig economy signifies not merely a shift in employment patterns but a structural and psychological  
redefinition of work, calling for a re-examination of leadership, organisational design and motivation  
frameworks. Situated within Self-Determination Theory, this paper underscores that autonomy in platform-  
mediated labour, while appearing liberating, is often entangled with volatile remuneration cycles and algorithmic  
unpredictability; competence development remains incremental yet fragmented, and relatedness is structurally  
weakened through digitalised transactional systems rather than collegial interaction. These findings deepen  
theoretical understanding by moving SDT from a peripheral explanatory model to a central diagnostic  
mechanism that illustrates how motivational fragility is embedded in gig work’s architecture rather than in  
individual preference. Leadership implications also extend theory beyond traditional hierarchical assumptions,  
as adaptive leadership, distributed authority, transformational engagement and e-leadership competencies  
become essential to sustain belonging and performance within hybrid labour ecosystems.  
Despite expanding scholarship, notable gaps remain. Empirical evidence on emerging gig economies in regions  
such as Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America is limited, particularly where informal  
employment, religious norms and state welfare constraints interact with platform work. Equally, research has yet  
to fully interrogate hybrid workforce functioning: how full-time and gig contributors coexist in digitally  
governed structures, how identity and equity tensions unfold, and how leadership distributes recognition to  
workers who are operationally central yet institutionally peripheral. Moreover, gig work’s psychological toll—  
loneliness, exhaustion, uncertainty, identity diffusion and digital surveillance—remains insufficiently measured  
through longitudinal and cross-industry comparisons, preventing a fuller understanding of motivation decline  
and mental health consequences within algorithmically managed labour markets. These gaps point toward future  
research directions that must integrate SDT’s intrinsic needs with structural-economic conditions to explain not  
only motivational activation but motivational depletion.  
Practical implications are equally pressing. Organisations must invest in stable earning models, transparent task  
allocation logic and developmental support rather than assuming flexibility itself guarantees motivation. Human  
resource leaders must extend inclusion practices, learning access and feedback channels to independent workers  
rather than restricting professional growth to payroll employees. Algorithmic scoring and customer evaluation  
should be redesigned with fairness, appeals mechanisms and data visibility, recognising that ratings shape  
identity security and not merely service efficiency. Finally, policy makers need to advance benefit portability,  
social protection access, taxation clarity and platform accountability so that workforce fluidity does not  
rationalise insecurity as choice.  
Taken together, the gig economy’s future will depend less on technological acceleration than on the ethical and  
psychological reforms that accompany it. If organisations and policy systems can reconstitute autonomy as  
assured rather than exposed, competence as cumulative rather than episodic and relatedness as relational rather  
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than algorithmically symbolic, gig work can mature from precarious participation into sustainable engagement.  
Until then, leadership will need to act not as a mechanism of oversight but as a stabilising presence that anchors  
identity, wellbeing and motivation amid an employment system increasingly defined by transience, data-driven  
supervision and decentralised belonging.  
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