Profile

Dr. Greetje “Gretta” Corporaal was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute where she also taught the course Digital Technology and Economic Organization. Corporaal is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the New Social Contract, a Teaching Affiliate at Said Business School, and co-host of the Talking About Organizations Podcast. She holds a PhD in Organization Sciences, an MSc (cum laude) in Social Research and PMC (cum laude) in Culture, Organization and Management from VU Amsterdam, and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Groningen, where she also studied Classical Violin and Modern Japan Studies. In 2014-2015 Corporaal was a visiting scholar at New York University, Stern School of Business.

A Sociologist of Work and Organizations, Corporaal’s research is positioned at the intersection of Management and Organization Studies, Information Systems Research, and Economic Sociology. She is interested in the development of AI, digital platform technologies and services, and how their usage shapes the future of work and organizing in society.

Corporaal was part of the ERC-funded project ‘iLabour: The construction of Labour Markets, Institutions and Movements on the Internet‘. This project examines online freelance work and online labour platforms. Her research focuses on the technology firms that develop these platforms and how these new private regulators create and manage their marketplaces. To this aim, Corporaal conducted a one-year ethnographic study inside one of the largest online labour platforms for knowledge work. She also studies firm adoption of platforms and how they are changing their organizational processes and practices internally to engage online freelancers as part of their external workforce.

Corporaal’s other research focuses on how globalization, digitization, and hyper-specialization are transforming work in the areas of technology, innovation, and strategy. To this aim, she conducted a 4-year multi-sited field study of cross-boundary collaboration among research scientists, engineers, and divisional managers within a Japanese multinational and its collaboration with an American engineering contractor.

Corporaal is an active member of the Academy of Management and the European Group of Organization Studies. She received various awards for her work, among which Best Reviewer Awards from the Academy of Management (2017), a Young Talent Award from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds (2014) and the Wilhelmina Drucker Early Career Award from VU Amsterdam (2015). Her research has been covered in The Financial Times, Fortune Magazine, and Forbes Magazine (Personal website, Researchgate, LinkedIn)

Research interests

Online freelancing and outsourcing of knowledge work in the digital platform economy; the development of AI, machine learning models, and algorithmic management processes; the emergence and transformation of fields, boundaries and practices; institutional processes; micro-processes of strategy-making; sociology of work and organizing; technology and management innovations and new value creation

Positions held at the OII

  • Research Associate, March 2020-
  • Postdoctoral Researcher, April 2016 – January 2020
  • Member of the Departmental Steering Board, February 2017 – January 2020

Research

Past projects

Books

  • CORPORAAL, G. (2018) Boundary Work: Addressing the Challenges of Cross-boundary Collaboration at Mirai Corporation.

Conference papers

  • CORPORAAL, G.F. and LEHDONVIRTA, V. (2018) Motivations for platform sourcing: Why do firms adopt online labor markets for knowledge work?. Reshaping Work Conference, Amsterdam October 25-26.
  • Corporaal, G.F., Ferguson, J., de Gilder, D. and Groenewegen, P. (2014) "10,000 miles across the room?", Proceedings of the 5th ACM international conference on Collaboration across boundaries: culture, distance & technology - CABS '14. the 5th ACM international conference, 20 – 22 August 2014. ACM Press. 29-30.

Reports

  • Corporaal, G.F. and Lehdonvirta, V. (2017) Platform Sourcing: How Fortune 500 Firms Are Adopting Online Freelancing Platforms. Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute.

Working papers

  • CORPORAAL, G. and LEHDONVIRTA, V. (2020) How the flexible firm expands with online labor platforms: Theorizing online labor platforms as a new model for sourcing high-skilled knowledge work. University of Oxford.
  • CORPORAAL, G. and LEHDONVIRTA, V. Explaining variation in firm adoption of digital platforms: How different platform adoption paths impact the networked capabilities of online labor platforms..

Teaching

Videos

News

Events

  • OxDeg: Mixed methods and hyper-triangulation

    23 November 2016

    This seminar series, created by the Oxford Digital Ethnography Group, gathers leading scholars and practitioners to reflect on how ethnography is adapting to the study of heavily-mediated worlds.

Blog

Press

  • How Slack took over the office

    26 January 2018 Financial Times


    Slack, the workplace messaging system, has wheedled its way into working lives. Greetje Corporaal comments.

  • The Gig Economy Isn’t Just For Startups Anymore

    29 August 2017 Fortune


    Coverage of a new report by Gretta Corporaal and Vili Lehdonvirta on how Fortune 500 companies are turning to online freelancing platforms like Upwork and PeoplePerHour to find designers, marketing staff, IT specialists and other knowledge workers.

Integrity Statement

My current research on iLabour: the construction of labour markets on the Internet is funded by the European Research Council. I have given paid lectures on digital transformation and the future of work for Oxford Saïd Business School, various global consultancy firms, industry actors, and (semi-) governmental institutions. I am a Fellow of the World Economic Forum, supporting them in an unpaid advisory role related to the platform economy, platform labour markets, and the future of work and education. I am also a podcaster with the Talking About Organizations Podcast, which is on an unpaid voluntary basis. Prior to joining the OII, my PhD research on cross-boundary collaboration was funded by Teijin Limited, Yanmar Europe BV and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds. I’ve received additional financial support from VU departmental research cluster on Organizational Networks and research grants and bursaries from the VU Graduate School of Social Sciences, the VU ‘werkgroep vrouwelijk talent’, and the Society of the Advancement of Management Studies.