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Research Under Review or Revise & Resubmit
Identity Play Beyond Algorithmic Governance. Professional identity in platform-mediated independent work is strained when algorithmic governance displaces the relational and developmental foundations through which identity is constructed. This paper examines how freelancers on Upwork and Fiverr navigate this tension through disintermediation, the practice of maintaining client relationships outside the platform despite strict prohibitions. Whereas prior accounts depict disintermediation as fee-avoidance opportunism, drawing on interviews and three years of ethnographic observation, I show that it functions instead as identity play. Freelancers convert forbidden exchanges into arenas for learning, value expression, partnership building, and self-determination through four recurring processes: Skill Transformation, Authenticity Seeking, Relational Anchoring, and Autonomy Reclaiming. These dynamics reveal how freelance professionals cultivate client relationships as a personal “holding environment” for identity experimentation when formal systems offer only algorithmic evaluation and surveillance. The study extends identity theory into algorithmically mediated work and reframes agency under digital control, showing that what platforms view as market leakage is often identity leakage, the overflow of aspiration, dignity, and creativity beyond algorithmic boundaries.
Psychological Contracts in Platform Intermediation. This paper theorizes disintermediation as a relational realignment within the triadic exchange order among freelancers, platforms, and clients. Platforms’ explicit and implicit promises such as equitable access to work, fair dispute resolution, transparent policy enforcement, and developmental support form the psychological contracts that sustain freelancers’ participation. When platforms fail to uphold these obligations, freelancers experience relational breach and cease to view the platform as a legitimate partner in the triad. In response, they disintermediate the platform as a means to restore relational balance, redirecting loyalty toward clients who continue to honor reciprocal obligations. Drawing on a multimethod design that integrates archival analysis and interviews with a survey of experienced Upwork freelancers, I develop and validate a typology of psychological contract breaches that predict freelancers’ disintermediation intent. The study extends social exchange theory by demonstrating how breach in one leg of a triadic arrangement reverberates across the others, reorganizing reciprocal exchange even in impersonal, algorithmically mediated work settings.
Bargaining Power in Platform-Based Exchange. Platform governance structures project-based work through algorithmic reputation systems and incentives for relational continuity, embedding freelancers in evaluative and relational dependencies that remain undertheorized in organizational research. This paper conceptualizes platform governance as the design of dependence and examines how these intertwined mechanisms condition freelancers’ bargaining position vis-à-vis clients. Drawing on a complementary qualitative and quantitative study of freelancers on Upwork and Fiverr, I show that bargaining power declines steadily as work relationships unfold across contracting, execution, and delivery. Qualitative evidence reveals stage-specific mechanisms: visibility pressures temper negotiation during contracting, hidden feedback and client expectations prompt scope stretching during execution, and clients’ control over ratings and refunds makes dissent prohibitively costly at delivery. Quantitative analyses model bargaining power as a within-project trajectory and demonstrate that recurring-client dependence and reputational standing each intensify its decline. The paper advances understanding of platform control as engineered dependence, delineates a boundary condition for relational governance, and reframes autonomy as the capacity to manage intertwined dependencies.
AI Developers as De Facto Job Designers. Job design is increasingly configured not only by managers but by the upstream actors who build and commercialize workflow AI. This paper theorizes how AI developers’ values, embedded in the products they market to healthcare providers, reshape the design and outcome of clinicians’ work. Although AI is often sold on the promise of efficiency, achieving efficiency requires redistributing tasks, authority, and information flows, each of which alters discretion, monitoring, and opportunities for learning. Then why do efficiency-oriented AI investments so often heighten job demands while thinning resources? We argue that developers’ productization choices are the missing link. Whether technologies are marketed as turnkey automation or customizable augmentation determines the demands and resources clinicians experience. An analysis of AI vendor marketing materials shows that automation-first solutions dominate even where augmentation tools would better support frontline work. We theorize this process as de facto job design, where developer choices cascade into clinical settings with downstream consequences for employee experience.
Research in Progress
The Professionalization Paradox of Digital Labor Markets. Why do identical exchange asymmetries precipitate a reordering of exchange relationships in some digital labor markets yet register as routine market volatility in others? Drawing on institutional logics, social exchange, and markets-as-organization research, this paper argues that platform professionalization shapes the interpretive frameworks through which participants make sense of exchange asymmetries. Professionalized platforms import service-oriented norms and expectations, leading participants to view the intermediary as a partner with reciprocal exchange obligations. Guided by this relational logic, participants interpret asymmetries as violations of expected reciprocity and rebalance the exchange by shifting collaboration directly to clients through disintermediation. In contrast, less professionalized platforms cultivate a transactional logic that downplays the norms of reciprocity. Within this logic, participants treat exchange asymmetries as ordinary market fluctuations to be managed through market-side adjustments such as multihoming.
Institutional Logics and Managerial Practices. Managerial practices improve employee well-being only when managers have the ability, motivation, and opportunity (AMO) to implement them. This paper argues that these AMO conditions are not manager-specific attributes but are shaped by the institutional logics embedded in different firm ownership models. We theorize that employee well-being practices are most effective when the prevailing logic enables managers’ AMO. Accordingly, we predict that independent clinics operating under a professional care logic are more likely to generate positive well-being outcomes because they emphasize clinical judgment, craft expertise, and relational coordination as central to organizational performance. In contrast, we expect private equity establishments guided by a financial market logic to produce weaker effects because tighter controls, efficiency targets, and cost-oriented priorities constrain AMO. To test these predictions, we are conducting a nationwide randomized field experiment in 100 U.S. veterinary clinics, pairing manager training on culture building, work-life practices, and job crafting with matched employee surveys measuring burnout, satisfaction, and turnover intentions.
(Pre-Ph.D.) Peer-Reviewed Publications in Public Policy & Management
Eusuf, M. A., Rana, A., & Rabi, R. I. (2022). "The Political Economy of a COVID-19 Stimulus Package in Bangladesh: The Case of Women-Owned Enterprises." International Journal of SME Development, 5, 35–55. Link
Khan, N. A., Rana, A., & Haque, M. R. (2020). "Rise of the Concepts and Indicators of Social Development: Insights from the Experience of Bangladesh." Journal of Population and Development, 2, 27–38. Link
Kamal, M., & Rana, A. (2019). "Do Internal and International Remittances Affect Households’ Expenditure and Asset Accumulation Differently? Evidence from Bangladesh." The Journal of Developing Areas, 53(2), 139–153. Link
Rana, A., & Kamal, M. (2018). "Does Clientelism Affect Income Inequality? Evidence from Panel Data." Journal of Income Distribution, 27(1), 1–24. Link
Kamal, M., Rana, A., & Wahid, A. (2018). "Economic Reform and Corruption: Evidence from Panel Data." Australian Economic Papers, 57(1), 92–106. Link
Rana, A., & Wahid, A. (2017). "Fiscal Deficit and Economic Growth in Bangladesh: A Time-Series Analysis." The American Economist, 62(1), 31–42. Link
Kamal, M., & Rana, A. (2015). "Probing the Efficacy of Social Business as the New Kind of Capitalism in Alleviating Poverty." International Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(3), 57–65. Link
Haque, T., Haque, M. R., & Rana, A. (2013). "Holding NGOs Accountable: Reinvigorating Development Management in Bangladesh." Social Science Review, 30(2), 49–74. Link
Khan, N. U., Haque, M. R., & Rana, A. (2012). "The Role of Civil Societies in Development of Democracy in Bangladesh." Development Review, 22, 31–40. Link
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