News

by Jessie Ge, PhD Candidate

Gig economy platforms continue to struggle with high worker attrition. A plausible reason is that workers’ well-being suffers because of an inability to cope with technology demands. Nonetheless, automation is trending, especially for online gig-economy platforms. For example, Uber drive implements algorithm control to screen qualifying drivers (gatekeeping algorithm control) and to monitor and advise on driver behavior (guiding algorithm control). It is important to understand whether and how algorithm control may be a double-edged sword for employees’ well-being in terms of technostress, affecting their intention to continue working on the platform and/or to pursue system workarounds.

The School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) is pleased to share that Jillian Adams has been awarded the Warren Ober Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student. This award is given to a University of Waterloo graduate student in the Faculty of Arts who has made significant contributions to teaching.

Congratulations to School of Accounting and Finance professor Ranjini Jha, recipient of the 2023 Arts Award for Excellence in Service!

Established in 2012 by then-dean Doug Peers, the Arts Awards for Excellence in Service, Teaching and Research recognize exceptional contributions made by faculty, staff, and students in the Faculty of Arts. This is the 11th anniversary of the Arts Awards and more than 30 members of the Arts community were nominated by their chairs, supervisors, and colleagues.

Read more about this year's Arts Award recipients.

Wenqian Hu’s paper Trust Versus Rewards: Revisiting Managerial Discretion in Incomplete Contracts was awarded the Lazaridis Institute Prize for the best paper on accounting issues relevant to technology firms. The paper finds that an algorithm-generated bonus allocation scheme improves employee productivity, compared with human managers’ bonus allocation. It also finds that compared with human managers’ bonus allocation, the algorithm-based one removes managers’ responsibility and improves employees’ trust in the reward system.