From control to care: a digital CSR framework for alleviating labor exploitation in China’s time-critical express delivery industry

Purpose The explosive growth of China’s time-critical express delivery (TCED) industry highlights both the potential and the pitfalls of the digital platform economy. While delivering unprecedented convenience, its profit-driven model has triggered a corporate social responsibility (CSR) crisis, with frontline riders facing working conditions that increasingly resemble labor exploitation. This study addresses the critical disconnect between the efficiency-focused logic of algorithmic management and the urgent need for ethical platform governance. It investigates how the same digital infrastructure that enables control could be redesigned to promote care, fairness and social sustainability. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a qualitative research method, collecting primary data through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with riders in four strategically selected Chinese cities to capture diverse market contexts and rider profiles. This empirical evidence is triangulated with a systematic analysis of multiple authoritative secondary sources, including policy documents, investigative reports and industry publications. A rigorous thematic analysis identifies the structural and technological drivers of rider stress and exploitation, leading to the development of a novel Digital Corporate Social Responsibility (DCSR) framework. Findings This analysis uncovers a system of algorithmic domination, sustained by opaque and relentless time compression, the unilateral transfer of systemic risks onto riders and the institutionalized evasion of employer responsibilities. In response, a six-proposition DCSR framework is advanced. Its core actionable mechanisms – mandated algorithmic transparency, rider data sovereignty governing wearable technology, mutual rating systems to rebalance stakeholder power and data-driven dynamic incentives – are designed to ethically reconfigure platform architectures. Thereby, digital tools can be fundamentally transformed from instruments of control into foundations of care and equity, ultimately enhancing social sustainability while guarding against an advanced form of digital confinement. Research limitations/implications Findings are context-specific to China’s TCED sector. The rider-centric design, while deliberate, excludes other stakeholder views (e.g. platforms, regulators). The qualitative, exploratory approach establishes a theoretical framework that requires future empirical validation. This study bridges modern slavery/SCM, platform governance and DCSR literatures. The proposed framework offers actionable guidance for ethically encoding CSR into platform architecture, transitioning from algorithmic control to care-based governance. Originality/value This research makes three key contributions. First, it bridges the previously separate scholarly discourses on modern slavery and supply chain ethics, platform governance and digital transformation by introducing an integrative DCSR framework. Second, it provides empirically grounded, practical guidance for regulators and platform designers aiming to implement CSR in the digital economy, shifting the focus from critical diagnosis to constructive and technology-informed design. Third, it centers the lived experience and “folk theories” of riders as essential stakeholders, yielding crucial insights for ethical innovation and challenging top-down techno-solutionist approaches in the platform economy.