From Autonomy to Alienation: Exploring Organisational Dehumanisation Among Ride-Hailing Drivers

Platform ride-hailing pairs algorithmic efficiency with promises of flexible, ‘be-your-own-boss’ work, yet drivers portray the job as dignity-stripping. Using an interpretive–abductive design, 31 interviews with Indian male drivers were conducted and analysed via the Gioia methodology. Six interlocking mechanisms emerged: indiscriminate automation, metrics-driven gamification, detached and transactional relationship, deindividuation, limited solidarity and emotional distance, and entrapment, each aligning with classic facets of organisational dehumanisation. Advancing the scholarship on organisational dehumanisation, this study conceptualises dehumanisation as a process that systematically erodes dignity and introduces a novel framework that maps the six mechanisms into three analytically distinct but interrelated dignity erosion pathways: epistemic flattening (erosion of recognitional dignity and professional identity), affective disembedding (erosion of relational dignity and emotional recognition), and c oercive infrastructure (erosion of autonomy and volition). The findings also reveal that this moral injury stems from the synergy of code, discretionary corporate policy, and capital structure, an interaction ignored by autonomy-versus-precarity and technostress debates. The study also proposes multi-level remedies: participatory rating dashboards, live dispute channels, EMI-to-income caps, and peer-mentoring hubs, that simultaneously address code, corporate process, and capital architecture. By revealing how seemingly neutral algorithms can entrench coercive and dehumanising conditions, the study invites platform designers, regulators, and labour advocates to pursue human-centred governance of digital work.