Hire of Service or Hire of Work? A Case Study of the Employment Relationships between the Riders and the Food-delivery Firms in Taiwan

Existing studies on the platform-based food-delivery sector largely focus on laws, regulations and job quality, while fewer have explored the interactions of different views regarding employment relations between riders and platform firms (i.e. whether to consider riders employees or contractors of platform firms), especially in an East Asian context. This qualitative case study applies the theory of institutional logics to analyse interactions among stakeholders with different discourses of employment relations in the Taiwanese platform-based food-delivery sector and finds that they co-create a hybrid logic: ‘quasi-employee’. This creation is embedded within an economic and political context wherein riders are well paid and the government prioritises attracting investment from foreign digital capital. This article, taking a theoretical perspective, examines this unusual case of how stakeholders – presumably with different interests – have quickly resolved the contested issue.