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Danielle Batist is an experienced freelance journalist, founder of Journopreneur and co-founder of the Constructive Journalism Project. She lived and worked all around the globe and covered global and local stories of poverty, exclusion and injustice. Increasingly, she moved beyond ‘problem-reporting’ to include stories about the solutions she found. She witnessed the birth of the new nation of South Sudan and interviewed the Dalai Lama. She reported for Al Jazeera, BBC and the Guardian and regularly advises independent media organisations on innovation and sustainability. She loves bringing stories to the world and finding the appropriate platforms to do so. The transformation of traditional media fascinates rather than scares her. While both the medium and the message are changing, she believes the need for good storytelling remains.
Could ‘Pop Up Employers’ Replace Contracting As We Know It?
The ‘gig economy’ has a new trend coming, according to Stanford University researchers featured in this piece. They call it ‘flash organisations’, which they define as ‘ephemeral setups to execute a single, complex project in ways traditionally associated with corporations, nonprofit groups or governments’.
What’s interesting about the projects they analysed is that the concept seems to bring back middle management: where traditional freelancers typically perform worker-bee tasks, ‘pop-up’ companies tend to combine both workers and managers.
The piece highlights interesting findings on the social behaviour side too: “One thing that was really surprising and exciting about what we saw was how quickly flash organisations developed solidarity and collective behaviour.”
The article also pays attention to the downsides: while fostering flexibility, the model could easily compound insecurity as temporary firms are not likely to provide things like health or retirement benefits.
It will be interesting to see how and in what areas ‘flash organisations' might grow next.
