Algorithmic labor (Lalgo)

Academy of Management Annals, 2020: Katherine Kellogg, Melissa Valentine and Angèle Christin mapped six mechanisms of algorithmic control at work (restricting, recommending, recording, rating, replacing and rewarding) and named the resistance they provoke "algoactivism." Algorithmic labor, written Lalgo by analogy with the human labor factor, means handing algorithms execution, and coordination and cognitive control as well, within an organization. Schildt theorized it in economic sociology, followed by Kellogg, Valentine and Christin, and the concept breaks with the classic view that put computing in fixed capital. With agentic AI billed by usage, per token or per API call for instance, technology spending stops being an investment you depreciate and becomes a variable cost strictly proportional to the task performed, exactly like piece-rate pay. Algorithmic labor then behaves as a variable factor of production, competing directly with human cognitive labor and tending to replace it. This reclassification reshapes the firm's cost structure and organization, because it collapses the marginal cost of coordination. For risk management, algorithmic labor brings new exposures (opacity, error correlation and dependence on infrastructure providers), and these make up the core of the insurability questions in the agentic economy.