Exploring the implications of working conditions for corporate sustainability in last-mile delivery platform companies

Last-mile delivery platforms have recently emerged as effective business models to match
supply and demand, even though they have been criticized for potentially exploiting their
workers. This paper investigates the corporate sustainability and socio-economic trade-offs of
platform companies in relation to working conditions (i.e., work relationships, social
subsystems, and technical subsystem). A survey of 392 paid-per-order workers from six food
delivery platforms across Spain was conducted to validate our research framework. Our
findings provide a nuanced understanding of the impact of working conditions on corporate
sustainability in platform companies. On the one hand, there are positive implications for both
social and economic sustainability in the presence of higher earnings, rights and protections,
and empowerment for workers. Conversely, prolonged work relationships between workers
and platform companies are negatively related to workers’ perceived stress and individual
performance. Based on these insights, we advance our understanding of how platform
companies can deal with conflicting objectives regarding working conditions by adopting an
instrumental approach in the case of short-term workers and an integrative approach with longterm
workers.