Faced with uncertain job opportunities, intense market competition, and a lack of support from stable organizations, gig workers on online labor platforms are confronted with the challenge of career precariousness. Therefore, in order to enhance their career resilience and secure sustainable livelihoods, gig workers must proactively manage their career development. However, empirical research on gig workers’ long-term oriented career behaviors under algorithmic management remains limited. Drawing on goal shielding theory, our study investigates whether platform-based gig workers engage in long-term career behaviors and explores how, why, and when they pursue in long-term oriented career behaviors while simultaneously engaging in short-term oriented deviant behaviors. Using a three-wave time-lagged survey, our research not only reveals that algorithmic management triggers gig workers’ bottom-line mentality, which, as a psychological state of goal shielding, leads them to engage in short-term oriented deviant behaviors in pursuit of their bottom-line goals, but also finds that platform job transition support—one of the platform management practices—intensifies the impact of algorithmic management-triggered bottom-line mentality on long-term oriented career behaviors. Our findings contribute to the behavioral research on algorithmic management, and research on gig workers and bottom-line mentality.
