International Remote Work and the Governance of Employer of Record (EOR) Arrangements

Abstract

The expansion of remote work, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic but rooted in longer-term structural trends, created the conditions for the rapid growth of a new category of digital labour intermediary: the Employer of Record (EOR). EOR platforms act as the formal legal employer of workers on behalf of client companies operating in jurisdictions where they have no corporate presence, centralising payroll, compliance, and statutory obligations within a tripartite, cross-border employment architecture. Despite the scale of this phenomenon, the EOR model remains underexplored in academic literature. Scholarship on remote work has focused primarily on productivity, engagement, and organisational outcomes, while scholarship on platform work has concentrated on task-based gig economy intermediaries. Neither body of literature adequately addresses the EOR model, which mediates ongoing skilled employment relationships across national legal systems and produces accountability gaps that existing regulatory frameworks are ill-equipped to resolve. This article examines the EOR model as a structurally distinct form of digital labour intermediation, tracing its emergence from the structural conditions of remote work, analyzing its legal architecture and its divergence from existing regulatory categories, and proposing a research agenda grounded in platform governance and comparative employment law.