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Research on the Multiple Collaborative Governance Mechanism of Social Security for Flexible Employment Personnel in the Platform Economy: A Comparative Analysis Based on Multiple Cases

Aug 2026 · Asia Pacific Economic and Management Review · 0 citations · 5 references

Abstract

Driven by the dual drive of digital technology empowerment and industrial structure reshaping, the platform economy has become the core carrier for absorbing employment and ensuring people's livelihood in China, and the scale of flexible employment it covers has exceeded the 200 million mark. However, while this group enjoys employment flexibility, they also face a serious lack of social security. The traditional social security system based on industrial standard labor relations shows obvious exclusion effect in the face of fragmented and decentralized labor under the control of algorithms. Based on the perspective of collaborative governance, this paper analyzes the practical dilemmas such as ambiguous identification of labor relations, imbalance in the distribution of responsibilities and ineffective regulatory coordination. By comparing JD.com's "full guarantee", Meituan and Ele.me's "selective guarantee", and Lala's "de-wages" governance model of foreign Uber, the efficiency differences in the allocation of rights and responsibilities of multiple subjects are discussed. The research shows that building a collaborative governance network with the participation of the government, platforms, trade unions and workers is the key to breaking the situation. This paper advocates realizing the multi-party sharing of social security responsibilities by innovating "order/proportional" flexible payment, promoting occupational injury protection pilots, and strengthening digital supervision methods. This study not only has important academic discussion value, but also directly responds to the policy demand of improving the insurance rate of flexible employment personnel in the national "15th Five-Year Plan", and has clear practical relevance.

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