Technology-mediated work increasingly complicates a basic organizational question: who receives credit when valued outcomes arise from combinations of employee effort, technological capability, algorithmic coordination, and managerial interpretation? Existing research explains important parts of this problem through studies of digital visibility, algorithmic control, human–artificial intelligence collaboration, performance management, and technologically mediated judgment, yet these literatures do not provide an integrated account of how contribution becomes organizational recognition. This Original Conceptual Framework Article addresses that gap by proposing an Effort-Recognition Framework that separates contribution production from four subsequent processes: visibility, attribution, evaluative representation, and recognition allocation. The framework distinguishes human, technological, and joint contributions; identifies selective visibility and measurement compression as potential sources of recognition discrepancy; and treats managerial interpretation and contextual expertise as consequential parts of the recognition process rather than residual adjustments. It further proposes that task characteristics, technological opacity, expertise, organizational context, and the design of performance systems condition how contribution is interpreted. The article develops testable propositions concerning visibility selectivity, attribution partitioning, measurement-to-credit slippage, recognition discrepancy, and human contextual correction. It also identifies implications for motivation, identity, status, and organizational design. The framework is an original non-empirical synthesis rather than a validated causal model. Its relationships require direct empirical testing across occupations, technologies, organizational forms, and levels of analysis, particularly where digital traces are incomplete or human and technological contributions are difficult to disentangle.
