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6 - The Organization of Digital Marketplaces: Unmasking the Role of Internet Platforms in the Sharing Economy

from Part 2 - Organization in and around Markets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2019

By
Stefan Kirchner  and
Elke Schüßler
Edited by
Göran Ahrne  and
Nils Brunsson
Göran Ahrne
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
Nils Brunsson
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

The platform economy enables socio-technical infrastructures that facilitate new forms of internet intermediation between buyers and external sellers. Several prominent and successful examples of such digital infrastructures depict themselves as a part of the so called “sharing economy”. We posit here that the key to understand the social structures of sharing economy platforms is to analyze them as digital marketplaces created and operated by market organizers. In this article we address these issues by approaching the problem of market order creation and the elements of market order as a question of the organization of markets by drawing on two exemplary cases, Lyft and Airbnb. We first consider efforts of market organizers to create new market orders on their digital marketplaces by mobilizing participants and resources. Second, we analyze what elements of organization these market organizers install to continuously operate their digital marketplaces. In all we show that although they use the rhetoric of sharing, internet platforms in the sharing economy generate enormous profits by establishing order on digital marketplaces using the five elements of organization.

Keywords

organizationmarketsdigital marketplacessociologysharing economymarket creationmobilization
Type
Chapter
Information
Organization outside Organizations
The Abundance of Partial Organization in Social Life
 , pp. 131 - 154
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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