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Capturing the dynamics of the sharing economy: Institutional research on the

plural forms and practices of sharing economy organizations

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DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2017.05.023

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 Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Technological Forecasting & Social Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore

Capturing the dynamics of the sharing economy: Institutional research on

the plural forms and practices of sharing economy organizations
Johanna Mair, Georg Reischauer⁎
Hertie School of Governance, Friedrichstrasse 180, 10117 Berlin, Germany

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: To date, management research has paid little attention to dynamics of the sharing economy: how markets for
Sharing economy sharing resources emerge and change, and the intended and unintended consequences of resource sharing. We
Market propose a definition of the sharing economy that brings the role of organizations as infrastructure providers to
Organizational form the fore and helps us to assess the culturally rooted pluralism of forms and practices in these organizations. We
Organizational practice
introduce two perspectives in research on organizational institutionalism that focus on culture and pluralism –
Institutional logics
Institutional work
institutional complexity and institutional work – and argue that unpacking the pluralism of organizational forms
and practices is critical to examine the dynamics of the sharing economy. We propose an agenda for research to
capture the dynamics of the sharing economy at the organizational, field, and inter-field level. Such an agenda
helps to document and analyze how the sharing economy manifests and evolves across various economic systems
and has the potential to refine and recast existing management theory.

1. Introduction individuals to share resources. We believe that studying sharing

The sharing economy has attracted considerable public and scho-
larly attention. Current debates underscore that it has set economic and
socially relevant dynamics in motion, altering existing markets. For
example, the ride-sharing market, led by Uber and Lyft, has changed the
taxi market. The sharing economy may also lead to new markets, such
as the home-sharing market that Airbnb pioneered (Belk, 2014; Matzler
et al., 2015; Sundararajan, 2016). Besides producing possible positive
effects (Kostakis and Bauwens, 2014), the sharing economy calls into
question established ways of organizing labor and commercializes
personal life (Martin, 2016). Analytically, these dynamics involve
processes of market change (Meyer et al., 2005) and of market
emergence (Fligstein, 2013), as well as intended and unintended
consequences (Merton, 1936). In particular, the unintended conse-
quences are drawing increasing interest from policy makers.
So far, empirical studies have not addressed these dynamics of the
sharing economy explicitly. They have instead focused on aspects such
as the antecedents of sharing and motivations for it (Bucher et al., 2016;
Hellwig et al., 2015; Lamberton and Rose, 2012; Möhlmann, 2015;
Piscicelli et al., 2015), competition (Cusumano, 2014), and the
governance of users (Hartl et al., 2016; Scaraboto, 2015). These efforts
have been particularly helpful for understanding the business models of
organizations in the sharing economy (sharing economy organizations
for short). These organizations operate a digital platform that allow
economy organizations, and more specifically the culturally rooted
pluralism of their forms and practices which reflect their embeddedness
in varying cultural contexts, is critical for understanding the dynamics
of the sharing economy: market change, market emergence, and
intended and unintended consequences.
Culture, understood as taken-for-granted sets of meanings and rules,
is important for explaining economic outcomes and processes in various
economic systems (Amable, 2003; Hall and Soskice, 2001). It shapes
how organizations act and react (Beckert, 2010; Dequech, 2003; Zukin
and DiMaggio, 1990). In the sharing economy, culture seems to affect
the choice of organizational forms and to account for the pluralism of
sharing economy organizations. For example, organizations in Germany
seem to differ from those in the U.S. regarding the orientation – for-
profit vs. not-for-profit – they adopt (Schor and Fitzmaurice, 2015) and
regarding how they organize – the structures and systems they adopt. In
the U.S., the dominant structure of sharing economy organizations
seems to be similar to that of organizations in the “traditional” economy
(Schor and Fitzmaurice, 2015), whereas in Germany alternative ways of
organizing are common (Oberg et al., 2017).
Besides a pluralism of organizational forms, a pluralism of practices
of sharing economy organizations appears in our empirical research
(Reischauer and Mair, 2017). Organizations seem to vary greatly
regarding how they interface with nonmarket actors such as city
governments or interest groups (Baron, 1995) and how they govern

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: mair@hertie-school.org (J. Mair), reischauer@hertie-school.org (G. Reischauer).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.05.023
Received 19 July 2016; Received in revised form 2 May 2017; Accepted 22 May 2017
0040-1625/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Mair, J., Technological Forecasting & Social Change (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.05.023
J. Mair, G. Reischauer
interactions and relationships with users. For example, The Food
Assembly, a France-based organization in the food-sharing market that
connects local farmers with consumers, allows selected users to assume
managerial responsibilities. In return for coordinating and encouraging
transactions between farmers and consumers, these users receive
monetary compensation (Acquier et al., 2017). U.S.-based sharing
economy organizations seem not to offer such freedom to users.
The culturally rooted variety of forms and practices of sharing
economy organizations allows productive engagement with manage-
ment theory, and more specifically with organizational institutionalism,
a vibrant research program dedicated to examining the role of culture
in organizations and inter-organizational dynamics (Dobbin, 1994;
Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2014; Weber and Dacin, 2011). More
recent accounts of this perspective would predict that the path for
sharing economic organizations seeking legitimacy and recognition is
filled with conflict, tensions, and contestation (Thornton et al., 2012).
Scholarship on institutional complexity argues that organizations operate
in institutionally plural contexts, and also that their business models are
based on multiple and often conflicting institutional logics (Greenwood
et al., 2011). Understood as sets of assumptions, beliefs, and practices,
institutional logics prescribe the behavior of sharing economy organi-
zations and explain change in sharing economy markets. Thus, in their
strategizing, but also in their day-to-day operations, organizations must
navigate this pluralism. A second powerful stream of research endor-
sing pluralism is described as institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby,
2006), which leaves more room for purposeful and strategic behavior.
Scholars adopting this perspective foreground the potential for organi-
zational practices to create new institutions, maintain existing ones, or
disrupt old ones, enabling the change and emergence of markets more
broadly. We aim to demonstrate that using the perspectives of institu-
tional complexity and institutional work to study the forms of sharing
economy organizations and their practices enables scholars to better
understand the dynamics of the sharing economy: market change,
market emergence, and intended and unintended consequences. Doing
so further clarifies the nature of the sharing economy. We hope to guide
future empirical work and thereby contribute to establishing the
sharing economy as a promising field of scholarly inquiry.
Although early research on a new phenomenon such as the sharing
economy triggers great excitement, its connection to established
theories is often loose (Hirsch and Levin, 1999). Nevertheless, ground-
ing research on a new phenomenon in a theoretical tradition is
enormously beneficial to build a field of research and at the same time
strengthen the field of practice. In addition, linking the sharing
economy with institutional theory also offers an important opportunity
to rethink and refine concepts in organizational institutionalism. For
example, research on social entrepreneurship led institutional scholars
to rethink the uniformity of organizations and inspired research on
hybrid organizing (Mair and Martí, 2006; Mair et al., 2012).
We first propose a definition that specifies the role of organizations
in the sharing economy. We then elaborate on the pluralism of the
forms and practices of sharing economy organizations. Next, we
illustrate how to leverage the institutional complexity and institutional
work perspectives to unpack and empirically analyze this pluralism. We
end by outlining a research agenda, detailing how to apply these
Table 1
Stylized comparison between sharing economy and traditional economy.
Comparative dimension Sharing economy
Forms of compensation used in transactions Various (bartering, trading, gift giving,
payment)
Transaction locus Markets
Transaction focus Redistribution of and access to resources
Transaction partners Individuals
Transaction infrastructure and infrastructure Digital platforms operated by organizations
provider
2
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
perspectives to capture the dynamics of the sharing economy.
2. Sharing economy: Important features, dynamics, and why it
matters
Clarifying the meaning of the sharing economy is critical for
unpacking the dynamics in the sharing economy and for making the
case for further research, especially as existing knowledge of the
phenomenon is in an “embryonic” state (Barnes and Mattsson, 2016:
200).
2.1. Defining the sharing economy
For the purposes of this paper, we develop a definition of the
sharing economy based on abductive reasoning. We integrate insights
from existing management and marketing research on the sharing
economy and pay attention to how the phenomenon manifests. We
define the sharing economy as a web of markets in which individuals use
various forms of compensation to transact the redistribution of and access to
resources, mediated by a digital platform operated by an organization.
Transactions constitute the core of economic activities in the
sharing economy. Accordingly, our definition encompasses five main
features. First, “various forms of compensation” refers to the several
ways that transactions in the sharing economy can be made. Second,
“market” refers to the locus of transactions in the sharing economy.
Third, “redistribution of and access to resources” focuses on what is
transacted. Fourth, “individuals” brings the transacting partners to the
fore. Fifth, “digital platform operated by an organization” highlights the
importance of infrastructure in the sharing economy and the central
role of organizations in providing this infrastructure.
In what follows, we elaborate on these features. In addition, we
provide first ideas for comparing the sharing economy more system-
atically with established ways of doing business in a capitalist society,
which Cusumano (2014) called the “traditional” economy. Although
this is of course a stylized way to portray the sharing economy and the
traditional economy, we believe that it is a first step toward clarifying
the relationship between sharing and traditional economies and toward
bringing the previously neglected relevance of organizations to the fore.
The principal features are of course not exclusive to the sharing
economy. As Table 1 summarizes, the locus of transactions in both the
sharing economy and the traditional economy is the market. The
sharing economy is narrower in scope with respect to transaction focus,
transaction partners, transaction infrastructure, and infrastructure
provider. But the sharing economy allows for a broader range of
compensation forms than the traditional economy does.
For the discussion, we follow Sundararajan (2016), who says that
“sharing economy” is currently the most popular umbrella term to
describe the phenomenon we seek to clarify. We also refer to other
popular labels that have been brought forward to describe the sharing
economy, especially “collaborative economy” (Botsman and Rogers,
2010), “gig economy” (Friedman, 2014), and “platform economy”
(Kenney and Zysman, 2016).
First, various forms of compensation are used for transactions in the
sharing economy. In the traditional economy, the principal compensa-
Traditional economy
One (payment)
Markets
Production, distribution of, and access to resources
Organizations, individuals
Distribution channels between organizations and individuals, digital platforms
operated by organizations
J. Mair, G. Reischauer
tion form is monetary payment in return for receiving a good or service
(Williamson, 1985), whereas “the sharing economy spans the con-
tinuum between market economies and gift economies” (Sundararajan,
2016: 26). Paying explicit attention to this variety allows for a more
nuanced understanding of how transactions in the sharing economy
take place. As various authors have pointed out, the sharing economy
involves compensation forms such as “bartering, trading” (Belk, 2014:
1597), and gift giving (Schor and Fitzmaurice, 2015). For example,
Couchsurfing provides the infrastructure for individuals to stay in
homes without immediate compensation. Nevertheless, as Airbnb and
Uber illustrate, monetary payment is also widespread in the sharing
economy.
Second, the locus of transactions in the sharing economy is the
market. In other words, transactions take place in markets, “social
spaces where repeated exchanges occur between buyers and sellers
under a set of formal and informal rules governing relations between
competitors, suppliers, and customers” (Fligstein and Dauter, 2007:
113). This exchange can happen both online and offline. Moreover,
sharing economy markets are increasingly labeled according to the type
of resource shared (e.g., home-sharing market, ride-sharing market, or
item-sharing market). Consider the example of the ride-sharing market
in the U.S., in which organizations such as Uber, Lyft, and Via currently
operate. These organizations match individuals who seek rides with
others offering them and facilitate an exchange. Requesting a ride and
paying for it happens online, but the ride happens offline. Thus the
exchange takes place both online and offline. The ride-sharing market
has its own formal and informal rules, which lead to exchange patterns
different from, for example, the food-sharing market's.
Third, the redistribution of resources and the access to them are the
focus of transactions in the sharing economy. Shared resources include
material resources such as cars, food, clothing, or goods, and non-
material resources such as services, capital, or information (Belk,
2014). In contrast to the traditional economy, an important emphasis
in sharing economy markets rests on resources that are underused from
the point of view of the person who offers them (Schor and Fitzmaurice,
2015). Consider the example of the guest room that previously has been
used by friends or family, but is now also offered to strangers from
around the world. An additional aspect that distinguishes the sharing
economy from the traditional economy is the prioritization of access to
resources over the production of new ones. Redistribution of existing
resources has been highlighted by Botsman and Rogers (2010: 72f),
who argued that “a redistribution market encourages reusing and
reselling old items rather than throwing them out, and also significantly
reduces waste and resources that go along with new production”. A
focus on access to resources is also known in the traditional economy;
short-term rental services and car sharing services run by automobile
producers are prominent examples (Bardhi and Eckhardt, 2012). Yet, in
the sharing economy, resources define identity: “you are what you can
access” (Belk, 2014: 1598). This focus on quick access to resources
increasingly affects human resources as well. The possibility that
workers can be hired virtually on the spot and then immediately
released inspired the label “gig economy” (Friedman, 2014). A “gig” is a
short-term task or job that is typically conducted by a nearly instantly
supplied human resource. A prominent example is TaskRabbit, a
sharing economy organization that connects people who seek help for
everyday tasks such as moving or cleaning with providers.
Fourth, individuals are the transacting partners in the sharing
economy. People have varying motives for why they share – from
altruistic to pecuniary – and why they use shared resources (Bucher
et al., 2016; Hellwig et al., 2015; Lamberton and Rose, 2012;
Möhlmann, 2015; Piscicelli et al., 2015). Because the parties to the
transaction are considered as peers, some authors refer to the sharing
economy as the “peer-to-peer economy” (Schor and Fitzmaurice, 2015).
This feature distinguishes the sharing economy from the traditional
economy, where firms typically transact with individuals (Cusumano,
2014; Matzler et al., 2015). Sharing economy organizations such as
3
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
TaskRabbit instead connect a very large number of individuals around
the world with each other. Sundararajan (2016) recently introduced the
label “crowd-based capitalism” to capture this feature of the sharing
economy.
Fifth, in the sharing economy, transactions occur via digital platforms
operated by organizations. These digital platforms mediate transactions
by matching the supply side with the demand side (Armstrong, 2006).
The challenge for organizations running a digital platform is that “one
group's benefit from joining a platform depends on the size of the other
group that joins the platform” (Armstrong, 2006: 668). Digital plat-
forms integrate various technologies such as big data, new algorithms,
and cloud computing (Kenney and Zysman, 2016). Given the involve-
ment of individuals who do not know each other, on digital platforms
special attention is paid to technologies that foster trust-building
between users and providers, such as rankings and reviews
(Orlikowski and Scott, 2014), as well as technologies that facilitate
transactions and provide guidance in case of conflicts (Hartl et al.,
2016).
Digital platforms are of course also established in the traditional
economy. But in the sharing economy they operate as a substitute for
relationships between suppliers, producers, and customers that are
common in the traditional economy. Thus, in the sharing economy,
digital platforms can be considered as the main infrastructure. The label
“platform economy” (Kenney and Zysman, 2016) underscores the
relevance of digital platforms. Yet, although the emergence of low-cost
and small-scale production technologies such as additive manufacturing
may change the way organizations produce, digital platforms do not
simply replace organizations (Davis, 2016). Consider the example of
Airbnb. Although it has no hotel employees, Airbnb employs people
who run and refine its digital platform. In simple terms, we argue that
behind any digital platform there is a sharing economy organization
running and refining it. A sharing economy organization provides the
infrastructure that individuals use to share resources.
2.2. Specifying the dynamics of the sharing economy
As noted, we believe that studying the culturally rooted pluralism of
the forms and practices of sharing economy organizations provides the
key to capturing the dynamics of the sharing economy. But what exactly
do dynamics encompass? Summarizing recent theoretical discussions of
the sharing economy (Belk, 2014; Kostakis and Bauwens, 2014; Martin,
2016; Matzler et al., 2015; Sundararajan, 2016) and building on
insights from our ongoing empirical research (Reischauer and Mair,
2017), we emphasize three features – distinct processes and outcomes –
that characterize the dynamics of the sharing economy.
First, dynamics of the sharing economy involve processes of market
change. The traditional view of market change holds that it involves a
change of the identities and market positions of organizations and the
alteration of the underlying definition of a market (Fligstein and
Dauter, 2007). This view encompasses the notion that markets aim
for an equilibrium and assume linearity. Meyer et al. (2005) add to this
view and argue that market change processes involve complex adaptive
systems, self-organizing networks, and autocatalytic feedback. An
example of market change in the sharing economy is the change in
taxi markets triggered by the rise of Uber and Lyft.
Second, dynamics of the sharing economy may also include
processes of market emergence. Markets in a state of emergence are
populated by organizations that have not yet stabilized their patterns of
interaction. These situations offer strategic opportunities for both
incumbents and challengers (Fligstein, 2013). The home-sharing mar-
ket pioneered by Airbnb and the crowdfunding market shaped by
Kickstarter and Indiegogo are telling cases.
Third, dynamics can involve intended and unintended consequences
of organizations' behavior. As Merton (1936) famously claimed,
intended consequences are expected outcomes. Unintended conse-
quences, on the contrary, are outcomes that deviate from those foreseen
J. Mair, G. Reischauer
and intended. Consider the example of the claim that the rise of home-
sharing markets puts pressure on the long-term housing market in
urban areas. Still, although unintended consequences can have negative
outcomes, they are not inherently negative. For example, the increased
shared use of tools such as drills might ultimately lead to an increased
demand for more robust and high-quality drills.
2.3. Making the case for research on the sharing economy
The sharing economy challenges and tests boundaries related to
social and economic life, and therefore it warrants empirical and
theoretical scrutiny. We see at least three ways in which the sharing
economy recasts established categories used to describe economic and
social activity. First, it blurs boundaries between production and
consumption. Established theories typically assume that organizations
produce and individuals consume. In the sharing economy, however,
organizations do not produce resources; they provide the infrastructure
for individuals to access or share existing resources that they already
possess. In principle, in the sharing economy people can be suppliers or
consumers of resources – or both at the same time, a case that has been
labeled “prosumption” (Barnes and Mattsson, 2016). Extant manage-
ment theory and practice typically do not consider the ability of an
individual to produce on her own, rather than as part of an organiza-
tion. Thus, patterns of exchange and behavior in the sharing economy
seem to have significant implications for organizing, leading, and
managing human resources that produce or consume resources.
Second, the activities of sharing economy organizations require us
to rethink the distinction between full employment and casual labor. As
the label “gig economy” highlights, in the sharing economy, organiza-
tions can virtually switch work forces on and off (Friedman, 2014;
Sundararajan, 2016). Management scholars typically place people
working full-time at the core of their theoretical and empirical research.
Similarly, managers typically do not run firms based on a flexible
workforce. Although there have been shifts toward considering part-
time work as a possible new occupational reality, the implications of an
instant workforce for organization design, leadership, human resource
management, and accounting are not yet fully understood.
Third, the sharing economy defies the boundary between private
and public. In the sharing economy, individuals invite strangers into
their homes (home-sharing) and cars (ride-sharing), borrow money
from a large and unknown crowd (crowdfunding), and hire strangers to
take care of their loved ones (personal services sharing) (Sundararajan,
2016). Established management theory and practice implicitly assume
the exchange of resources to be economic activity in the public domain
and hardly consider the social aspects or private life dimensions of this
exchange. The implications of overlap with the private domain, and the
possible tensions that arise, remain to be explored.
A final and strong argument for more research rests on the
observation that the sharing economy seems to be pervasive – it
challenges established markets in new ways and spreads quickly across
regions. As the Wall Street Journal (2015) vividly proclaimed, “There's
an Uber for Everything Now”. That is, a number of organizations use
the basic idea of the sharing economy to disrupt markets in the
traditional economy. Established management theory has been mainly
concerned with how technological change affects markets. The perva-
sive and parallel spread of the sharing economy presents a new
dimension that is hard to explain with established concepts. Moreover,
the sharing economy is spreading rapidly around the globe. While
organizations such as Uber and Airbnb operate in a wide range of
nations and grow internationally, new sharing economy organizations
emerge and evolve regionally at a stunning pace. Put simply, in the
sharing economy, geographic expansion is just a fingertip away
(Sundararajan, 2016). The potential and instant nature of diffusion
and expansion challenges established management theories, especially
internationally oriented ones, which typically assume that entering a
new geographic market requires deep pockets and localized knowledge.
4
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
The argument that the sharing economy spreads rapidly across regions
does not imply that the sharing economy and sharing economy
organizations spread uniformly. On the contrary, we witness a cultu-
rally rooted pluralism of the form and practices of sharing economy
organizations.
3. Culturally rooted pluralism of forms and practices
Culture refers to taken-for-granted sets of meanings and rules that
shape how organizations behave (Beckert, 2010; Dequech, 2003; Zukin
and DiMaggio, 1990). Scholars have termed this influence “cultural
embeddedness”. In general, embeddedness, as introduced by Polanyi
(1957) and popularized by Granovetter (1985), highlights that eco-
nomic behavior both shapes the societal context that actors are part of
and is shaped by it. Scholars have developed different ideas about what
embeddedness means and distinguished between different types, one of
them cultural embeddedness (Zukin and DiMaggio, 1990).
Recent research has highlighted the relevance of culture for
individual behavior in the sharing economy (Schor et al., 2016). We
extend this thread and argue that a focus on culture is particularly
helpful for examining the pluralism of form and practices of sharing
economy organizations, and ultimately for capturing the dynamics of
the sharing economy. We display this culturally rooted pluralism with
examples from our ongoing empirical research on the sharing economy
(Reischauer and Mair, 2017) and existing studies of the sharing
economy. In doing so, we turn to examples of organizations that
operate in different economic systems. According to the literature on
the varieties of capitalism (Amable, 2003; Hall and Soskice, 2001), two
distinct ideal-type economic systems exist. Whereas organizations in
liberal market economies such as the U.S. and the U.K. coordinate via
hierarchies and market arrangements, organizations in coordinated
market economies such as Germany and France rely on nonmarket
relationships.
Attending to the pluralism of the form of sharing economy organiza-
tions accentuates that there is no such thing as “the” sharing economy
organization. An organizational form refers to “those characteristics of
an organization that identify it as a distinct entity and, at the same time,
classify it as a member of a group of similar organizations” (Romanelli,
1991: 81–82). We believe that culture shapes the pluralism of organiza-
tional forms in at least two respects. The first concerns their orientation
(Schor and Fitzmaurice, 2015): sharing economy organizations differ
with respect to whether they have a for-profit or a non-profit orienta-
tion. The U.S., for example, hosts a wide range of for-profit organiza-
tions (Schor and Fitzmaurice, 2015). Germany, on the other hand, hosts
several sharing economy organizations that operate on a non-profit
basis. Some of them, such as Maschinenring, a national association in
which farmers share resources such as machinery, were founded
centuries ago (Oberg et al., 2017). Culture, understood as taken-for-
granted meanings and rules, seems to shape what are considered as
appropriate ways to operate a sharing economy organization. Whereas
in the U.S. it is accepted that a sharing economy organization will
generate a profit, in Germany seeking profit seems less appropriate.
Second, culture might be helpful for explaining different organiza-
tional structures in the sharing economy. Some organizations adopt
structures akin to firms in the traditional economy, but others rely on
alternatives. Consider U.S.-based sharing economy organizations such
as Airbnb and Uber: critics claim (Martin, 2016) that they operate like
firms in the traditional economy. In contrast, sharing economy organi-
zations in Germany like Fairmondo, an organization in the item-sharing
market, have a structure similar to that of cooperatives. Similarly,
foodsharing (sic!), a German organization in the food-sharing market
that redistributes edible but unsalable food free of charge, is structured
according to the requirements of an association. Culture seems to affect
these choices: sharing economy organizations follow rule-like prescrip-
tions prevalent in their cultural context and mimic prevalent expecta-
tions in their economic systems.
J. Mair, G. Reischauer
Culture also allows us to better understand the pluralism of the
practices of sharing economy organizations. An organizational practice
refers to “an organization's routine use of knowledge for conducting a
particular function” (Kostova and Roth, 2002: 216), such as customer
relationship management, sales, or production. In our research
(Reischauer and Mair, 2017), we have observed pluralism reflected in
the practices of sharing economy organizations in various ways. Two
examples illustrate them. First, nonmarket strategies targeted at
organizations such as governments and interest groups (Baron, 1995)
seem to vary considerably in their scope. Consider the initiative “Airbnb
Citizen” recently launched by Airbnb, which “promotes home sharing's
potential to help solve many of the economic, environmental and social
challenges we face today” (Airbnb Citizen, 2016). This initiative goes
beyond marketing the services of Airbnb and promotes home-sharing
globally by emphasizing its positive effects on society. Another example
of a nonmarket strategy that exemplifies plural practices is what could
be labeled “collective lobbying for sharing”. In February 2016, the
European Collaborative Economy Industry issued an open letter to the
Netherlands Presidency of the Council of the European Union urging
the European Union to ensure that local and national laws do not
hamper the development of the sharing economy. This consortium
consists of organizations from sharing economy markets that are based
especially in the U.S. and the U.K. Another example of plural practices
is OuiShare, a France-based social movement that Sundararajan (2016:
24) described as an “influential arbiter in the vibrant marketplace of
ideas about crowd-based capitalism”, which advocates a vision for a
collaborative economy. Likewise, but focused on a single country, the
nationwide trade body Sharing Economy U.K., with members such as
Airbnb and TaskRabbit, aims to develop the sharing economy in the
U.K. into a global role model. In a similar vein, the Dutch sharing
economy interest group ShareNL partnered with the municipal govern-
ment of Amsterdam to promote the sharing economy. Culture seems to
be a factor, as nonmarket strategies like these seem to be more likely
deployed by organizations based in in liberal market economies.
Second, sharing economy organizations deploy plural practices to
integrate users of their digital platforms. For example, The Food
Assembly allows selected users to assume managerial responsibilities.
In return for coordinating and fostering transactions between farmers
and consumers, these users receive monetary compensation (Acquier
et al., 2017). This practice stands in contrast to U.S.-based sharing
economy organizations such as Airbnb and Uber, which do not grant
such freedom. Culture seems to be in play here, because taken-for-
granted assumptions differ about how much freedom should be granted
to individuals.
4. Institutional perspectives
4.1. Institutional theory: specifying the influence of culture
How can we use existing theories to ground these insights and
further develop theory? We believe that institutional theory, with its
explicit and long-standing attention to culture (Dobbin, 1994; Scott,
2014; Thornton et al., 2012; Weber and Dacin, 2011), offers a
promising theoretical domain for studying the pluralism of forms and
practices of sharing economy organizations in order to capture the
dynamics of the sharing economy. According to this conception, culture
shapes institutions, referring to “rules and shared meanings […] that
define social relationships, help define who occupies what position in
those relationships and guide interaction by giving actors cognitive
frames or sets of meanings to interpret the behavior of others”
(Fligstein, 2001: 108). Scholars have emphasized regulative, normative,
and cognitive elements of institutions (Scott, 2014) that shape the
behavior of organizations by prescribing what is appropriate and
providing templates for practices. Moreover, institutions also shape
markets as they enable and foster exchange (Campbell and Lindberg,
1990).
5
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
A critical concept in institutional theory for understanding how
pluralism relates to dynamics is legitimacy. Legitimacy is defined as “a
generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are
socially desirable, proper or appropriate within some socially con-
structed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions” (Suchman,
1995: 574). Legitimacy is conferred by others and is a prerequisite for
organizations to act, whereas legitimation is the process whereby
organizations aim to attain or maintain their legitimacy (Suchman,
1995). For example, taxicabs have been considered a legitimate means
of individual transportation. With the rise of ride-sharing markets, an
alternative and by now also legitimate method of individual transporta-
tion has emerged.
Scholars studying organizations view legitimacy as a relational
concept that reflects the exchange between organizations and society.
Deephouse and Suchman (2008) distinguish among three sources of
legitimacy. First, legitimacy is conveyed by organizations in the public
domain, such as government agencies or interest groups. Germany, for
example, was quick to issue a nationwide restriction on ride-sharing,
with the effect of withholding legitimacy from Uber and its kin. In the
U.S., in contrast, ride-sharing only recently encountered push-back at a
regional level, when certain types of ride-sharing were banned in the
city of Austin, Texas. Another recent example of a change of legitimacy
induced by public organizations is new legislation restricting home-
sharing in San Francisco, California. Second, mass media also assess and
create legitimacy. Media coverage is a marker of an organization's
legitimacy. Media attention also affects how other organizations assess
the legitimacy of the organization and possibly question it. Extensive
press coverage of Austin's attempt to tighten safety measures for ride-
sharing organizations such as Uber and Lyft, for instance, apparently
affected the ballot outcome. The third source of legitimacy derives from
an organization's relationship with other organizations that convey
legitimacy in a similar or different domain. Examples of this kind of
legitimation are the partnerships of Airbnb with American Express and
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
To summarize, institutional theory offers researchers a solid theo-
retical foundation to study the influence of culture, especially by
pointing toward legitimacy as a vital explanatory factor for the
behavior of organizations and resulting dynamics. Within institutional
theory, this insight has been approached from different viewpoints. In
what follows, we outline two closely connected but distinctive perspec-
tives (Zilber, 2013): institutional complexity and institutional work. We
consider these perspectives particularly useful for two reasons: first,
they are especially suited to study of the pluralism of organizational
forms and practices in the sharing economy. Whereas the institutional
complexity perspective enables the investigation of plural organiza-
tional forms, the institutional work perspective enables scholars to
explore the pluralism of practices. Second, both perspectives share the
idea of “embedded agency” (Battilana and D'Aunno, 2009), meaning
that organizations are neither fully constrained nor fully free in what
they do. The institutional complexity perspective tends to highlight
how organizations respond to institutions. In contrast, the institutional
work perspective looks at how organizations attempt to shape institu-
tions.
4.2. Institutional complexity: the pluralism of organizations
The institutional complexity perspective highlights an organiza-
tion's exposure to multiple and coexisting institutional logics that
produce competing demands (Greenwood et al., 2011). Introduced by
Friedland and Alford (1991), the concept of institutional logics refers to
“a set of material practices and symbolic constructions” (Friedland and
Alford, 1991: 248) that structure how organizations behave and are
designed. Institutional logics are part of the interinstitutional system of
a society (Friedland and Alford, 1991). As Thornton et al. (2012)
specify, this interinstitutional system consists of the ideal-type logics
market: family, religion, profession, economic organization, state, and
J. Mair, G. Reischauer
community. Empirically, however, logics at play are real-types - lived,
complex and nested. They can involve logics such as the proenviron-
mental logic that links community with a high intrinsic value to
environmental goods (Lee and Lounsbury, 2015). Each logic refers to
a specific set of practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules.
Legitimacy is established within the order a logic provides (Suddaby
and Royston, 2005). For example, the legitimacy of a firm in the
traditional economy is usually based on its market position (Thornton
et al., 2012).
More recently, researchers have shown that multiple institutional
logics can coexist and shape dynamics between organizations (Mair and
Hehenberger, 2014). Goodrick and Reay (2011) offer three images for
understanding the interplay among different and often competing
logics. The first image highlights that one logic dominates and others
are secondary or subordinate to it. For example, one might suspect that
for Uber and Airbnb, the dominant guide of their behavior is the
commercial logic. Other logics, such as a public good provision, in the
case of Uber, or a community logic, in the case of Airbnb, may represent
secondary logics. A second image consists of multiple logics that are
“battling with each other for supremacy until ultimately one logic wins
out—becoming the new dominant institutional logic for a period of
time” (Goodrick and Reay, 2011: 376). As a study by Smink et al.
(2015) of a problem-laden collaboration between biomethane produ-
cers and operators of a gas network showed, such a battle between
logics hampers the cooperation between organizations.Goodrick and
Reay's third image portrays the relationship between logics as con-
tingent on the type of organization and geographical regions. Studies by
Greenwood et al. (2010) on the role of family ownership and regional
orientation in Spanish organizations and by Hafsi and Hu (2016) on
how the entry of Western antidepressants altered the market for
traditional Chinese antidepressants offer illustrations for this image.
To summarize, the dedicated focus on how multiple logics compete or
coexist matters for organizations. This makes the institutional complex-
ity perspective a promising theoretical frame to analyze the pluralism of
the forms organizations in the sharing economy take on.
Organizations do experience institutional complexity differently.
Early research focused on the sheer number of logics that an organiza-
tion experiences or the degree of incompatibility between logics
(Greenwood et al., 2011); recent studies go beyond. Raynard (2016)
urged scholars to pay attention to the degree of influence that three
factors have on how organizations experience institutional complexity.
The first factor, incompatibility, denotes the struggle to combine
prescriptions of multiple logics. Consider the example of a local non-
profit organization in the food-sharing market that adheres to a
community logic, yet intends to distribute food for a global food
producer in the traditional economy. The second factor, prioritization,
refers to the situation where there is no market-wide agreement on
which logics are prioritized. For example, anecdotal evidence suggests
that in the German food-sharing market, organizations do not prioritize
a commercial or a community logic—both seem to coexist and are
considered to be legitimate. The third factor is jurisdictional overlap,
denoting situations “where multiple logics claim authority over the
same jurisdictional spaces” (Raynard, 2016: 315). Sharing economy
markets represent such situations. Consider a situation where city
government, regional government, and national government all aim
to regulate a sharing market in different ways.
Institutional complexity per se is not problematic. A number of
studies have portrayed institutional complexity as a challenge for
organizations (Greenwood et al., 2011), but others have emphasized
opportunities (Kraatz and Block, 2008). A promising way to shed light
on this issue is to study empirically how organizations respond to
institutional complexity. How organizations alter structures over time
as they face multiple logics has received growing attention. For
example, Schildt and Perkmann (2017) propose that organizations
respond by creating their own idiosyncratic organizational settlements,
or a “specific configuration of structural and cognitive elements that an
6
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
organization develops to accommodate or productively leverage multi-
ple institutional logics and to accomplish relative stability in the face of
institutional complexity” (Schildt and Perkmann, 2017: 140). Structural
elements of an organizational settlement highlight that tasks and roles
that are important for one logic are allocated to different units within
an organization. Cognitive elements refer to the development of shared
and organization-wide interpretation frames that are developed for
each logic and thereby provide a “how to” to deal with the demands of
a logic. The concept of organizational settlements exemplifies the
relevance of considering the interplay between formal and informal
organizational structure. Likewise, Ramus et al. (forthcoming) show
that how informal collaboration mechanisms, such as meetings, and
formalization mechanisms, such as guidebooks, are combined to deal
productively with multiple logics is contingent on the dominant logic at
the time of an organization's foundation.
4.3. Institutional work: The pluralism of practices
We now turn to the institutional work perspective (Lawrence and
Suddaby, 2006). Stimulating important debates within institutional
theory over the last decade, this perspective has been applied more
recently to study of the social effects of technology (Blanc and Huault,
2014; Fuenfschilling and Truffer, 2016), which – given the relevance of
digital platforms – makes it espcially suitable for sharing economy
research. Institutional work refers to “the purposive action of indivi-
duals and organizations aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting
institutions” (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006: 215). Institutional work
complements the institutional complexity perspective: whereas institu-
tional complexity is more concerned with how institutions affect
organizations, institutional work is more concerned with how organiza-
tions and their members affect institutions (Zilber, 2013). Research on
institutional work also provides a nuanced perspective on dynamics as
it highlights the theoretical and empirical importance of how organiza-
tions strive “to cope with, keep up with, shore up, tear down, tinker
with, transform, or create anew the institutional structures within
which they live, work, and play, and which give them their roles,
relationships, resources, and routines” (Lawrence et al., 2011: 53).
Creating, maintaining, and disrupting are types to classify the
various practices organizations can employ when directing institutions
according to their goals. These types also provide a conceptual frame
for understanding how organizations can actively try to achieve
legitimacy (Lawrence et al., 2009) and how organizations combine or
engage practices from multiple types over their life span (Zietsma and
Lawrence, 2010). In the following section, we elaborate on each type.
Our objective is to provide a basic understanding of this perspective and
to enable scholars to identify practices of institutional work as they
relate to sharing economy organizations and their efforts to shape
institutions.
Creating institutions refers to practices that establish and legitima-
tize a new institution (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). An example of a
new institution related to the sharing economy is using an app on a
mobile phone to redistribute and gain access to resources. Smartphone
apps have nearly replaced the previous institution: using a telephone to
dial a number. Another example is the new norm that allows complete
strangers live in one's home, which underpins the legitimacy of
organizations in home-sharing markets.
Practices that maintain institutions provide insights about why,
despite attempts to change institutions, original meanings prevail. The
taken-for-granted character of institutions conveys the idea that
institutions are somehow self-sustained, but even powerful ones such
as democracy demand activity to stay stable and endure (Lawrence and
Suddaby, 2006). Consider the example of the effort by the governing
authorities in Berlin – the German capital – to adjust the housing laws
to counter the effects of a booming home-sharing market. This
adjustment should ensure that the laws remain effective to maintain
the desired goal of providing housing space for an extended period.
J. Mair, G. Reischauer
Disrupting institutions involves practices that aim to change exist-
ing institutions (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). Studying how Intel
coped with changes of institutional logics, Gawer and Phillips (2013)
found that the types of institutional work that Intel used were an
important source of pressure to change the market logic the way Intel
wanted. Moreover, Mena and Suddaby (2016) described how a private
regulatory initiative transformed the ideals it advocated – fair working
conditions – into a more abstract model – a code of conduct for working
conditions – to foster the diffusion of these ideals and convince other
organizations to follow them. We expect similar practices constituting
institutional work in the sharing economy. Consider the example of
crowdfunding, which demanded the effort of several organizations in
various nations to become recognized as a legitimate form of financing.
Another example is the activities of interest groups, such as the
European Collaborative Economy Industry, Sharing Economy U.K.,
and OuiShare, that aim to change the institutionalized way of doing
business to one based on a vision of the sharing economy.
Besides describing what organizations do to create, maintain, and
change institutions, discussing what motivates organizations to engage
in institutional work is important. The main driving force is a wish to
become or stay legitimate (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). In addition,
recent studies point toward an organization's desire to gain power as a
motive for institutional work (Lawrence, 2008; Martí and Fernández,
2013). Organizations exert power on institutions especially through
influence. Influence refers to practices used to persuade another
organization to do something that it would not otherwise do and
include negotiation, rational persuasion, ingratiation, or moral suasion
(Lawrence, 2008). Consider lobbying attempts of sharing economy
organizations or the campaign Airbnb Citizen, which portrays home-
sharing as a means to tackle societal challenges.
Yet another motive for organizations to engage in institutional work
is to maintain or change the boundaries of their market. Investigating a
conflict on harvesting practices and decision authority in the British
Columbia coastal forest industry, Zietsma and Lawrence (2010) found
that the practices used to target and challenge the boundaries depended
on the stage of institutional stability and change of this industry.
Focusing on how institutional work defines market boundaries is
particularly interesting, as organizations within a sharing economy
market, such as ride-sharing, and organizations in the traditional
economy are threatened by a sharing economy market, such as the
taxi market.
5. An agenda for institutional research to capture the dynamics of
the sharing economy
We suggested that scholars apply the perspectives of institutional
complexity and institutional work to study the pluralism of forms and
practices of sharing economy organizations to capture dynamics (i.e.,
market change, market emergence, and intended and unintended
consequences). We now propose an agenda for engaging these perspec-
tives more systematically. Following established paths of institutional
analysis discussed by Scott (2014), we elaborate on three levels of
analysis as especially promising: organization, field, and inter-field. As
summarized in Table 2, for each level we discuss several possible
directions.
Before doing so, we briefly elaborate on how we use the term field in
this paper. A field refers to the “population of actors that constitute a
social arena by orienting their actions toward each other” (Beckert,
2010: 609). The concept emphasizes that organizations that are not part
of a market are also important for understanding the behavior of
organizations in the market (Beckert, 2010; Fligstein, 1996, 2013). For
the sharing economy, a field may include sharing economy organiza-
tions in a specific market (e.g., Uber and its competitors, such as Via
and Lyft, for the ride-sharing market), organizations operating in a
related market in the traditional economy (e.g., car rental and car
producer firms for the ride-sharing market), local government, interest
7
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
groups, and unions. Studying fields is appropriate “when new industry
segments proliferate and when the boundaries around existing indus-
tries can shift from permeable to nonexistent” (Davis and Marquis,
2005: 337). For this reason, we consider the concept particularly
relevant for studying the sharing economy. In what follows, we use
the notion of market when referring to organizations of a certain sharing
market such as ride-sharing. We refer to fields instead of markets if the
objective is to capture the breadth of actors and activity of a market
beyond sharing economy organizations. In those cases we refer to, for
example, the ride-sharing field instead of the ride-sharing market.
5.1. Directions for organization-level studies
Organization-level studies conducted by institutional scholars typi-
cally investigate how a single organization responds to institutions or
attempts to change them (Scott, 2014).
From an institutional complexity perspective, a first promising
avenue is to examine the responses of a sharing economy organization
to institutional complexity. Given that sharing economy organizations
compete not only with each other but also with organizations in the
traditional economy, these organizations are likely to face high levels of
institutional complexity. Research uncovering responses to such com-
plexity could complement existing work. Furthermore, studies could
more explicitly assess the consequences of their responses. Such
investigations could uncover a gap between intended and unintended
consequences and how the organization evaluated this gap, positively
or negatively. Moreover, a comparative study of sharing economy
organizations could reveal interesting similarities and differences in
responses to complexity and uncover factors that explain why responses
differed.
From an institutional work perspective, scholars could take stock of
the institutional work employed by sharing economy organizations.
Studying sharing economy organizations that apply novel practices or
rely on old ones to affect institutions – and understanding why and with
what consequences – will broaden the repertoire of institutional work
currently discussed in the literature. Examining institutional work
conducted by sharing economy organizations that operate worldwide
could be particularly interesting for building bridges between research
on institutional work, nonmarket strategies, and international business.
Moreover, probing the underlying motivation of sharing economy
organizations engaging in institutional work will help researchers
understand why and under what conditions organizations decide to
do institutional work. An additional, potentially fruitful direction for
research is the intended and unintended consequences of institutional
work by sharing economy organizations. For example, researchers
could gain more insight into the outcomes of the promotion of more
professional sharing (i.e., attempts of sharing economy organizations to
motivate their users to share their resources more systematically). In
addition, researchers could take a comparative approach to ask how
and why institutional work varies. This would again involve exploring
contingency factors.
5.2. Directions for field-level studies
As we said at the beginning of this article, a field-level analysis
centers on the interactions and exchanges between organizations that
researchers consider a population. Determining which organizations
belong to a specific population or a field depends on the research scope
and the analytical focus (Fligstein, 2001). For the sharing economy, a
promising departure would be first to identify a group of sharing
economy organizations in a certain market, such as ride-sharing, that
interact with each other and, in a second step, which non-sharing
economy organizations are important for this group.
Leveraging the institutional complexity perspective, scholars could
investigate which institutional logics dominate or coexist in a field and
why. For example, a sharing economy field might be dominated by a
J. Mair, G. Reischauer
Table 2
A research agenda for institutional studies to capture the dynamics of the sharing economy.
Level of analysis Institutional complexity perspective
Organization • How do sharing economy organizations respond to institutional
complexity?
• What are the intended and unintended consequences of responses?
• How and why do responses differ across organizations?
Field • Which logics dominate or coexist in a field, why, and with which
intended and unintended consequences?
• How do logics of a field develop over time, with which intended and
unintended consequences?
• How and why do fields differ?
Inter-field • What is the link between institutional change and logic change in
interrelated fields?
• How do fields in the sharing economy relate to fields in the
traditional economy?
• How do interrelated fields evolve and why?
• How do fields emerge and why?
commercial logic, whereas others are prone to the community logic, or
the commercial logic and the community logic might coexist in a field.
Asking why may uncover the role of field-level contingency factors. As a
closely related question, it seems fruitful to scrutinize the intended and
unintended consequences of both logic dominance and logic coexis-
tence. Consider the example of houses that are bought for the exclusive
purpose of home-sharing and thereby are no longer available for long-
term housing – an unintended consequence that might be explained
with the dominance of the commercial logic. Another interesting
avenue to follow is to study how patterns of logics in a field develop
over time (van Gestel and Hillebrand, 2011) and what consequences go
along with this development. Scholars could further ask how and why
fields differ regarding the reproduction, diffusion, or decline of existing
or emerging institutions (Van de Ven and Hargrave, 2004). For
example, swapping might emerge as a legitimate form of compensation
in sharing ecconomy markets that currently do not embrace this form.
Such studies would be helpful to identify the characteristics of a sharing
economy market in which commercial logics dominate at the expense
of sharing that is beneficial to society – a question that seems central to
current debates about a possible negative impact of the sharing
economy (Martin, 2016).
Scholars building on the institutional work perspective could search
for patterns in institutional work depending on the characteristics of a
field. For example, markets such as ride-sharing with relatively large
international players may differ – or not – from locally oriented markets
such as food-sharing in how they shape institutions and exchange
patterns with non-sharing economy organizations. Another interesting
direction would be to find patterns of institutional work of sharing
economy organizations within a field. Likewise, future studies could
examine why, how, and with what consequences interest groups in the
sharing economy such as OuiShare engage in institutional work to
shape the development of a field. The institutional work of organiza-
tions in the traditional economy would also be an interesting object of
inquiry. Or scholars could study the collective effort of both sharing
economy organizations and non-sharing economy organizations to
shape institutions. For example, the rising political pressure on several
home-sharing markets that affects Airbnb and Wimdu, an Airbnb
competitor, may require them to partner in order to push back
collaboratively at several national fronts. Such an inquiry could help
to identify contingency factors underpinning this effort.
5.3. Directions for inter-field-level studies
Inter-field-level studies center on how fields are connected and what
effects these connections trigger (Fligstein, 2001; Furnari, 2016). This
kind of macro-level analysis seems especially relevant because the
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
Institutional work perspective
• What (new) institutional work is used?
• What motivates institutional work?
• What are the intended and unintended consequences of an organization's
institutional work?
• How and why does institutional work differ across organizations?
• How and why is institutional work related to the state of a field?
• How and why do sharing economy organizations or non-sharing economy
organizations shape the development of a field?
• How and why do sharing economy organizations or non-sharing economy
organizations work institutions together?
• What
work?
are the intended and unintended consequences of inter-field institutional
• What triggers inter-field institutional work?
• How do interrelated fields evolve and why?
• How do fields emerge and why?
“same technology [for digital platforms] will be implemented in
different ways depending on surrounding institutions” (Davis, 2016:
139), thereby attaining comparative aspects of institutional change
(Van de Ven and Hargrave, 2004). Inter-field-level studies allow
scholars to uncover processes of change and emergence as well as
consequences not only for the studied fields but also for society more
generally. The broader scope of inter-field-level studies resonates with
and can inform the comparative macro-analysis approach applied by
scholars studying varieties of capitalism (Amable, 2003; Hall and
Soskice, 2001).
Applying an institutional complexity perspective might help “to
understand the link between logics and institutional change and,
conversely, to understand how and when logics shift” (Gawer and
Phillips, 2013: 1038). Future studies on the sharing economy could
investigate the institutionalization of new ways of thinking and
behaving – such as giving strangers access to one's resources – and
address their economic and societal implications. Another interesting
research direction could be the relationships between sharing economy
fields and fields associated with the traditional economy. The former
might try to mimic structures and rules of the latter or vice versa.
Consider the automotive field, which, as examples such as Zipcar and
RideNow illustrate, has incorporated elements of ride-sharing into its
business models. Similarly, organizations in fields in the traditional
economy, such as the hotel business, might strive to remain differ-
entiated from sharing economy fields such as home-sharing. Such
studies would be helpful to uncover contingency factors that explain
why logics from one field are mimicked or not. They are also helpful to
shed new light on competitive dynamics between fields in the sharing
economy and across fields in the traditional and the sharing economy.
Linking the study of institutional complexity and competitive dynamics
has recently been identified as one of the most promising areas for
future empirical research in management (Ocasio and Radoynovska,
2016). Moreover, longitudinal inter-field studies may allow us to
understand long-term developments such as the co-evolution of sharing
economy fields. Such studies might reveal how dominant logics trigger
certain stages of a field's evolution, such as the increased commercia-
lization of sharing. Pursing such a research direction would also involve
examining the effect of specific logics on why, how, and in what
direction a market changes.
Research from an institutional complexity perspective could foster
our understanding of how fields emerge. For example, the combination
of the commercial logic, the community logic, and the pro-environ-
mental logic may result in a new sharing economy market that is
populated by organizations aiming to meet the demands of all these
logics. The institutional work perspective is particularly helpful to study
the intended and unintended consequences of institutional work
J. Mair, G. Reischauer
associated with inter-field efforts. For example, sharing economy
organizations from different markets may join forces to create or alter
institutions in several countries at the same time; it seems highly
interesting to specify the outcomes of such an effort. Future studies
could also specify why organizations from different sharing economy
markets start institutional work and why non-sharing economy organi-
zations engage in it. Furthermore, researchers could study the evolution
of interrelated sharing economy fields. This work could involve
unpacking the nature of institutional work affecting shifts in direction.
For example, the food-sharing and item-sharing market might develop
so that they meet idealistic objectives such as a sustainable economy or
an economy where cooperative ownership of organizations is preferred
to private ownership. Other markets might develop in ways such that
result in organizations becoming similar to those in the traditional
economy. Such a development might also include different institutional
work, depending on whether the sharing economy market is established
or nascent and on the types of non-sharing economy organizations
involved. An additional aspect to be investigated includes the institu-
tional work involved in facilitating relationships between sharing
economy organizations across fields. This type of investigation would
help to identify contingency factors and develop a better understanding
of what drives well-functioning inter-field-relationships. Finally, re-
search on institutional work could be helpful for understanding how the
exchange between organizations in interrelated sharing economy
markets and competition among them, or exchange between sharing
economy organizations and traditional organizations, can give rise to a
new field. What are the contingency factors for this field emergence?
One might look at organizations in the ride-sharing and item-sharing
market that join forces to change legal rules and thereby create the
opportunity for a new sharing economy market.
6. Conclusion
We hope to raise interest in theoretically and empirically relevant
research on sharing economy organizations. We have clarified what the
sharing economy is and why it is of interest for scholarly inquiry. We
chose to focus on institutional theory because of the theoretical
relevance of the cultural embeddedness metaphor. Culture, however,
is only one type of embeddedness (Beckert, 2010; Zukin and DiMaggio,
1990). Another prominent one is embeddedness in networks, which
highlights the role of relationships between organizations or individuals
and the overall structure of these relationships (Granovetter, 1985). A
further important type is political embeddedness. This type focuses on
the role of political processes by considering the emergence and
stabilization of markets as part of state building and by highlighting
that the behavior of organizations reflects struggles to control a market
(Fligstein, 1996).
Leveraging the analytical force of these embeddedness types may
provide further avenues for strengthening our understanding of the
sharing economy. More specifically, perspectives engaging the meta-
phor of cultural embeddedness and using other types of embeddedness
will shed new light on the dynamics of the sharing economy and help it
to reach the next stage as a field of scientific inquiry. Studying the
sharing economy gives scholars in various research camps the oppor-
tunity to unpack and make sense of an inspiring and complex
phenomenon and thereby to advance and refine existing theory.
Acknowledgments
In the spirit of the sharing economy, both authors shared the work
and contributed equally. This research was funded by the German
Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Grant Number
01UT1408C).
9
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
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Johanna Mair is a professor of organization, strategy and leadership at the Hertie School
of Governance in Berlin. She is also a distinguished fellow at the Stanford Center on
Philanthropy and Civil Society and co-leads the Social Innovation and Change Initiative at
the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research focuses on how organizational and institu-
tional arrangements affect social and economic development, and the role of innovation
in this process. She received her PhD from INSEAD.
Georg Reischauer is a local project manager and research associate at the Hertie School
of Governance in Berlin. His research focuses on the organization and management of
collaborative innovation in high-technology and institutionally complex settings.