Amd 2016 0164

Academy of Management Discoveries
How Organizations Strategically Govern Online

Communities: Lessons from the Sharing Economy
Journal: Academy of Management Discoveries
Manuscript ID AMD-2016-0164.R2
Manuscript Type: Special Issue: Sharing Economy
Organization and management theory (General) < Organization and

Management Theory < Topic Areas, Virtual teams, virtual work, and virtual
organizations < Organizational Communication and Information Systems <
Topic Areas, Organizational communication and information systems
Keywords: (General) < Organizational Communication and Information Systems <
Topic Areas, Qualitative orientation (General) < Qualitative Orientation <
Research Methods, Case < Qualitative Orientation < Research Methods,
Multisided Platforms < Strategy Content, Value Creation, Capture, and
Appropriation < Strategy Content
For organizations in the sharing economy, the online communities they

host, where users interact with each other, are core to value creation. Little
is known, however, about the organizational practices used to govern these
online communities – to encourage participation and to direct, coordinate,
and control interactions strategically. We address this gap with a
comparative case study in the Berlin sharing economy and identify three
governance practices. Scoping community boundaries encourages
participation by demarcating the perimeters of interaction and defining the
online community as a distinct social space; nudging social relations
Abstract: encourages participation by providing stimuli for interaction; and steering
users exerts a form of social control over interactions. We discovered that
organizations rely on both online and offline technologies to govern.
Building on these findings, we develop a framework that helps to unpack
why organizations use governance practices differently and how these
practices relate to the value-creation potential of organizations. Our study
highlights the dual role of organizations in the sharing economy as curators
and guardians of online communities and displays the potential of sharing
economy research to enhance knowledge about value creation, online
communities, and organizational governance.
Page 1 of 57 Academy of Management Discoveries
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3 HOW ORGANIZATIONS STRATEGICALLY GOVERN ONLINE
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5 COMMUNITIES: LESSONS FROM THE SHARING ECONOMY
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10 GEORG REISCHAUER *
11 Hertie School of Governance
12 Friedrichstrasse 180
13 10117 Berlin
14 Germany
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Tel: +49 30259219 156
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e-mail: reischauer@hertie-school.org
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20 JOHANNA MAIR
21 Hertie School of Governance
22 Friedrichstrasse 180
23 10117 Berlin
24 Germany
25 Tel: +49 30 259219 329
26 e-mail: mair@hertie-school.org
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49 * In the spirit of the sharing economy, both authors shared the work and contributed equally.
50 Names are listed in reversed alphabetical order.
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53 Acknowledgements: We would like to thank the guest editor Tomi Laamanen and two
54 anonymous reviewers who provided exceptional guidance. This research was funded by the
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German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Grant Number 01UT1408C).
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Academy of Management Discoveries Page 2 of 57
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3 HOW ORGANIZATIONS STRATEGICALLY GOVERN ONLINE
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5 COMMUNITIES: LESSONS FROM THE SHARING ECONOMY
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10 Abstract
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12 For organizations in the sharing economy, the online communities they host, where users
13 interact with each other, are core to value creation. Little is known, however, about the
14 organizational practices used to govern these online communities – to encourage participation
15 and to direct, coordinate, and control interactions strategically. We address this gap with a
16 comparative case study in the Berlin sharing economy and identify three governance
17 practices. Scoping community boundaries encourages participation by demarcating the
18 perimeters of interaction and defining the online community as a distinct social space;
19 nudging social relations encourages participation by providing stimuli for interaction; and
20 steering users exerts a form of social control over interactions. We discovered that
21 organizations rely on both online and offline technologies to govern. Building on these
22
findings, we develop a framework that helps to unpack why organizations use governance
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24
practices differently and how these practices relate to the value-creation potential of
25 organizations. Our study highlights the dual role of organizations in the sharing economy as
26 curators and guardians of online communities and displays the potential of sharing economy
27 research to enhance knowledge about value creation, online communities, and organizational
28 governance.
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Keywords
32 sharing economy; online community; governance; organizational practice; value creation;
33 strategy; platform
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3 INTRODUCTION
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5 We are currently witnessing the rapid rise of the sharing economy. A recent report of
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7 the Brookings Institute estimates that the sharing economy will grow from 14 billion USD in
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9 2014 to 335 billion USD by 2025 and predicts that it will become a major part of the global
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11
economy (Yaraghi & Ravi, 2017). The sharing economy represents a social-relations-based
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14 economy driven by information and communication technologies, with a focus on the
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16 distribution of existing products and services rather than on the production of new goods and
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18 services (Albinsson & Perera, 2012; Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015). Management scholars have
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20 just begun to examine how organizations in the sharing economy operate (Kane &
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22 Ransbotham, 2016; Mair & Reischauer, 2017) and with what consequences (Reischauer &
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Mair, forthcoming; Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015), but there is increased awareness that the
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27 sharing economy is an important setting for management research and an opportunity to recast
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29 existing theories.
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31 Paralleling the embryonic stage of development of the sharing economy (Barnes &
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33 Mattsson, 2016), concepts and definitions are still evolving (see Acquier, Daudigeos, &
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35 Pinkse, 2017 for a recent review). Nevertheless, there is growing consensus about three
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37 critical features of the sharing economy that expose its value creation logic. First,
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organizations in the sharing economy provide access to goods and services offered and
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42 demanded by individuals who are not formally related to the organization. Second,
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44 organizations in the sharing economy operate a platform based on information and
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46 communication technologies to facilitate exchanges. Third, organizations in the sharing
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48 economy host online communities, understood as the sum of individuals who interact over the
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50 platform operated by the organization. Heterogeneous organizations, ranging from globally
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present companies like Uber and Airbnb to locally acting organizations such as the Germany-
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55 based organization Foodsharing, transact in the sharing economy. Although objectives, legal
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57 mandates, and moral standards of organizations inhabiting the sharing economy vary, these
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3 three features highlight the strategic importance of online communities. Online communities
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5 are at the core of how sharing economy organizations create value for themselves and for the
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7 users of the communities they host. Consider the example of Uber: Without individuals of its
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9 hosted online community offering rides with their cars and other individuals demanding them,
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Uber’s survival would be threatened.
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14 Previous research emphasized that organizations host an online community to have
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16 access to inputs that are beneficial for value creation (Ceccagnoli, Forman, Huang, & Wu,
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18 2012; Faraj, Jarvenpaa, & Majchrzak, 2011; Faraj, von Krogh, Monteiro, & Lakhani, 2016;
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20 West & O'Mahony, 2008). More specifically, an organization thinks of the online community
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22 it hosts as a complementary resource that must be combined with internal resources to create
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value for its customers (Barrett, Oborn, & Orlikowski, 2016; Dahlander & Wallin, 2006).
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27 Because of the strategic relevance of hosted online communities, organizations develop
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29 distinct organizational practices to manage them. The term organizational practice refers to
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31 one or more activities shared by and performed across various organizations (Bromiley &
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33 Rau, 2014; Värlander, Hinds, Thomason, Pearce, & Altman, 2016).
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35 Scholars have labeled organizational practices targeted at online communities online
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37 community governance practices (Markus, 2007), henceforth called governance practices for
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short. The objective of these practices is to encourage participation and to direct, coordinate,
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42 and control interactions among individuals in an online community that an organization hosts
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44 (Kraut & Resnick, 2012; West & O'Mahony, 2008). People participating in online
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46 communities are referred to as users. Scholars have identified a number of governance
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48 practices and corresponding activities. For example, Sibai and colleagues (2015) point to
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50 monitoring and sanctioning actions that have the same function as traditional command-and-
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control activities (Sibai et al., 2015); others have identified more subtle practices, such as
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55 fostering the embeddedness of users in the community and allowing users to span boundaries
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57 within the online community (Fleming & Waguespack, 2007; Porter & Donthu, 2008).
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3 The extensive body of knowledge on governance practices faces two limitations with
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5 respect to understanding how organizations in the sharing economy govern online
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7 communities. First, the governance practices identified so far do not reflect that hosting online
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9 communities is integral to how organizations in the sharing economy create value. As Kane
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and Ransbotham (2016: 1258, emphasis added) point out, “‘[s]haring economy’ companies
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14 rely on knowledge and resources possessed by the community to facilitate economic
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16 transactions.” For them, the online community is not just peripheral (Barrett et al., 2016;
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18 Dahlander & Wallin, 2006), but at the core of value creation. Because of this strategic
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20 relevance, organizations in the sharing economy need to pay particular attention to governing
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22 users in the online communities they host. Extant theory on governance practices is mostly
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based on studying practices used to govern online communities peripheral to value creation
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27 and thus needs to be revisited.
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29 Second, we know little about practices organizations use to govern hosted online
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31 communities as opposed to autonomous online communities. Existing theory is largely based
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33 on studies of autonomous online communities such as those of Wikipedia and Linux. Because
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35 hosted online communities in the sharing economy are “fundamentally different” (West &
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37 O'Mahony, 2008: 163) from autonomous online communities, we can expect governance
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practices to vary considerably. Given the estimated rapid growth of the sharing economy
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42 worldwide, generating new and more systematic insights into the practices used to govern
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44 online communities is timely and relevant for management theory and for advancing
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46 management practice. We ask What practices do organizations in the sharing economy use to
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48 strategically govern the online communities they host?
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50 The exploratory scope of our research question called for a qualitative inquiry. We
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triangulated interviews, observations, and archival data to conduct a comparative analysis of
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55 23 organizations (Eisenhardt, 1989; Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007) in the sharing economy in
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57 Berlin, one of the hot spots of the sharing economy in Europe (Frenzel & Leber, 2014). We
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3 identified three distinct governance practices: scoping community boundaries, nudging social
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5 relations, and steering users; each consists of various activities to encourage participation in
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7 the online community hosted by the organization and to direct, coordinate, and control
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9 interactions among users.
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We discovered that organizations applied these practices variably and that scoping
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14 community boundaries and nudging social relations relied on both online and offline
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16 technology. This observation has rarely been discussed in the literature on online community
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18 governance; it allows for a more accurate picture of how organizations in the sharing
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20 economy govern strategic online communities. Scoping community boundaries as a distinct
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22 governance practice encourages participation by demarcating the perimeters of interaction and
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defining the online community as a distinct social space. It involves (1) structuring the
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27 community and (2) fostering identification with the community. At the heart of this practice is
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29 the creation and maintenance of boundaries around and within an online community (rather
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31 than merely focusing on the boundaries of the organization). The discovery of this practice
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33 puzzled us, as it stands in contrast to boundary spanning (Fleming & Waguespack, 2007), a
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35 governance practice that aims to overcome boundaries, not to create and maintain them, as is
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37 the case with scoping community boundaries. Nudging social relations, another distinct
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governance practice, encourages participation by providing stimuli for interactions. Nudging
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42 involves (1) promoting off-purpose spaces and (2) showcasing participation. The third
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44 practice, steering users, entails (1) monitoring users and (2) sanctioning users – this practice
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46 comes closest to the command-and-control image of governance uncovered by previous
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48 research (Sibai et al., 2015). Whereas this practice exemplifies the role of organizations as
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50 guardians of online communities, the previous practices illustrate the relevance of
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organizations as curators of online communities. In our setting, these practices to govern
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55 hosted online communities were critical for value creation and thus are of strategic relevance.
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3 Because organizations we studied used these practices differently, we have developed
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5 a framework to identify four distinct patterns of governance practices to explain how and why
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7 organizations use them in different ways. We label these patterns “differentiation,”
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9 “customization,” “standardization,” and “acquiescence. We also speculate about the link
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between these distinct patterns and value creation, drawing on the generic value drivers
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14 identified in the seminal work by Amit and Zott (2001) on how organizations that leverage
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16 information and communication technology create value.
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18 These steps allow us to develop plausible explanations that can inform and guide
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20 future theorizing efforts in research on the sharing economy. We also reveal important
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22 linkages between organizations in the sharing economy and existing knowledge about value
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creation, online communities, and organizational governance. In addition, our findings offer
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27 valuable insights and reflections for management practice and policy-making. In the
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29 following section, we synthesize knowledge about the relevance of online communities, how
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31 these communities drive value creation, and what practices organizations use to govern them.
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34 ONLINE COMMUNITIES: WHAT THEY ARE, HOW THEY CREATE VALUE,
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36 AND WHAT ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES GOVERN THEM
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38 The sharing economy is a social-relations-based economy driven by information and
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communication technologies. Organizations associated with the sharing economy distribute
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43 products and services. To do so, they run a platform based on information and communication
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45 technologies that provides the foundation for hosting an online community.
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48 Online Communities
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An online community is made up of individuals, commonly termed users, who interact
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53 with each other, mediated by a platform and based on a common interest or problem (Faraj et
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55 al., 2011). Scholars distinguish between two types of online communities: hosted online
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57 communities and autonomous online communities. In hosted online communities, the
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3 organization operating the platform assumes a central role in defining and monitoring the
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5 purpose of the online community (Fosfuri, Giarratana, & Roca, 2011; Porter & Donthu, 2008;
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7 West & O'Mahony, 2008). Organizations in the sharing economy typically host their online
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9 community (Reischauer & Mair, forthcoming). In autonomous communities, such as open
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source communities and Wikipedia, users decide on purpose and control. Thus, the locus of
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14 authority with respect to purpose and control is the principal difference between the two
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16 community types.
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18 In both autonomous and hosted online communities, interactions are mediated by
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20 platforms based on information and communication technologies (Altmann & Tushman,
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22 2017; Evans & Schmalensee, 2016). Scholars have been particularly interested in two kinds of
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platforms, communication platforms and transaction platforms. Communication platforms
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27 such as social media and shared-interest sites, as exemplified by Facebook and Wikipedia,
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29 focus on generating and providing information (Leonardi, Huysman, & Steinfield, 2013).
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31 Transaction platforms offer the means to complete a contract in exchange for money or other
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33 compensation (Rochet & Tirole, 2003); examples are Airbnb and Uber.
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36 Online Communities and Value Creation
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39 Organizations in the sharing economy create value for themselves and the individuals
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41 who share – offer and request – a product or service. As previous research has demonstrated,
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43 the value-creation potential of organizations strongly relying on information and
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45 communication technologies hinges on complementarity effects, lock-in effects, efficiency
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effects, or novelty effects (Amit & Zott, 2001). Online communities unlock this potential
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50 because they provide inputs that organizations do not otherwise have access to (Ceccagnoli et
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52 al., 2012). Therefore, for these organizations online communities are a core asset in the form
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54 of an external resource. This view is especially pronounced in the work of Dahlander and
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3 Wallin (2006), who conceived of online communities as complementary resources – external
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5 resources that an organization combines with internal resources to create value.
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7 Online communities are valuable in two ways. First, they help organizations produce
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9 more efficiently because they can cut production costs by outsourcing tasks (Barrett et al.,
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2016; Dahlander & Magnusson, 2005). As Wikipedia illustrates, online communities can even
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14 create a product independent of an organization but important for it (Kane & Ransbotham,
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16 2016). Second, knowledge created in online communities enables organizations to develop
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18 innovative products and services better and quicker (Dahlander & Magnusson, 2005; Faraj et
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20 al., 2011). For example, users freely reveal their innovations within the community, thereby
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22 making them available to the organization, which can then use the innovations for product
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development (Jeppesen & Frederiksen, 2006). To control and exploit the value-creation
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27 potential of online communities, organizations need to develop and apply governance
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29 practices.
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32 Online Communities and Organizational Practices to Govern Them
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As we said above, governing online communities refers to all activities that
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37 organizations use to encourage participation and to direct, coordinate, and control interactions
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39 in online communities. A productive stream of research has studied incentive and control
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41 structures (Abrahao, Parigi, Gupta, & Cook, 2017; Dahlander & O'Mahony, 2011; O'Mahony
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43 & Ferraro, 2007; West & O'Mahony, 2008) and user roles (Jeppesen & Frederiksen, 2006) in
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45 online communities. This body of research has provided important insights into the principles
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and structures of online community governance, but it has not explicitly explained how
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50 organizations turn these principles and structures into action day by day.
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52 To answer this question, scholars increasingly examine the organizational practices
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54 that govern online communities (Fleming & Waguespack, 2007; Porter & Donthu, 2008;
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56 Sibai et al., 2015). Organizational practices denote one or more activities performed by
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3 several organizations. For example, banks have developed and use practices for approving
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5 loans (Bromiley & Rau, 2014). Studying organizational practices is crucial to understanding
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7 how organizations achieve goals and create value (Värlander et al., 2016).
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9 Organizational practices to govern an online community involve encouraging
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participation and directing, coordinating, and controlling interactions. Participation is critical
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14 for value creation, as it enables, sustains, and increases interactions among users of the online
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16 community (Kraut & Resnick, 2012; West & O'Mahony, 2008). Consider Airbnb: unless
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18 users offer their homes and other users seek to rent them, no value is created. Directing,
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20 controlling, and coordinating interactions enable organizations to safeguard how they create
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22 value (Markus, 2007). The research focus of studies of governance practices and
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corresponding recommendations vary. A popular stream of studies centers on practices to
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27 monitor and sanction interactions. In essence, these studies advocate strong social control of
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29 online communities that resembles a command-and-control approach (Kraut & Resnick, 2012;
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31 Sibai et al., 2015). These studies typically build on economic perspectives on governance in
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33 organizations that have progressed under the label corporate governance (Daily, Dalton, &
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35 Cannella, 2003).
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37 A different set of studies has highlighted the need to expand the concept of governance
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and take into consideration aspects that aim at facilitating and enabling. They reveal more
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42 subtle practices. Porter and Donthu (2008) reported that practices that foster the
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44 embeddedness of users in the community – such as providing users with specialized roles or
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46 allowing them to develop their own rules for interaction – and access to quality content
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48 positively affect participation and increase interaction. Similarly, Fleming and Waguespack
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50 (2007) found that boundary spanning – allowing users to bridge knowledge between different
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knowledge domains in the community – encourages participation, as boundary spanners are
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55 likely to assume a leadership position within the community.
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3 This body of research has generated important knowledge about governance practices,
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5 but the application of this knowledge to organizations in the sharing economy may be limited.
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7 First, “‘[s]haring economy’ companies – such as Airbnb and Uber - rely on knowledge and
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9 resources possessed by the community to facilitate economic transactions” (Kane &
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11
Ransbotham, 2016: 1258, emphasis added). As this quote illustrates, organizations in the
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14 sharing economy are unable to create value without active users who offer and request goods
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16 and services. Therefore online communities are not peripheral (Barrett et al., 2016; Dahlander
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18 & Wallin, 2006), but strategically relevant for value creation (Faraj et al., 2016; Reischauer &
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20 Mair, forthcoming). But little is known about governance practices to strategically encourage
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22 participation in online communities.
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Second, as West and O'Mahony (2008: 163) have argued, governing non-hosted online
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27 communities is “fundamentally different” from governing hosted ones. Organizations in the
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29 sharing economy seek to encourage participation in the online communities they host. Aside
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31 from a few exceptions (Kraut & Resnick, 2012; Porter & Donthu, 2008; Sibai et al., 2015),
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33 insights on the governance practices aimed at hosted online communities in the sharing
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35 economy are scarce. These limits of extant theory and the estimated rapid growth of the
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37 sharing economy worldwide (Yaraghi & Ravi, 2017) warrant explorative research. We ask
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What practices do organizations in the sharing economy use to strategically govern the online
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42 communities they host?
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45 METHODS
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47 We opted for a qualitative research design, as it is especially useful to reveal new
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49 phenomena and capture their depth and richness (Ariño, LeBaron, & Milliken, 2016). More
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51 specifically, we chose to compare multiple cases of organizations in the sharing economy.
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This procedure allowed us to clarify whether findings are idiosyncratic to a single case or
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3 replicable across several cases, which is critical to develop more robust theory (Eisenhardt &
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5 Graebner, 2007).
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7 To ensure the validity of our findings, we followed the recommendations by Gibbert
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9 and colleagues (2008) and the example of Ariño and Ring (2010) to control for construct
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validity, internal validity, external validity, and reliability. Table A1 provides an overview of
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14 these steps, which are discussed in more depth in the remainder of this section. We chose not
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16 to expose the names of the organizations we studied for confidentiality reasons.
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19 Research Setting
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From February 2015 to December 2016, we studied organizations in the sharing
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24 economy in the city of Berlin. The German capital is an ideal setting for studying the practices
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26 that organizations in the sharing economy use to manage their hosted online communities.
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28 First, the sharing economy in Berlin has been described as a thriving place for startups and as
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30 embracing and nurturing values associated with civil society (Frenzel & Leber, 2014). We
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32 expected to uncover a heterogeneous set of organizations and governance practices that might
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also differ from those in the sharing economy in the U.S. Our objective was to avoid a
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37 homogenization bias when building theory in management studies (Glynn, Barr, & Dacin,
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39 2000) and potential biases associated with U.S.-based samples (Scott, 2005). Second,
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41 studying organizations associated with the sharing economy in the city of Berlin reflects that
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43 the sharing economy is currently an urban phenomenon (Cohen, Almirall, & Chesbrough,
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45 2016).
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48
Sampling Strategy and Cases
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51 Comparative case analysis requires specifying the population of possible cases to
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53 define the range of the studied cases and the limits for generalizing the findings (Eisenhardt,
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55 1989). Researchers often rely on classification schemas such as SIC codes or on existing
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studies for specifying the population at stake. These options, however, are of limited use,
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3 because in the sharing economy categories are blurred or ill-defined and few empirical studies
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5 yet exist (Acquier et al., 2017). Because of the fuzziness of our research setting, and following
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7 Gibbert et al. (2008), who urge scholars to provide more information about their sampling
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9 strategy in case study research, we report our approach to sampling in some detail.
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Case screening. We first attained an overview of the sharing economy and
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14 organizations in the sharing economy in Berlin and in Germany more broadly. To do so, we
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16 followed Yin (2009) and conducted a comprehensive case screening, using archival data from
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18 sources that engaged in or featured debates on the sharing economy in Germany in business,
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20 politics, and civil society. For each of these domains, we obtained information on the local
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22 (Berlin) and national level (Germany). We collected more than 1,000 document pages of
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reports, newspapers, and position papers. We used content analysis to identify characteristic
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27 features related to our research setting (Berlin) and to develop criteria for systematic case
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29 selection.
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31 Case selection. To embrace variance among organizations, we used three criteria to
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33 select our cases: (1) We included organizations from two sharing economy markets, which we
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35 label “Personal Service Sharing” (PSS) and “Goods and Food Sharing” (GFS). Organizations
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37 in the Berlin PSS market enable users to offer and receive labor such as house cleaning or
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39
40
repairing goods. Organizations in the Berlin GFS market enable users to share or give away
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42 small tangible resources such as power drills, clothes, or food. We identified these markets as
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44 highly relevant in Berlin, in terms of both number of organizations and growth. (2) We
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46 decided to include for-profit and non-profit organizations to reflect local realities of the
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48 sharing economy in Berlin. We based this decision on an insight generated from the case
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50 screening phase: Berlin hosts a relatively large number of non-profit organizations. Here we
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also took seriously the observation by Schor and Fitzmaurice (2015) that for-profit
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55 organizations in the sharing economy strongly differ from non-profit ones. In addition,
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57 contrasting “polar types” (for-profit vs. non-profit) allows researchers to identify contrasting
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14
1
2
3 patterns more easily (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007). (3) We included organizations that run a
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5 communication platform and a transaction platform. As discussed above, operating a
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7 transaction platform is a defining feature of popular organizations in the sharing economy
8
9 such as Uber and Airbnb. These platforms provide people with the means to directly share a
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11
good or service and also to handle cash (Altmann & Tushman, 2017; Evans & Schmalensee,
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13
14 2016; Sundararajan, 2016). In the case screening phase, we discovered that Berlin also hosts
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16 several organizations that provide communication platforms. These platforms allow users to
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18 send messages to specific users or with every use of the platform; post, edit, and sort text and
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20 files produced by themselves or others; and provide information on where users meet and how
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22 to contact them. Wikis and websites with closed member sections are an example of these
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24
communication platforms (Leonardi et al., 2013).
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27 Case characteristics. We initially identified organizations that met these three criteria
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29 using the archival data generated in the case screening phase. We approached organizations
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31 by email and followed up by both email and phone. As our research moved along, we also
32
33 used the snowball technique and asked informants about relevant organizations that operate in
34
35 the two sharing economy markets we focused on. As part of the research process, we also
36
37 visited about two dozen public events on the sharing economy in Berlin to establish personal
38
39
40
contact with organizations. This procedure resulted in a sample of 23 cases whose principal
41
42 characteristics are summarized in Table 1.
43
44 ---------------------------------
45
46 Insert Table 1 about here
47
48 ---------------------------------
49
50 Our sample is heterogeneous in several ways. It contains 9 cases with a for-profit
51
52
53
orientation and 14 with a non-profit orientation. Nine cases operate a communication
54
55 platform, 14 run a transaction platform. The oldest organization was founded before 2000, the
56
57 youngest in 2015. In addition, the size of the hosted online communities varies greatly: one
58
59
60
15
1
2
3 organization was reported to have just 60 users; another handles several million. The only
4
5 similarity among three-fourths of the organizations is that they employ fewer than 10 people.
6
7 We assembled this information from interviews and, where possible, crosschecked with
8
9 archival and publicly available data.
10
11
12
Data Collection
13
14
15 We followed the advice of Gibbert et al. (2008) on triangulating various methods to
16
17 ensure construct validity. As we summarize in Table 2, we conducted semi-structured
18
19 interviews, observed meetings and events, and analyzed archival data.
20
21
---------------------------------
22
23
25
26 ---------------------------------
27
28 Semi-structured interviews. Our main source of data consists of 43 interviews that in
29
30 total lasted 40 hours. We interviewed organizational members with deep knowledge and first-
31
32 hand experience of how their organization governs its hosted online community. We
33
34
interviewed 12 CEOs, 5 members of the board, 7 Heads of Initiative, 2 Heads of Community
35
36
37 Management and Marketing, 3 Heads of Geographic Areas, 3 General Managers, 8
38
39 Community Managers, and 3 Community Ambassadors.1 Interviews lasted between 25
40
41 minutes and nearly 2 hours, averaging 55 minutes. All but 3 interviews were conducted in
42
43 German. All interviews were recorded and transcribed in the language in which they were
44
45 conducted. Quotations reported here were translated into English by the authors. In our
46
47
interviews, respondents predominantly referred to users as “he.” We therefore decided to use
48
49
50 “he” instead of “she” in our translations, too.
51
52 We developed an interview guideline with a list of semi-structured questions that we
53
54 used in all interviews. This guideline was informed by both insights from the case screening
55
56
1
57 As we will detail in the findings section, a community ambassador is a user who serves as an interface between
58 online community and organization.
59
60
16
1
2
3 phase and a broad understanding of online community governance as exemplified by Markus
4
5 (2007). We pretested the guideline in three interviews with organizations in the Berlin sharing
6
7 economy that are not part of our sample. Appendix B lists the questions.
8
9 Observations. We complemented interview data with 170 hours of observation. As
10
11
Van Maanen (1979: 1) reminds us, a detailed understanding of an emerging phenomenon “is
12
13
14 best accomplished by lengthy, continuous, firsthand involvement in the organizational setting
15
16 under study.” Directly observing how organizations interact with their communities allowed
17
18 us to reflect on the insights generated from the interviews, reaffirm them, and possibly add to
19
20 them (Miller, Cardinal, & Glick, 1997). Observations focused on how organizations interacted
21
22 with users and general social dynamics. The types of situations observed included internal
23
24
meetings where matters related to the community were discussed, events that organizations
25
26
27 hosted for their online community, and sites that organizations provided for their community.
28
29 Carrying out observations at events and on site was especially important, as previous research
30
31 has shown that such forms of convening both drive the sharing economy and reflect a sense of
32
33 community (Albinsson & Perera, 2012). Observations were made either as a visitor or as a
34
35 participant. Observing in the role of participant meant that one of us was an active part of the
36
37 situation, for instance contributing to meetings or participating in the same way users
38
39
40
typically do. Observing in the role of a visitor meant that one of us observed situations and
41
42 sites but did not actively contribute as a user or a member of the studied organizations would
43
44 do. Overall, our observation data consists of 38 hours of participation in community events,
45
46 19 hours of participation in internal meetings and team events, 11 hours of participation in
47
48 community meetings, and 2 hours of participation in an organization’s core activity. We also
49
50 logged 72 hours of visits to sites of activity and 28 hours of visits to community events. An
51
52
53
observation typically lasted close to 3 hours. This duration was linked to the temporary nature
54
55 of all observed situations. Shortly after the end of an observation, the impressions, received
56
57 information of informal talks, and context were documented in the digital field book.
58
59
60
17
1
2
3 Archival data. We used a comprehensive set of archival data composed of 7,917
4
5 document pages and 96 video minutes. We focused on a period from 2014 to 2016, as we had
6
7 identified this period as particularly relevant in the case screening phase. We collected 82% of
8
9 the document pages from publicly accessible websites of our cases and, for a few cases, their
10
11
wikis. The decision to include a document was based on whether the document featured or
12
13
14 was about the online community of the organization. Applying this criterion resulted in
15
16 collecting documents such as FAQs, tutorials, and information about the sharing service.
17
18 Eleven percent of the document pages were compiled by surveying blogs and social media
19
20 websites of the organizations. A few organizations gave us internal documents, such as
21
22 meeting minutes or internal guidelines, accounting for 7% of the document pages.
23
24
Of the 96 video minutes, 64% were publicly available videos over social media sites or
25
26
27 the website of an organization. As with the documents, the main criterion for collecting these
28
29 videos was whether the content was community related. The remaining 36% covered videos
30
31 for internal purposes, especially for training community ambassadors. We decided to collect
32
33 this visual material as well, as work in organizations covers “an orchestration of talk, text,
34
35 graphs, gestures, facial expressions, embodied maneuvers within built spaces” (Ariño et al.,
36
37 2016: 111).
38
39
40
41
Data Analysis
42
43 We also followed Gibbert et al. (2008) to ensure the internal validity of our findings.
44
45 We chose the cross-case analysis technique suggested by Eisenhardt (1989) to analyze our
46
47
data. First, we triangulated the insights from interviews, observations, and archival data to
48
49
50 map how a single organization governs its online community. Interviews were coded with the
51
52 software MAXQDA 12, resulting in theoretical categories. We complemented the content
53
54 analysis with the insights from memos of the observations and the archival data collected on
55
56
57
58
59
60
18
1
2
3 each case. Second, we searched for cross-case patterns (Eisenhardt, 1989) by comparing how
4
5 the organizations in our sample strategically governed the online community they hosted.
6
7 Our objective in this study was discovery. We followed Mantere and Ketokivi (2013),
8
9 who argued that scholars conducting case study research reason inductively and abductively
10
11
but need to reflect upon this fact to ensure the credibility of their findings. We ensured
12
13
14 continuous reflection on our reasoning in the following way. First, we informally discussed
15
16 intermediate results with informants and practitioners from other sharing economy markets.
17
18 These discussions sharpened our understanding of boundaries of online communities in the
19
20 sharing economy. Second, we conducted a workshop to reflect on emerging findings with a
21
22 group of practitioners who operate in markets other than those we studied and who were
23
24
interested in how online communities could benefit their organizations. This workshop was
25
26
27 especially useful for clarifying the scope conditions of our findings. Third, we continued to
28
29 collect new data in parallel to data analysis. This iterative process also involved re-coding.
30
31 Fourth, over the entire research period we met as a team on a continuous basis to discuss
32
33 intermediate results.
34
35 We stopped the analysis when new analyzed data did not add to the emerging theory
36
37 (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007). At that point, we also revisited the literature to refresh our
38
39
40
core insights on the nature of online communities (Faraj et al., 2011), community identity
41
42 (Fosfuri et al., 2011), participation architecture (West & O'Mahony, 2008), and value drivers
43
44 (Amit & Zott, 2001). This allowed us to better connect empirical findings and theorizing. An
45
46 example of a finding that was informed by this step is “fostering community identification” as
47
48 an activity of the governance practice of “scoping community boundaries.”
49
50
51 FINDINGS
52
53
We report our findings in a way that reflects our process of discovery and sense-
54
55
56 making. In this section, we elaborate on the three distinct governance practices we identified.
57
58
59
60
19
1
2
3 Table 3 summarizes the practices and encompassing activities with illustrative quotes. In the
4
5 subsequent section, we use these findings to develop plausible explanations for the link
6
7 between these practices and value creation and thereby inform and guide future theorizing
8
9 efforts in research on the sharing economy.
10
11
---------------------------------
12
13
15
16 ---------------------------------
17
18 We found that organizations in the sharing economy strategically govern the online
19
20 community they host using three distinct practices. We labeled them “scoping community
21
22 boundaries,” “nudging social relations,” and “steering users.” Each of these practices
23
24
encompasses activities to encourage participation and to direct, coordinate, and control
25
26
27 interactions. As Table 4 shows, we found evidence for these practices and their constitutive
28
29 activities among all our cases. We also uncovered variance in how frequently the
30
31 organizations applied these practices.
32
33 ---------------------------------
34
36
37 ---------------------------------
38
39
40
Organizations acted to govern their online communities both online and offline. We
41
42 found that surprising and interesting. First, this observation puts in perspective the “digital
43
44 only” mentality we often adopt when discussing the sharing economy and online
45
46 communities. Second, our discovery that those organizations alternate between offline and
47
48 online technologies poses interesting questions to be addressed in future research that could
49
50 probe the use and combination of old and new technologies in the sharing economy. We
51
52
53
provide further illustrations of organizations in the sharing economy governing their online
54
55 communities online and offline when we discuss scoping community boundaries and nudging
56
57 social relations.
58
59
60
20
1
2
3 Governance Practice: “Scoping Community Boundaries”
4
5
Scoping community boundaries refers to the governance practice that encourages
6
7
8 participation by demarcating the perimeters of interaction and defining the online community
9
10 as a distinct social space. For the organizations in the sharing economy we studied, hosting an
11
12 online community also implied making explicit the communal aspect of the interactions for
13
14 users and outlining the distinctiveness of the specific sharing community. As the community
15
16 manager of GFS08 illustrated: “In principle, we only provide the frame. The users fill this
17
18
frame. Thus we only provide the possibility for the community to hang out and interact.” And
19
20
21 the CEO of GFS03 explained: “If you do not pay attention to whether users are really present
22
23 [in a space provided by the organization] and create a place where people can really meet …,
24
25 then I think community is getting a bit lost and this threatens its durability in the long run.”
26
27 Organizations recognize the limits of governing by command-and-control governance
28
29 practices. The CEO of PSS05 told us: “I believe that ‘govern’ in a strict sense [as in
30
31 command-and-control] is counterproductive … because if you try to do too much, then you
32
33
34
are suppressing the sometimes spontaneous ways that communities are formed.” In a similar
35
36 vein, the community manager of PSS03 remarked: “I think one can offer them [users]
37
38 incentives and motivate them, but one cannot govern them.”
39
40 Scoping focuses on proactively creating and maintaining community boundaries.
41
42 Previous studies that have discussed community boundaries have emphasized boundary
43
44 spanning, a practice to overcome the boundaries (Fleming & Waguespack, 2007). In contrast,
45
46
organizations in the sharing economy have a keen interest in only selectively allowing
47
48
49 boundary spanning. Instead, they proactively use boundaries to govern the online
50
51 communities they host. Our discovery of the relevance of boundaries for online community
52
53 governance emerged during one of the discussions of intermediate results by our research
54
55 team. The head of GFS11 said, “This is an open community which has open boundaries.”
56
57 This pointed description made us aware that boundaries could be important for organizations
58
59
60
21
1
2
3 to make sense of their online community. We also discovered that several informants used the
4
5 concept of boundary to explain their organization’s way of governing. For example, the
6
7 general manager of PSS09 said, “It is of course also hard to define the boundaries and what
8
9 makes our community different from others.” Similarly interesting was the description by a
10
11
member of the board of GFS07 of their maxim regarding sanctioning users: “We damage our
12
13
14 credibility in the whole community and one unfortunately needs to draw a line.” In German,
15
16 the idiom “drawing a line” implies “boundary.” Therefore, for several organizations,
17
18 boundaries seem to be at the heart of governing the online community they host. Subsequent
19
20 discussions with practitioners corroborated boundaries as a central theme in our theorizing.
21
22 We identified two activities that constitute scoping community boundaries: community
23
24
structuring and fostering community identification.
25
26
27 Community structuring. Community structuring refers to the activity that establishes
28
29 and reinforces formal boundaries of and within the online community. Similar to establishing
30
31 departments and positions within organizations, establishing formal boundaries facilitates the
32
33 portrayal of the community and the role of the individual user. What was special in our setting
34
35 was that this structuring work was subject to steady revision and iteration. Community
36
37 structuring activities targeted the participation architecture and selected users.
38
39
40
The participation architecture of an online community refers to the socio-technical
41
42 framework that organizations provide to extend opportunities to users and integrate their
43
44 contributions (West & O'Mahony, 2008). Our interviews confirmed the relevance of the
45
46 participation architecture as a target of community structuring. Organizations structure the
47
48 participation architecture of their online communities by creating “sub-communities” (the
49
50 CEO of PSS03). The criteria organizations in our sample used to create sub-communities
51
52
53
were whether the users demanded or supplied goods and services, geography, user interests,
54
55 and user engagement.
56
57
58
59
60
22
1
2
3 A first important difference we observed among organizations was the degree of
4
5 autonomy granted to a sub-community. Some organizations granted their sub-communities
6
7 great autonomy. For example, the community manager of GFS08 said, “The people [should]
8
9 use our platform and then simply plan their joint projects and joint endeavors and … decide
10
11
when they want to meet, where, and what they want to do.” In a similar vein, the community
12
13
14 manager of GFS03 reported, “Because this is a decentralized project, everybody operates a
15
16 small individual [specific label of sub-community] that he can form.” In such cases of high
17
18 autonomy, organizations often demanded that sub-communities check with them before
19
20 making major decisions or public appearances. A telling example is GFS07, whose
21
22 community ambassador said that only “when [organization’s name] appears in public, the OK
23
24
from the guys at the top needs to be obtained.” Other organizations granted only a low degree
25
26
27 of autonomy. The general manager of GFS08 reflected upon his role in paying close attention
28
29 to his organization’s sub-communities: “You need someone like me who is steering a bit so
30
31 that some balderdash is not told.”
32
33 Another variance we identified was whether organizations allowed an overlap of sub-
34
35 communities. Organizations often allow users to decide which sub-communities they want to
36
37 join. As the community manager of PSS02 told us: “A [specific user label] can become part of
38
39
40
several communities, depending on what he wants, what he can do, and what matches his
41
42 skills.” On the other hand, we also observed organizations that paid close attention to creating
43
44 and maintaining sub-communities that do not overlap. For example, the CEO of PSS03
45
46 explained the philosophy behind their community structuring at the architectural level: “You
47
48 need to keep the community small based on the region. … If you have 500 people in one
49
50 district, this is too many. If you have 500 people Germany-wide, this is too few.” Likewise,
51
52
53
the head of community management of PSS02 told us, “We have another extra community,
54
55 the [specific label of sub-community] who represent the power users – we really want a strong
56
57 distinction between them and the ordinary users.”
58
59
60
23
1
2
3 Community structuring targeted at selected users hinges on singling out and
4
5 supporting key users. At the center is the aforementioned position of the community
6
7 ambassador – a code used by several informants. This label refers to a user who serves as the
8
9 interface between the overall community or sub-community and the organization that hosts
10
11
the community. As compensation, a community ambassador receives monetary benefits,
12
13
14 recognition, or as in our case privileged access to shared goods and services. Organizations in
15
16 the sharing economy use community ambassadors particularly to facilitate interactions in sub-
17
18 communities. Thus structuring the hosted online community into sub-communities is often –
19
20 but not in all of our cases – accompanied by assigning a community ambassador.
21
22 Community ambassadors encourage participation and are important for value creation.
23
24
They can better serve local needs of a sub-community and ease the burden on the organization
25
26
27 to invest in attaining in-depth knowledge about users though other means. As the CEO of
28
29 PSS02 put it, “proximity to the community is crucial.” The CEO of GFS03 uses the metaphor
30
31 of the moderator to describe the role of the community ambassador: “The [specific label of
32
33 the community ambassador] is the moderating person, as in TV shows.” The general manager
34
35 of GFS08 brings up the relevance of the community ambassador role for value creation:
36
37 “With the concept of the [specific label of the community ambassador] we believe we
38
39
40
perform better, we become more active locally and regionally, and … we do not have to do it
41
42 [promoting sharing] ourselves.”
43
44 Similar to community structuring that targets the participation architecture, we
45
46 observed variance in the degree of autonomy that organizations granted community
47
48 ambassadors. Some granted considerable autonomy. An example is GFS08, whose
49
50 community manager explains: “We simply hold a short briefing with them [community
51
52
53
ambassadors] to clarify whether they are really delivering the right message.… Apart from
54
55 that, they can do it on their own.” Other organizations were hesitant to grant community
56
57 ambassadors much autonomy. A member of the board of GFS07 exposes this attitude:
58
59
60
24
1
2
3 “Because the [specific label of a sub-community] has completely different tasks, the
4
5 ambassador must take another test – there are very strict rules.”
6
7 Fostering community identification. Fostering community identification refers to
8
9 activities by which an organization creates a sense of belonging for the online community.
10
11
(Fosfuri et al., 2011). A head of geographic area of PSS08 described the relevance of creating
12
13
14 a sense of belonging: “The [specific label of community] is not necessarily a closed group but
15
16 an informal network – to which one feels belonging.” Likewise, as the initiative head of
17
18 GFS11 told us, for their organization it is vital “that they [users] perceive themselves a part of
19
20 this community.” The analysis of documents revealed that an often-used means to create a
21
22 sense of belonging on a day-to-day basis is the use of distinct labels for users and sub-
23
24
communities. These labels are used instead of generic ones such as “user,” “member,” or
25
26
27 “customer.” We unfortunately cannot report the exact labels, because this would reveal the
28
29 identity of our cases. What they have in common is that they are playful, using terms such as
30
31 “hero,” “super,” or “friend.” Often the name of the organization is included in a playful way
32
33 in these distinctive labels. The initiative head of GFS10 illustrates: “We write to them [users]:
34
35 ‘Dear [playful modification of the organization’s name].’ So far no one has raised concern
36
37 about that in public…. I think, for community, it is very much about a sense of belonging.”
38
39
40
We observed that organizations use these distinct labels both online and offline. Online they
41
42 included these labels in newsletters, in letters, or on the website. Offline they use the labels
43
44 orally at events and on flyers. Some also distribute stickers with the distinct labels that users
45
46 can put on their laptops, cars, or other physical items.
47
48 Besides this direct means of fostering community identification, organizations
49
50 proactively engage in instilling a sense of responsibility. Put differently, organizations make
51
52
53
users realize that there are stakes involved in being part of the community. In the words of the
54
55 head of marketing of PSS01: “We want for one to feel … somehow responsible. That does not
56
57 mean that one should feel obliged to engage every week. But I believe feeling responsible
58
59
60
25
1
2
3 contributes to the community.” The rationale for organizations to create a sense of
4
5 responsibility is that when users are made aware that they are responsible and, to a certain
6
7 degree, held accountable for what they do, they identify with the community. An observation
8
9 at the site of activity of GFS11 further illustrates this argument. One of the authors observed
10
11
conflict triggered by one user not taking proper care of shared goods, prompting other users
12
13
14 standing nearby to confront him about his understanding of what it means to be part of this
15
16 sharing community. As the offender was sent away from the site, the remaining users
17
18 reassured each other that they had made the right decision.
19
20 Organizations use various offline and online measures to instill a sense of
21
22 responsibility. Face-to-face interactions, such as those just described, are one important
23
24
offline measure. Non-profit organizations especially refer to the norm of reciprocity to convey
25
26
27 a sense of responsibility. In the words of a regional head of PSS08: “You can make use of
28
29 services, but then you actually have to be able to reciprocate.” Likewise, the CEO of PSS06
30
31 said, “The community is a platform where people can themselves become active. In principle,
32
33 the idea is that everybody takes from the community but also gives back to the community.”
34
35 An online measure we often observed is to require using one’s real name when registering and
36
37 interacting online. Some organizations require that users upload documents to verify their
38
39
40
personal identity such as photos or identity documents. As the head of marketing of PSS01
41
42 put it: “We require that people register with their real name because this involves a certain
43
44 responsibility.”
45
46
47 Governance Practice: “Nudging Social Relations”
48
49
50 Nudging social relations refers to the governance practice with which organizations
51
52 encourage participation by stimulating interactions. This practice encompasses two activities:
53
54 interactions by promoting off-purpose spaces and showcasing participation.
55
56
57
58
59
60
26
1
2
3 Promoting off-purpose spaces. Promoting off-purpose spaces refers to the activities by
4
5 which organizations stimulate the creation of complementary social spaces for the online
6
7 community. The focus and purpose of interaction in these social spaces are not directly related
8
9 to the specific sharing purpose. The feature of these spaces relevant for governance is their
10
11
openness: any active or prospective user may join and participate.
12
13
14 Organizations typically do not create these spaces intentionally or by following a grand
15
16 plan; users and outsiders can create them. Organizations may promote or support these spaces
17
18 and places online or offline. Examples online are discussion forums, dashboards, discussion
19
20 functions in blog entries or news entries, and functions that allow users to “nudge” other users
21
22 in a playful way. Offline examples include community meetings where decisions about the
23
24
future of the community are discussed, community events where users celebrate and receive
25
26
27 training, and sites where users actually exchange shared goods and services.
28
29 Organizations deem off-purpose spaces beneficial to stimulate interactions for two
30
31 reasons. First, off-purpose spaces enable connections among users. The head of initiative of
32
33 PSS09 described this rationale: “For us, community is really the decisive element with which
34
35 we create something together with our users. Our users should all connect more and have
36
37 places where they can connect.” The relevance of forging relationships in off-purpose places
38
39
40
is also emphasized by the head of marketing of PSS01, who reported, “the need for
41
42 interconnectedness amongst our users is great.”
43
44 Further evidence of the importance of off-purpose interactions comes from
45
46 observations of the community events involving a community ambassador of GFS03. He
47
48 hosts regular community events of his sub-community in a shop that he owns. While
49
50 observing one of these events, this community ambassador attempted to promote his products
51
52
53
to users who had come because of sharing goods other than those the community ambassador
54
55 sells in his shop. Another example is the annual community event of PSS09 that is jointly
56
57 organized with social movements and people associated with environmentalism. It provides a
58
59
60
27
1
2
3 forum where users can run workshops that are only loosely connected to the shared goods of
4
5 PSS09. In sum, the first rationale organizations shared with us for providing off-purpose
6
7 spaces is that the relationships that emerge because of encounters in these spaces foster
8
9 interactions in line with the purpose of the community, in our case sharing of services or
10
11
goods.
12
13
14 Second, we found that organizations promote off-purpose spaces to enable
15
16 personalized user experiences. A community ambassador of GFS03 commented: “at
17
18 [organization’s name] it is nice that there are real meetings once a week where people get to
19
20 know each other.” Although organizations created some off-purpose spaces online, offline
21
22 off-purpose spaces, such as community events and community meetings, played a central role.
23
24
As the regional head of PSS08 put it: “Over the internet it is still somehow impersonal. I can
25
26
27 only figure out how someone behaves or get to know how someone ticks if I sit down and talk
28
29 with him.” A community manager of PSS02 said, “For them [users], our community events
30
31 are a great opportunity to simply get to know each other a bit.” Likewise, the general manager
32
33 of PSS02 said that “events actually exist to hear what the community thinks, what ideas they
34
35 have. They can give input.”
36
37 The relevance of offline off-purpose spaces for enabling personalized user experiences
38
39
40
became especially apparent in observations. For example, offline activities of GFS07 involve
41
42 people bringing their children; the children started playing with each other. This aspect was
43
44 also highly visible at community events of organizations in the PSS market. At one
45
46 community event, PSS01 created tables for regular attendants grouped by geographic regions,
47
48 which fostered amicable interactions among strangers. An observation during an internal
49
50 meeting of PSS08 further illustrates how offline off-purpose spaces make sharing more
51
52
53
personal. Before the start of the event, the user who had invited the observing author
54
55 introduced him by noting that he “knows what sharing is really about because of personal
56
57 exchange.” This comment triggered affirmative nods by several of the people present.
58
59
60
28
1
2
3 Showcasing participation. Showcasing participation exemplifies ongoing and past
4
5 interactions in the online community. We found that organizations deem this activity useful
6
7 because it signals a vibrant and active community life. Exemplifying ongoing interactions
8
9 online mostly involved displaying information about currently active users and currently
10
11
shared resources on the platform. The head of marketing of PSS01 illustrates the relevance of
12
13
14 this feature for governance: “This is one of the sticking points, giving the people the feeling of
15
16 ‘here something is currently happening.” The CEO of PSS05 expressed the relationship
17
18 between showcased current activity and status of users: “The more they use the platform, the
19
20 more active they are, the higher status they have.” Some organizations used online data to
21
22 measure their success. The community ambassador of GFS07 told us: “We measure success
23
24
based on the amount of shared [specific label of shared goods] that is counted on our website
25
26
27 day by day.” Organizations showcased ongoing interactions offline by urging users to use
28
29 blackboards or other physical display mediums to demonstrate the quantity of remaining
30
31 goods to be shared. Moreover, in a few cases organizations also displayed the number of
32
33 people currently present.
34
35 Exemplifying past interactions online often involves the organizations iteratively
36
37 providing the users with narratives and users’ stories about the benefits of using the platform.
38
39
40
Organizations conduct interviews with selected users – such as their community ambassadors
41
42 – that are put online; they also provide best-practice cases of successful sharing. The latter
43
44 means was reported to us as especially promising. As the community manager of GFS08 put
45
46 it: “We try to push those who already did it [users who used the platform frequently] to share
47
48 their experiences with others.” An often-observed way to demonstrate community life offline
49
50 is the integration of selected users in community events. At a community event of PSS01 to
51
52
53
celebrate a milestone in its development, several outside speakers were invited. One was a
54
55 community ambassador – not a member of the hosting organization – from another
56
57 organization in the Berlin sharing economy that is not directly related to the business of
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29
1
2
3 PSS01. After his talk, the presenter was approached by several visitors who wanted to know
4
5 more about his organization.
6
7
8 Governance Practice: “Steering Users”
9
10
11 Steering users refers to exerting social control over interactions. As a member of the board of
12
13 GFS07 put it: “If I as user provide a completely exaggerated number of [specific label for
14
15 interactions on the platform], this attracts attention. Then there is a kind of social control.”
16
17 The rationale behind this practice is that it stimulates interactions, as users respect and
18
19 appreciate the role of the organization as a guardian of the community. The community
20
21
manager of PSS07 illustrated: “A community does not emerge by itself. … One really must
22
23
24 take care of that.” Organizations vary in how frequently they use this technique. Some engage
25
26 in continuous steering. On the other hand, some organizations steer only irregularly. Of all the
27
28 governance practices we identified, steering users is most akin to the practices to govern
29
30 hosted online communities portrayed by Sibai et al. (2015). For this reason, we discuss only
31
32 the most important aspects of the two activities of this practice, monitoring users and
33
34
sanctioning users. Both activities are closely entangled.
35
36
37 Monitoring users. Organizations review the appropriateness of interactions in several
38
39 ways. They document interactions by using evaluations in the form of ratings of past
40
41 interactions. Organizations also observe users by tracking ongoing interactions on the
42
43 platform and promoting features on their platform that allow users to report inappropriate
44
45 behavior of other users. Moreover, organizations also observe interactions in the
46
47
aforementioned offline off-purpose spaces (such as contact points for users or community
48
49
50 events) and online off-purpose spaces (such as discussion forums). As the CEO of PSS05
51
52 reported, referring to online spaces: “We definitely watch out for what we produce and then
53
54 screen the forums to make sure that we have the right type of constructive messaging even
55
56 within the content that is put on our site by [label of sub-community].”
57
58
59
60
30
1
2
3 Sanctioning users. Organizations may also intervene in interactions. If the monitoring
4
5 detects misbehavior, organizations remind users of interaction rules. For example,
6
7 organizations may send an email that contains guidelines on how to end disputes
8
9 constructively. If these reminders do not lead to the desired outcome, the organization may
10
11
interrupt interactions. A number of organizations seek to get back to users before sanctioning.
12
13
14 In the words of the community manager of PSS02: “In that case one needs to listen to both
15
16 sides. … One always listens to the other side, to check if this is a one-time appearance or if
17
18 we should take a closer look.” Not surprisingly, organizations ban users if interrupting does
19
20 not improve or correct their behavior. The general manager of PSS03 summarized: “If
21
22 someone constantly receives bad evaluations, then we of course have to put these people off
23
24
the platform, simply to ensure the service quality.”
25
26
27
28
PATTERNS OF ONLINE COMMUNITY GOVERNANCE AND THE POTENTIAL
29
30 TO CREATE VALUE
31
32 We found that organizations use three governance practices – scoping community
33
34 boundaries, nudging social relations, and steering users – to encourage participation in the
35
36 online community they host and thereby to govern this community strategically. We observed
37
38 considerable variance, however, in how the organizations in our sample use these practices.
39
40
For example, we saw organizations with a high frequency of activities in all practices. We
41
42
43 also encountered organizations that use only a very few activities of each practice. To explain
44
45 this variance and assess how variation in the use of governance practices affects the value
46
47 creation potential of organizations in the sharing economy, we engaged existing literature on
48
49 governing online communities (West & O'Mahony, 2008) and on value creation of
50
51 organizations driven by information and communication technologies (Amit & Zott, 2001).
52
53
This step allowed us to identify distinct patterns to govern online communities and relate
54
55
56 these patterns to value drivers.
57
58
59
60
31
1
2
3 We identified two dimensions as relevant for categorizing patterns: accessibility and
4
5 boundary multiplicity. West and O’Mahony (2008) identified accessibility as an important
6
7 dimension to explain differences in online community governance. Accessibility refers to the
8
9 degree to which organizations allow their hosted online community to influence its direction
10
11
and activities directly. We found the same relevance of accessibility for the organizations we
12
13
14 studied.
15
16 Our analyses identified a second important architectural dimension to classify patterns
17
18 of governance practices, which we labeled boundary multiplicity. In contrast to accessibility,
19
20 we have found no reference to this dimension in the current literature. Organizations in our
21
22 sample differed on this dimension. For example, organizations such as PSS06, PSS07,
23
24
GFS01, and GFS02 hardly structured their community at all. They focused on a single
25
26
27 boundary, one between users and non-users. In contrast, organizations such as PSS03, PSS05,
28
29 GFS03, and GFS06 carefully structured their community and drew several boundaries,
30
31 resulting in various sub-communities. Our study thus suggests that boundary multiplicity
32
33 might be a relevant and so far underappreciated dimension to explain differences in how
34
35 organizations govern their hosted online communities.
36
37 ---------------------------------
38
39
40
Insert Figure 1 about here
41
42 ---------------------------------
43
44 In Figure 1 we use accessibility and boundary multiplicity to depict four different
45
46 patterns of governance practices. In our discussion, we highlight the activities that are
47
48 characteristic for a pattern, meaning that organizations use them frequently – see Table 5 for a
49
50 summary. In addition, we draw on the seminal work by Amit and Zott (2001) to speculate
51
52
53
about the relationship between a pattern and an organization’s potential to create value by
54
55 means of specific value drivers. More specifically, we use abductive reasoning and relate the
56
57 patterns to four value drivers – complementarity effects, lock-in effects, efficiency effects,
58
59
60
32
1
2
3 and novelty effects – that Amit and Zott (2001) identified. The aim of this discussion is not to
4
5 provide evidence for how value creation occurred in our setting but to offer a bridge to
6
7 existing research and lay the foundation for future research.
8
9 ---------------------------------
10
11
Insert Table 5 about here
12
13
14 ---------------------------------
15
16
17 Differentiation and Complementarity Effects
18
19 A pattern that we identified for five organizations in our sample is “differentiation.”
20
21
They clearly differentiated their community into sub-communities. They avoided overlaps
22
23
24 between sub-communities. Each sub-community was governed in a certain way – having in
25
26 common that a low degree of accessibility was granted. In other words, sub-communities had
27
28 very little influence over their own activities and direction. Organizations following the
29
30 differentiation pattern frequently used all three practices that we identified.
31
32 To create value, organizations following this pattern provide the online community
33
34
they host with a wide range of services and benefits. PSS02, for example, partners with
35
36
37 organizations in the traditional economy to stimulate demand in its online community. PSS03
38
39 provides its users with insurance and cooperates with organizations in the education sector
40
41 whose benefits are passed to the users. Likewise, GFS07 has a large number of partnerships
42
43 with smaller organizations in the traditional economy that enable their online community to
44
45 share better. Another example is GFS03, which encourages its users not only to share the
46
47
goods at the focus of their platform but also to add other goods that can be exchanged off the
48
49
50 platform. Organizations that follow the differentiation pattern provide their community with
51
52 complementarities – a bundle of services that together provide more value than the total value
53
54 of the separate services (Amit & Zott, 2001). In sum, we speculate that organizations
55
56
57
58
59
60
33
1
2
3 following the differentiation pattern to govern their online community create value based on
4
5 complementarity effects.
6
7
8 Customization and Lock-in Effects
9
10
11 We refer to a second pattern, which we observed for six organizations in our sample,
12
13 as customization. These organizations also drew clear boundaries and created distinct sub-
14
15 communities. But they grant these sub-communities a fairly high degree of accessibility and
16
17 allow sub-communities to overlap. According to our analysis, organizations actively structure
18
19 their online community and thus frequently scope community boundaries. Moreover, these
20
21
organizations also frequently promote off-purpose spaces, an activity characteristic of
22
23
24 nudging social relations.
25
26 For value creation, we speculate that organizations using the customization pattern of
27
28 governance practice put special emphasis on making interactions binding and long-term. Take
29
30 for example PSS08, which puts activities that reinforce the norm of reciprocity at center stage.
31
32 Likewise, PSS01 and PSS04 encourage the users of their online communities to give back not
33
34
only in money but in other small personal services such as mowing the lawn and establishing
35
36
37 a personal relationship. In a similar vein, users of GFS06 need to commit to the community
38
39 for a longer period by investing a small amount of money. The common thread in
40
41 organizations following the customization pattern was preventing users from switching to
42
43 another online community. These organizations attempt to lock in users to create value (Amit
44
45 & Zott, 2001). In sum, organizations that follow the customization pattern create value
46
47
because of lock-in effects.
48
49
50
51 Standardization and Efficiency Effects
52
53 For six organizations in our sample, we observed standardization in how governance
54
55 practices were used. These organizations use a “one-size-fits-all” model to govern their online
56
57
community: users are all treated equally, so only a low degree of accessibility is granted. At
58
59
60
34
1
2
3 the same time, the organizations do not differentiate or divide their community. These
4
5 organizations most frequently rely on steering users as the dominant practice and only
6
7 occasionally scope community boundaries.
8
9 The standardization pattern stands out in simplicity and speed. The CEO of GFS01
10
11
describes this feature vividly: “Overall, our goal was to radically simplify the access.” All
12
13
14 cases expose a narrow platform focus: organizations provide only the core function, to share a
15
16 certain good or service – nothing beyond that. PSS07 created a separate legal entity that is
17
18 active at a physical location other than the established one in order to cluster offerings that are
19
20 not directly related to PSS07’s core sharing business. The CEO of GFS02 – whose platform is
21
22 currently tightly focused – reflected on the organization’s greatest challenge in the past: “I
23
24
think we did too much, we provided too many functions. Because of these many functions,
25
26
27 the platform was not simple enough so that people could share actively.” In sum, we speculate
28
29 that organizations following the standardization pattern govern their online community to
30
31 create value based on efficiency effects (Amit & Zott, 2001).
32
33
34 Acquiescence and Novelty Effects
35
36
37 Finally, we identified six organizations in our sample that follow a pattern we call
38
39 acquiescence. Central to this pattern is again the one-size-fits-all idea – no boundaries are
40
41 drawn within the online community except those between users of the online community and
42
43 people who are not part of this community. These organizations tolerate users who do not
44
45 fully comply with the one-size-fits-all idea. Thus users are granted a high degree of autonomy
46
47
to shape the community. Organizations that follow this pattern use the activity of fostering
48
49
50 community identification that is part of scoping community boundaries. Activities
51
52 characteristic of the other practices are largely neglected.
53
54 The organizations pursuing the acquiescence pattern stand out in steadily providing
55
56 novel content. Take for example PSS06 and PSS10; they allow their communities to use their
57
58
59
60
35
1
2
3 platform to launch any kind of sharing of services as long as it is linked to the organization’s
4
5 mission. PSS10 even delegates to its online community the decision of which sharing service
6
7 should be financed by putting it to a vote online. GFS10 also scores high on accessibility: it
8
9 opens its platform and brand for everyone in Germany and only requests that enough people
10
11
in a region agree to plan and organize the concrete sharing. Likewise, GFS04 delegates the
12
13
14 long-term discretion of shared goods – and thus the decision about who is actually sharing –
15
16 to any users who want them and irregularly show up at team meetings. The shared goods of
17
18 GFS11 and GFS 12 are subject to steady change, as they are provided and collected by the
19
20 user; the organizations only provide the physical space to host them and the platform to order
21
22 them.
23
24
To sum up, organizations following the acquiescence pattern all provide new content, a
25
26
27 central feature of creating value based on novelty effects (Amit & Zott, 2001). We thus
28
29 speculate that organizations following the acquiescence pattern will govern their online
30
31 community to create value based on novelty effects.
32
33
34 DISCUSSION
35
36 In the sharing economy, online communities are not peripheral, but core to
37
38 organizational value creation. The objective of this study was to uncover how organizations in
39
40
the sharing economy strategically govern the online communities they host. We identified
41
42
43 three governance practices: scoping community boundaries, nudging social relations, and
44
45 steering users. We further developed a framework to identify patterns that unpack why
46
47 organizations use governance practices differently and how these practices relate to the value
48
49 creation potential of the organizations. Our findings provide important insights for
50
51 management research on the sharing economy that is poised to take off. In addition, they offer
52
53
valuable insights and reflections for management practice in and beyond the sharing
54
55
56 economy.
57
58
59
60
36
1
2
3 Implications for Research
4
5
Our findings inform research on the sharing economy by displaying important linkages
6
7
8 between organizations in the sharing economy and existing knowledge on value creation,
9
10 online communities, and organizational governance.
11
12 Organizations in the sharing economy and value creation. Our study starts to unpack
13
14 the question also posed by the editors of this special issue: How do organizations in the
15
16 sharing economy create value? We highlight the importance of organizational practices and
17
18
elaborate on the link between strategically governing an online community and the potential
19
20
21 to create value. More specifically, we show how a specific community governance pattern
22
23 relates to an organization’s main value driver, namely complementarity effects, lock-in
24
25 effects, efficiency effects, and novelty effects. The framework we have developed offers a
26
27 new way to examine systematically how organizations in the sharing economy create value
28
29 with and through the communities they host. More specifically, with this detailed account of
30
31 how organizations in the sharing economy create value, we add to research that has so far
32
33
34
been focused on basic principles and organizational capabilities of value creation in the
35
36 sharing economy (Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015; Sundararajan, 2016). We also extend previous
37
38 efforts by elaborating on governance practices aimed at users of an online community, not
39
40 formally affiliated stakeholders.
41
42 Organizations in the sharing economy and online communities. The governance of
43
44 online communities is at the heart of our findings. Although we are not the first to highlight
45
46
the importance of governing online communities, we provide one of the first systematic and
47
48
49 empirically grounded accounts of what governing hosted online communities (which are vital
50
51 for the survival of organizations) entails. In addition, we provide a framework that explains
52
53 how and why organizations govern online communities differently. These findings go beyond
54
55 existing research on online communities in three ways.
56
57
58
59
60
37
1
2
3 First, our discovery that governance practices leverage both online and offline social
4
5 technologies impels re-thinking the combination and relationship of offline and online
6
7 interactions in online communities. Whereas prior research has focused on how offline and
8
9 online interaction affect identification (Fiol & O'Connor, 2005), our findings provide a fertile
10
11
ground to consider how offline and online interactions affect participation in online
12
13
14 communities. We found that organizations vary offline and online activities in two distinct
15
16 governance practices: scoping community boundaries and nudging social relations.
17
18 Strategically governing an online community also involves facilitating, directing, and
19
20 coordinating face-to-face interactions. Even in the digital age, “traditional” means of
21
22 interaction – face-to-face interaction – are of strategic relevance for an increasing number of
23
24
organizations in the sharing economy and organizations operating platforms more generally
25
26
27 (Altmann & Tushman, 2017). In sum, these findings allow a more nuanced and more accurate
28
29 way to view and examine online communities.
30
31 Second, we complement existing work that argues that boundaries of online
32
33 communities matter (Faraj et al., 2011) but has not yet specified how they matter. Our
34
35 discovery of scoping community boundaries displays how organizations make use of
36
37 boundaries around and within online communities to encourage participation. Interestingly,
38
39
40
organizations are keen to inhibit spanning boundaries between sub-communities and often use
41
42 the community ambassador role to guard these boundaries. This practice highlights the
43
44 importance of careful boundary work and might also be relevant for governing autonomous
45
46 online communities.
47
48 Third, our findings complement a productive line of research on governance practices
49
50 targeted at hosted online communities (Kraut & Resnick, 2012; Porter & Donthu, 2008; Sibai
51
52
53
et al., 2015). West and O'Mahony (2008: 163) have argued that governing hosted online
54
55 communities is “fundamentally different” from governing autonomous online communities,
56
57 and further research needs to specify these differences. Our study provides a detailed account
58
59
60
38
1
2
3 of what organizations actually do to encourage participation in the online community they
4
5 host.
6
7 Organizations in the sharing economy and organizational governance. Our study
8
9 covers a newly emerging form of organized economic activity - the sharing economy. The
10
11
specific features of the sharing economy a challenge some of the basic assumptions and
12
13
14 principles of traditional perspectives and approaches to study organizational governance.
15
16 Commonly, organizational governance encompasses practices with which organizations
17
18 determine how organizational resources are used and with which conflicts among
19
20 stakeholders are resolved. A central theme of organizational governance is a rather tight
21
22 control over organizational resources such as personnel and money (Daily et al., 2003). This
23
24
tight approach is mirrored in extant research on governance practices that advocates social
25
26
27 control of online communities (Sibai et al., 2015). Our study illustrates the relevance of
28
29 rethinking whether social control is still applicable to organizations in the sharing economy
30
31 that rely on an online community instead of employees to create value. As we found,
32
33 governance practices of these organizations encompass more subtle activities to encourage
34
35 users.
36
37 Organizations need to relate to online communities in a very different way. This
38
39
40
relationship is comparable neither to the relationship between organizations and employees
41
42 nor to that between an organization and its customers. The relationship clearly blurs
43
44 established boundaries between consumption and production that have marked management
45
46 theory and practice for decades. With these findings, we also echo recent calls for better
47
48 understanding of how platform-based business models – such as those of organizations in the
49
50 sharing economy – reshape organizational governance (Altmann & Tushman, 2017).
51
52
53
Furthermore, our study offers insights on the role of boundaries for organizational
54
55 governance solidifying prior research on this topic (Santos & Eisenhardt, 2005). The practice
56
57 of scoping community boundaries we identified creates and sustains boundaries with the
58
59
60
39
1
2
3 activities of community structuring and fostering community identification. With this
4
5 practice, organizations employ power and identity – two levers for drawing boundaries
6
7 identified by Santos and Eisenhardt (2005) – in parallel. Whereas community structuring
8
9 relies on power to enforce differences in the online community, fostering community
10
11
identification uses identity to draw boundaries.
12
13
14
15 Future Research on Organizations in the Sharing Economy
16
17 The objective in this paper was to instigate excitement for research on organizations in
18
19 the sharing economy. We deliberately situated our study in a cultural context that has not been
20
21
the focus of research on the sharing economy or in adjacent areas such as of research on
22
23
24 online communities. As organizational practices are shaped by and vary across cultural
25
26 contexts (Glynn et al., 2000; Värlander et al., 2016), additional research across contexts is
27
28 necessary to enhance the generalizability of our results. Moreover, we deliberately chose a
29
30 sample that exposes the heterogeneity of organizations operating in the sharing economy. Our
31
32 intent was to move beyond often-studied large and internationally operating organizations
33
34
such as Uber or Airbnb. As a result, our sample consists mainly of small sized and local
35
36
37 organizations. Future research could build on our findings and examine how large and
38
39 internationally operating organizations in the sharing economy differ in their use of
40
41 governance practices.
42
43 We consider the findings and discoveries presented in this paper as particularly helpful
44
45 to advance research on how organizations in the sharing economy create value and on how
46
47
they evolve and change over time.
48
49
50 Unpacking value creation of organizations in the sharing economy. We believe our
51
52 observation of potential relationships between governance practices and value drivers will
53
54 inspire future studies to assess performance of governance practices. The different patterns to
55
56 govern online communities featured in this study provide insights and might be a first
57
58
59
60
40
1
2
3 important step in measuring performance and assessing value creation. Moreover, future
4
5 research could assess how organizations alter and combine value drivers and the implications
6
7 of such strategies for governance patterns and practices. Consider the example of UberEats, a
8
9 platform to order and deliver food online that Uber launched parallel to its platform for
10
11
ridesharing. This platform might require different governance practices from its platform for
12
13
14 ridesharing. In this paper, we interrogated value creation through probing the relevance of
15
16 specific value drivers and the compatibility of such drivers to the pattern of online community
17
18 governance we observed. Future studies could more specifically examine the relationship
19
20 between governance and value capture. A focus on value capture would also require bringing
21
22 in communities and users more centrally into the analysis. Such research would complement
23
24
this study but also popular research on business models in the sharing economy.
25
26
27 Another promising line of research could inquire into the role of governance practices in
28
29 the co-creation of value. Our study examined value creation by focusing on how organizations
30
31 use online communities strategically to create value. However, organizations increasingly use
32
33 multiple actors – online communities being one actor – and thereby co-create value
34
35 (Ceccagnoli et al., 2012). For example, future research could examine how other actors react
36
37 to the governance practices we identified and how these reactions may affect value drivers
38
39
40
and value creation processes. Scholars might also study how governance practices create
41
42 different kinds of value aside from financial value, for example epistemic or reputational
43
44 value (Barrett et al., 2016).
45
46 Developing a process based understanding of organizations in the sharing economy.
47
48 An important line of future research on governing online communities in the sharing economy
49
50 will be how patterns of governance practices evolve. A basic claim in this paper is that
51
52
53
organizations in the sharing economy depend on their external online communities. In
54
55 addition, we claim that governing these online communities is of strategic importance, as they
56
57 are at the core of value creation.
58
59
60
41
1
2
3 Research on how patterns of governance practices develop and change, therefore, must
4
5 take into consideration how external or regulatory factors affect change in these communities
6
7 and in the competitive dynamics within the sharing economy. A promising point of departure
8
9 for developing process based studies and theories is the canonical work of Van de Ven and
10
11
Poole (1995) on different types of process theories to explain how and why organizations
12
13
14 change. Important and relevant for process theories is that change does not occur in a social
15
16 vacuum but takes into consideration action and reaction of multiple actors.
17
18 Evolutionary theories assume that change occurs based on variation, selection, and
19
20 retention of structural properties. Competition for scarce resources and among alternatives is a
21
22 central theme (van de Ven & Poole, 1995). This line of reasoning seems highly applicable to
23
24
discovering how patterns of governance practices change and which patterns become
25
26
27 dominant in the sharing economy. For instance, changes in the environment might affect
28
29 competitive dynamics and the choice of value drivers. Consider the recent example of the
30
31 European court of justice ruling that Uber is a taxi operator in the European Union.
32
33 Consequently, Uber needs to adjust and reassess its value drivers and governance practices.
34
35 Researchers interested in developing process theories could observe and make sense of
36
37 sequences of variation, selection and retention and thereby provide a better understanding on
38
39
40
whether and under which conditions specific pattern or practices become dominant – not only
41
42 for Uber but also for a larger number of organizations in domains other than ridesharing
43
44 where Uber is active.
45
46 Dialectical perspectives to develop process theories assume that an organization
47
48 “exists in a pluralistic world of colliding events, forces, or contradictory values that compete
49
50 with each other for domination and control” (van de Ven & Poole, 1995: 517). This collision
51
52
53
can yield to improvement, but negative effects are also possible (van de Ven & Poole, 1995).
54
55 Consider again the example of Uber, for whom the European court of justice represents an
56
57 opposing external force. Studying the reactions of European countries and, in turn, Uber and
58
59
60
42
1
2
3 other international organizations in the sharing economy provides important insights into how
4
5 opposition drives patterns of governance practices and also reveals new governance practices.
6
7 Future research could study the dialectical development of patterns of governance practices in
8
9 large and internationally operating organizations in the sharing economy.
10
11
12
Implications for Practice
13
14
15 Our findings provide important insights for managers of organizations that host an
16
17 online community core to value creation, both in the sharing economy and in other markets
18
19 driven by information and communication technologies for which platforms are the key.
20
21
Complementing previous insights (Kraut & Resnick, 2012), we offer an empirically grounded
22
23
24 overview of concrete organizational practices to strategically govern hosted online
25
26 communities to achieve participation. Governing such communities goes beyond command
27
28 and control; it requires more subtle means, such as scoping community boundaries and
29
30 nudging social relations. Moreover, our framework allows managers to reflect on how their
31
32 organization governs the hosted online community. They can identify their own pattern of
33
34
online community governance and analyze how it fits with the value-creation strategy of their
35
36
37 organization, as well as what future path it might take. Such reflections might trigger both
38
39 adjustment of the articulated value-creation strategy and the pattern of online community
40
41 governance.
42
43 Our findings also speak to policy makers, for whom the sharing economy is increasingly
44
45 challenging. So far, regulation related to governance matters has been mainly concerned with
46
47
people who are members of an organization. Organizations in the sharing economy govern
48
49
50 not only their employees but also users – people in their online community who are often self-
51
52 employed. They thereby shape the working life of a large number of people. The activities we
53
54 identified as constitutive of governance practices might help policy makers to make more
55
56
57
58
59
60
43
1
2
3 informed decisions in crafting regulations that ensure a proper and just treatment of people
4
5 working and interacting in an online community.
6
7 CONCLUSION
8
9 Our study of organizations in the sharing economy extends existing management theory.
10
11
We believe that future theorizing efforts concerning the sharing economy require researchers
12
13
14 to grasp the phenomenon and, at the same time, connect back to theorizing efforts in adjacent
15
16 phenomena. We did so by relating our findings to previously identified value drivers in
17
18 markets driven by information and communication technologies, work developed by Amit
19
20 and Zott (2001).
21
22 Our approach and findings also emphasize the relevance of organizations as a focal
23
24
level of analysis for research on the sharing economy. Organizations serve as intermediaries
25
26
27 and constitute the backbone of the sharing economy. Bringing them to the fore of empirical
28
29 analysis is particularly helpful, as current theorizing and empirical studies of the sharing
30
31 economy often focus on the micro-level, such as motivation of users. In displaying the dual
32
33 role of organizations in the sharing economy as curators and guardians of online communities,
34
35 we take a fresh look at organizations in the digital age.
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
1
2 44
3
4
5 TABLE 1
6 Case Characteristics
7
8 Pseudonym Platform Type Orientation Founded Users Employees
9
10 Personal Services Sharing (PSS) Market
11 PSS01 Transaction For-Profit 2015 100,000 25
12 PSS02 Transaction For-Profit 2013 3,000 18
13 PSS03 Transaction For-Profit 2014 500 3
14 PSS04 Transaction Non-Profit 2015 6,500 3
15 PSS05 Transaction For-Profit Before 2010** Several Million** Several Hundred**
16 PSS06 Information For-Profit 2013 200 6
17
PSS07 Information For-Profit 2011 n/a* n/a*
18
PSS08 Information Non-Profit Before 2000* n/a* n/a*
19
PSS09 Information Non-Profit 2010 500 40
PSS10 Information Non-Profit 2010 1,500 6
20
21 Goods and Food Sharing (GFS) Market
22 GFS01 Transaction For-Profit 2015 n/a* 4
23 GFS02 Transaction For-Profit 2007 n/a* 5
24 GFS03 Transaction For-Profit 2015 20,000 6
25 GFS04 Transaction Non-Profit 2012 3,500 n/a*
26 GFS05 Transaction Non-Profit 2013 3,000 10
27 GFS06 Transaction Non-Profit 2013 200 2
28 GFS07 Transaction Non-Profit 2012 60,000 n/a*
31 GFS10 Information Non-Profit 2010 60 2
32 GFS11 Information Non-Profit 2012 500 20
33 GFS12 Information Non-Profit 2012 n/a* 7
34 GFS13 Information Non-Profit 2004 n/a* 70
35
36 * Organization could not or did not want to disclose exact numbers and/or years
37
38 ** More information would reveal the identity of this organization and is therefore withheld
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
1
2 45
3
4
5 TABLE 2
6 Case Data
7
8 Organization Interviewed Positions Type of Observation (Hours) Type of Archival Data
9 (Pseudonym) (Number of Interviews) (Document Pages or Video Minutes)
10
11 Personal Services Sharing (PSS) Market
12 PSS01 Head of Community Management Visited Community Events (4), Visited Community Documents (216); Website, Blog, &
13 (1), Head of Marketing (1) Site of Activity (2) Social Media (120)
14 PSS02 CEO (1), General Manager (1), - Community Documents (493); Website, Blog, &
15 Community Manager (1) Social Media (31)
16 PSS03 CEO (1), CEO (1) - Internal Documents (10); Community Documents
17 (44); Website, Blog, & Social Media (9)
18 PSS04 CEO (1) - Community Documents (104); Website, Blog, &
19 Social Media (17)
20 PSS05 CEO (1), Community Manager (1) - Community Documents (1046); Website, Blog,
21 & Social Media (58); Public Videos (3)
22 PSS06 CEO (1), Community Manager (1) Participated in Community Events (7) Internal Documents (362); Website, Blog, &
23 Social Media (273); Internal Videos (35); Public
24 Videos (16)
25 PSS07 CEO (1), Community Manager (1) Participated in Internal Meetings or Team Community Documents (270); Website, Blog, &
26 Events (2), Visited Site of Activity (11) Social Media (88); Public Videos (6)
27 PSS08 Head of Geographic Area (3) Participated in Internal Meetings or Team Community Documents (51); Website, Blog, &
28 Events (4), Participated in Community Social Media (7)
29 Meetings (7), Visited Community Events
30 (4), Visited Site of Activity (3)
31 PSS09 Head of Initiative (1), General Participated in Internal Meetings or Team Community Documents (735); Website, Blog, &
32 Manager (1) Events (6), Visited Site of Activity (2) Social Media (9)
33
34 PSS10 CEO (1), Community Manager (1) Participated in Internal Meetings or Team Community Documents (405); Website, Blog, &
35 Events (3), Participated in Community Social Media (11); Public Videos (2)
36 Meetings (4), Participated in Community
37 Events (2)
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
1
2 46
3
4
5 Goods and Food Sharing (GFS) Market
6 GFS01 CEO (1) - Internal Documents (120); Community
7 Documents (56); Website, Blog, & Social Media
8 (29); Public Videos (1)
9 GFS02 CEO (1) - Website, Blog, & Social Media (5); Public
10 Videos (11)
11 GFS03 CEO (1), Community Manager (1), Visited Community Events (13), Visited Community Documents (504); Website, Blog, &
12 Community Ambassador (1) Site of Activity (2) Social Media (53); Public Videos (2)
13
14 GFS04 Head of initiative (1), Community Participated in Internal Meetings or Team Internal Documents (14); Community Documents
15 Manager (1) Events (4), Visited Site of Activity (2) (231); Website, Blog, & Social Media (23);
16 Public Videos (1)
17 GFS05 CEO (1) - Community Documents (186); Website, Blog, &
19 GFS06 Head of Initiative (1) Participated in Community Events (2) Community Documents (1); Website, Blog, &
20 Social Media (6)
21 GFS07 Member of the Board (2), Founder Participated in Core Activity (2), Visited Community Documents (687); Website, Blog, &
22 (1), Community Ambassador (1) Community Events (4), Visited Site of Social Media (24); Public Videos (6)
23 Activity (11)
24 GFS08 General Manager (1), Community Participated in Community Events (12) Community Documents (804); Website, Blog, &
25 Manager (1) Social Media (21); Public Videos (3)
26 GFS09 Head of Initiative (1) - Internal Documents (81); Community Documents
27 (18); Website, Blog, & Social Media (8)
28 GFS10 Head of Initiative (1) Participated in Community Events (15) Community Documents (86); Website, Blog, &
29 Social Media (3); Public Videos (1)
30 GFS11 Head of Initiative (2), Community Visited Site of Activity (11) Community Documents (7); Website, Blog, &
31 Ambassador (1) Social Media (9)
32 GFS12 Member of the Board (1) Visited Community Events (3), Visited Community Documents (131); Website, Blog, &
33 Site of Activity (10) Social Media (13); Public Videos (9)
34 GFS13 Member of the Board (1) Visited Site of Activity (18) Community Documents (413); Website, Blog, &
36 TOTAL 43 Interviews (40 Hours) 170 Observation Hours 7917 Document Pages, 96 Video Minutes
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
1
2 47
3
4
5 TABLE 3
6 Data Illustrations
7
8 Aggregate Second- First-Order Representative Quotes and Observations
9 Theoretical Order Categories
Dimensions Themes
10
Scoping Community Structuring of “We have another extra community, the [specific label of sub-community] who represent the power users – we really want a strong
11
community structuring participation distinction between them and the ordinary users.”
12
boundaries architecture “A [specific user label] can become part of several communities, depending on what he wants, what he can do, and what matches his skills.”
13
“Sub-communities”
14
15
Structuring of “I call them our ambassadors.”
16 selected users “With the concept of the [specific label of the community ambassador] we believe to perform better, to become more active locally and
17 regionally, and … we do not have to do it [promoting sharing] ourselves.”
18 “The group manager [a specific label of the community ambassador] makes sense, as it is a central role that fosters exchange and gives tips.”
19
20 Fostering Creating a sense of “The [specific label of community] is not a closed group but an informal network – to which one feels he belongs.”
21 community belonging “I think for a community it is very much about a sense of belonging.”
22 identification “I as user should not only know [the offered service] but also identify with it.”
23
24 Instilling a sense of “We want one to feel … somehow responsible. That does not mean that one should feel obliged to engage every week. But I believe feeling
25 responsibility responsible contributes to the community.”
26 “It is give-and-take without a huge commitment. It is about taking care of each other and taking responsibility for each other.”
27
28 Nudging Promoting Promoting off-purpose “For us, community is really the decisive element with which we create something together with our users. Our users should all connect more
29 social off-purpose spaces to enable and have places where they can connect.”
30 relations spaces connections amongst “Our users are really connected with each other. At our location, they can exchange, they can help each other out:”
31 users
32
33 Promoting off-purpose “For them [users], our community events are a great opportunity to simply get to know each other a bit.”
34 spaces to enable “Over the internet it is still somehow impersonal. I can only figure out how someone behaves or get to know how someone ticks if I sit down and
35 personalized user talk with him.”
36 experiences
37
38 Showcasing Exemplifying ongoing “This is one of the sticking points, giving the people the feeling of ‘here something is currently happening.’”
39 participation interactions Events where users were allowed to promote goods and services other than those than the organization provided the platform to share
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
1
2 48
3
4
5
6 Exemplifying past “We try to push those who already did it [users who used the platform frequently] so that they share their experiences with others:”
7 interactions Events where users of organizations in the sharing economy were invited to share their experience with the platform
8
9 Steering Monitoring Documenting “We make and send reports about user activities. For example, ‘you have this resource and have shared this resource with such and such. Or
10 users users interactions next week the shared items of such and such are due, you have to take that back.’ “
11 “We definitely watch out for what we produce and then screen the forums to make sure that we have the right type of constructive messaging
12 Observing users even within the content that is put on our site by [certain label of sub-community].”
13
“We have our rules and our sanctions and they are communicated.”
14
Sanctioning Reminding users of
15
users interaction rules “If someone receives constantly bad evaluations, then we of course have to put these people off the platform, simply to ensure the service
16
Interrupting quality.”
17
interactions among
18
users
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
1
2 49
3
4
5 TABLE 4
6 Practices and Encompassing Activities to Strategically Govern Online Communities*
7
8 Practice Scoping community boundaries Nudging social relations Steering users
9
10 Practice Demarcating the perimeters of interaction and defining the Providing stimuli for interactions Exerting social control
11 Definition online community as a distinct social space
12 Activity of Community structuring Fostering community Promoting off-purpose Showcasing participation Monitoring users Sanctioning
13 Practice identification spaces users
14 Activity Establishing and reinforcing Creating a sense of Stimulating the creation of Exemplifying ongoing and Reviewing the Intervening in
15 Definition formal boundaries of and within belonging to and for the complementary social past interactions in the online appropriateness interactions
16 the online community online community spaces for the online community of interactions
17 community
18 Activity Degree of autonomy, degree of Degree of online and Degree of online and Degree of online and offline Frequency Frequency
19
Variance sub-communities overlap offline offline
20
Organization Activity Frequency per Organization
21
22 (Pseudonym)
23 PSS01 High Low High High Low Low
24 PSS02 High High High High High High
28 PSS06 Low High Low Low Low Low
29 PSS07 Low Low Low Low High High
31 PSS09 High Low High Low Low Low
32
PSS10 Low High Low Low Low Low
33
GFS01 Low Low Low Low High High
34
35 GFS02 Low Low Low Low High High
36 GFS03 High High High High High High
37 GFS04 Low High Low Low Low Low
39 GFS06 High Low High High Low Low
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
1
2 50
3
4
5 GFS07 High High High High High High
6 GFS08 High Low High Low Low Low
11
GFS13 Low Low Low Low High High
12
13 *Note: “High” denotes high frequency of observed activity, “Low” denotes low frequency of observed activity
14
15
16
17
18
19 TABLE 5
20
Frequency of Activities to Strategically Govern Online Communities*
21
22
23 Scoping community boundaries Nudging social relations Steering users
24 Community Fostering Promoting off- Showcasing Monitoring users Sanctioning users Cases in sample
25 Pattern structuring community purpose spaces participation
26 identification
27
28 Differentiation High High High High High High PSS02, PSS03, PSS05,
29 GFS03, GFS07
30 Customization High Low High Low Low Low PSS01, PSS04, PSS08,
31 PSS09, GFS06, GFS08
32 Standardization Low Low Low Low High High PSS07, GFS01, GFS02,
33
GFS05, GFS09, GFS13
34
35 Acquiescence Low High Low Low Low Low PSS06, PSS10, GFS04,
36 GFS10, GFS11, GFS12
37
38 *Note: “High” denotes high observed activity frequency, “Low” denotes low observed activity frequency
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
1
2 51
3
4
5 FIGURE 1
6 Patterns of Governance Practices and Potential Value Drivers*
7
8 Accessibility
9
10 Low High
11
12 Differentiation Customization
13
14
15
16 High
17
18
19 Value potentially created by Value potentially created by lock-
20 Boundary complementarity effects in effects
21
22 Multiplicity
23 Standardization Acquiescence
24
25
26 Low
27
28
29
30 Value potentially created by Value potentially created by
31 efficiency effects novelty effects
32
33 *Note: Circles represent the community boundary and – in case of circles within the bigger circle – sub-communities. Dotted lines represent permeable boundaries.
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
1
2 52
3
4
5 APPENDIX A
6 Details Research Design
7
8 TABLE A1
9 Steps Taken to Ensure Validity of Research Design (Adopted from Ariño & Ring (2010: 1079-1080)
10
11 Validity Tests Suggested Case Study Measures and Rationale Implementation of Measures in This Study
12 Construct validity: Use multiple sources of evidence: allows triangulation We used the following sources of evidence: (1) semi-structured interviews with informants
13 establishing correct and the development of converging lines of inquiry who are practicing community governance or planning it; (2) observations of situations
14 operational measures for the directly related to the online community; (3) organizational documents on community
phenomenon studied governance, such as guidelines and video tutorials; (4) publicly available documents
15
directed at the online community, such as FAQs and tutorials
16 Establish chain of evidence: allows external observer to We took the following steps to establish a chain of evidence: (1) detailed description of
17 follow the derivation of any evidence from research sampling strategy; (2) large number of interview quotations and observation memos in text,
18 questions to conclusions (3) table with illustrations of our data
19
Internal validity: establishing Have informants review draft case study report: We discussed intermediary and final findings informally with informants during public
20 a causal relationship, corroborates essential facts and evidence presented in the events and conducted a workshop to reflect important findings with a group of practitioners
21 whereby certain conditions case report, reducing the likelihood of false reporting
22 are shown to lead to other Have a general analytical strategy by (1) relying on a We relied on the online community governance perspective by Markus (2007) to guide our
23 conditions, as distinguished theoretical orientation to guide the analysis, or (2) data analysis
24 from spurious relationships developing a case description: helps the researcher choose
25 among different analytical techniques
26 Have a dominant analytical procedure by (1) pattern Our dominant analytical procedure was explanation building. We identified governance
27 matching, (2) explanation building, or (3) time series practices to explain how organizations govern strategic online communities, identified real
28 analysis: ensures that inferences based on the case types of governance practices to explain differences in how organizations use these
evidence are correct, ruling out alternative explanations practices
29
Use analytical techniques to manipulate the data: allows Following Eisenhardt (1989), we iteratively took the following steps: (1) triangulation of
30
putting the evidence in some order before actual analysis data on how a single organization governs its online community; (2) search for cross-case
31 patterns by comparing across cases
32
External validity: establishing Use replication logic in multiple case studies: allows We iteratively compared our emerging findings between the 23 cases
33
the domain to which a study’s researchers to establish the conditions under which a
34 findings can be generalized, phenomenon is likely to be found and those where it is
35 keeping in mind that the aim not likely to be found
36 is to generalize to theory
37 Reliability: demonstrating that Develop case study database: allows other researchers to Organized per case, our database includes: (1) all audio files and interview transcripts; (2)
38 the operations of a study can be retrieve the evidence directly observation memos; (3) all archival data
39 repeated, with the same results
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
53
1
2
3 APPENDIX B
4 Questions on Organizational Practices to Govern Hosted Online Communities
5
6
7 Who is your online community?
8
What is the role of your online community?
9
10 What metaphor or key characteristics best describe your online community?
11
12 How does your online community work on a day-to-day basis?
13
14 How does one become part of your online community?
15
16 How hierarchical is your online community?
17
How heterogeneous is your online community?
18
19 What differentiates your online community from the online community of other organizations in the
20 sharing economy?
21
22 How real is your online community?
23
24 How is trust established in your online community?
25
26 How do you interact with your online community?
27
28 How do users of your online community interact with each other?
29 How was your online community built?
30
31 How is your online community kept alive?
32
33 How is your online community steered?
34
35 What happens if users in your online community do not behave as expected?
36
37 Which characteristics would your ideal online community have?
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
54
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32 social and economic development, and the role of innovation in this process. She received her
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How Organizations Strategically Govern Online

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Organization and management theory (General) < Organization and

For organizations in the sharing economy, the online communities they

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