CASE STUDY:

In this research report we have considered a ridesharing in emerging markets case study and
have analysed it in the light of big data governance. We have chosen this case study because
of the field of technology as sharing economy is relatively new and under-explored however,
the benefit from this market is expected to be immense. J. Basukie et al (2020), in their case
study researched a ride-sharing platform local to Indonesia named Go-Jek and explored more
about the application’s sections such as allocation of work, rating system and legal and
ethical concerns. They conducted semi-structured interview on stakeholders who used this
application, the users or customer, the driver, data scientists and regulatory bodies. The ride
sharing platforms are increasingly used in today’s modern and technologically equipped
world. From the first ride-sharing service named Sidecar in 2011 till today, it has been over a
decade that this kind of service has started and hence more knowledge about this topic is
essential due to increasing usage by drivers and customers.

The ride-sharing platforms comes under the sharing economy. Sharing economy is all about
having shared resources rather than having the ownership for example Airbnb. This economy
is believed to increase 24 folds by 2025. Ridesharing is one such part of sharing economy and
after US, India is the largest market for Uber. But this tremendous growth relies on certain
factors and those being big data governance and algorithmic management or in other words
governance of algorithm and data. The algorithm decides a lot of workflows in the
application such as judging the driver’s performance, work assignments, and it also knows if
the driver is associated with other ridesharing applications and whether it uses them in
alignment. This can give rise to discriminative and unfair outcomes. One such example is
Uber’s Greyball software which was part of Uber application breached policies in London as
it did not allow the government official to gain access to the application which in turn did not
allow them to freely exercise their law enforcement duties and this was due to the powerful
tool – Algorithm. Hence, to overcome this algorithmic management becomes essential.

Indonesia was used for the case study because it is one of the growing digital economic
country and due to poor infrastructure and public transport citizens tend to use personal
vehicles or ridesharing applications. The Go-Jek is popularly used, and its Go-ride and Go-
food are the widely used service. The application function is following way: The customer
requests a ride, the application uses customer’s GPS and matches them with the driver, once
the service is availed the driver is paid money in cash or through Go-pay. If the driver’s
rating is below 4.3 it will affect their payout. The research question in this case study was
“What are the challenges of big data governance and algorithmic management for the sharing
economy platforms operating in emerging markets?”. Using this question, the researchers
interviewed users and drivers and were able to capture negative impression towards data
governance and algorithm. The findings based on work assignments are, the drivers were
paid unfairly depending upon their choice of vehicle example two-wheeler or four-wheeler,
the maps needed to be re-engineered for two-wheelers, unfair algorithm. The findings for
performance and rating were, algorithmic mismatch between reviews and ratings, customer
understood rating, fake customer reviews, and poor data management. The findings for legal
and ethical concerns were fake dashboard data, no restrictions in forming algorithm,
regulation differences between different governmental departments and no regulation for
local transport. This case study found that drivers were being discriminated by making them
stay on the less profitable time and roads. The big data governance is next to absent for
drivers the algorithmic data-driven decisions substitutes to unfairness (J. Basukie et al, 2020).

In contrast to ridesharing the banking has better big data governance. The automated
calculations which channel the firm’s resources, but they are in turn governed by the firm’s
managing and risk models which are based upon regulatory standards. The big data and
algorithms are transforming the old institutions and mediums of transactional governance.
There should be an acting medium between humans and technology for better governance in
global finance (Campbell-Verduyn, et al, 2017).

Big data governance also helped with healthcare and Atrium health adapted big data
governance and built a data governance plan. The major aim of this conversion was to extract
maximum benefit from it. For example, when the analytical data of the patient is obtained it
can clearly depict the trends during treatment which will in turn help the doctors to take
timely and strategic decision about further treatments to the patient. It enabled and powered
the clinicians to make strategic decisions. The organization set up strategies that would
ensure data privacy and the information was managed in more holistic way (Fuller, 2018).

However, the governance challenged faced by all the above industries are that correct balance
between risk and prize while the volume of data keeps on incrementing. For this the
industries should rather adapt those governing practices that best suits them. Regulation.
Forecasted data growth, IT standardization centralized IT and organization structure are few
enablers of big data governance. Adhering to data governance practices will lower cost for
the organizations (Tallon, 2013).

REFERENCE:

Basukie, J., Wang, Y., & Li, S. (2020). Big data governance and algorithmic management in
sharing economy platforms: A case of ridesharing in emerging
markets. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 161.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120310

Fuller, S. (2018). Examining the Importance of Data Governance in Healthcare. Journal of

AHIMA, 89(10), p 42–44. http://search.proquest.com/docview/2124682601/

Campbell-Verduyn, M., Goguen, M., & Porter, T. (2017). Big Data and algorithmic
governance: the case of financial practices. New Political Economy, 22(2), p 219–
236. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2016.1216533

Tallon, P. P. (2013). Corporate Governance of Big Data: Perspectives on Value, Risk, and
Cost. Computer, 46(6), p 32–38. https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2013.155