Prelims

Half Title Page

Theorizing the Sharing Economy

Series Page

Research in the Sociology of Organizations

Title Page

Research in the sociology of Organizations Volume 66

Theorizing the Sharing Economy: Variety and Trajectories of New Forms of Organizing

EDITED BY

Indre Maurer

University of Göttingen

Johanna Mair

Hertie School / Stanford University

Achim Oberg

WU Vienna University / University of Mannheim

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2020

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ISBN: 978-1-78756-180-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-179-3 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-181-6 (Epub)

ISSN: 0733-558X (Series)

Contents

Contributor Biographies

Aurélien Acquier (Ph.D., HDR) is Professor of Management at the ESCP Europe Business School, Paris, France, and Co-director of the ESCP Europe – Deloitte Research Chair in Circular Economy. Combining institutional, organizational, and historical analysis, he explores how the sharing economy is framed both conceptually and empirically. Mapping out the heterogeneous and paradoxical roots of the notion, he explores how the sharing economy is giving birth to various societal promises and controversies, business models, and organizational forms. His research on the sharing economy has been published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Revue Française de Gestion, or the Cambridge Handbook of the Law of the Sharing Economy.

Eliane Bucher is an Assistant Professor with the Nordic Centre for Internet and Society, BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway. She received the Doctorate degree in Management from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, where she is currently a Lecturer for Digital Media and Communications Management. She was a visiting scholar at Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research, Stanford University as well as the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. Her research interests include digital platforms and algorithmic labor and virtual and hyper-connective work environments. In particular, she is interested in how workers make sense of and “reverse-engineer” algorithmic decision-making mechanisms in increasingly digital work environments. Her research has been published, among others, in the Journal of Business Ethics, Academy of Management Discoveries, Computers in Human Behavior and the Journal of Managerial Psychology.

Valentina Carbone (Ph.D., HDR) is Professor of Supply Chain Management and Sustainability at the ESCP Europe Business School, Paris, France, and Co-director of the ESCP Europe – Deloitte Research Chair in Circular Economy. Her current research covers the sustainable dimension of SCM, corporate social and environmental responsibility, and sharing and circular economy business models. She explores the theoretical and ideological roots of the sharing economy and the multiple organizational configurations observed in the field, and in particular in the transportation/logistics sector. Her research on the sharing economy has been published in the Journal of Business Logistics, the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, the Revue Française de Gestion, and the Cambridge Handbook of the Law of the Sharing Economy.

Christian Fieseler is Professor of Communication Management with the BI Norwegian Business School, Norway and Director of the Nordic Centre for Internet and Society, Norway. He received the Ph.D. degree in Management and Economics from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, in 2008. Since then, his research is focused on the question how individuals and organizations adapt to the shift brought by new, social media, and how to design participative and inclusive spaces in this new media regime. In this field, he has over the last years, worked extensively on technology and new working modes in projects with the European Union and the Norwegian Research Council.

Koen Frenken is the Chair of Innovation Studies with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He previously worked at the University of Amsterdam, the University of Grenoble, and Eindhoven University of Technology. His early works focused on technological change from an evolutionary economics perspective (Frenken, 2006, Innovation, Evolution and Complexity Theory, Edward Elgar). He then concentrated his research on developing an integral evolutionary approach to economic geography. Since 2015, he has been developing an interest in the study of the platform economy and published a policy report on platforms in 2017 with the Rathenau Institute (“A Fair Share”) and a summary piece in 2017 on the sharing economy (“Putting the Sharing Economy into Perspective”, in: Environmental Innovation an Societal Transitions, with Juliet Schor).

Lea Fünfschilling is Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Design Sciences and CIRCLE, Lund University, Sweden. She received the Ph.D. degree in Sociology from the University of Basel. Her research interests are centered around understanding and conceptualizing the dynamics of sustainability transitions. Special attention is devoted to the co-evolution of institutions, actors, and technology in different industries and regions, in particular during processes of institutionalization and destabilization. She is active in the board of the Sustainability Transitions Research Network and the Project Coordinator of the Swedish Transformative Innovation Policy Platform.

Kerem Gurses is Assistant Professor at La Salle Barcelona, Ramon Llull University, Spain. He holds a Ph.D. in Management from IESE Business School and an MBA from Illinois Institute of Technology. He specializes in industry change, particularly how industry practices and technologies change through firm corporate political strategies. He is the author of many academic articles and chapters on this topic at Academy of Management Journal, European Management Journal, and The Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurship and Collaboration among others. Kerem has also done consulting and project work for food and aerospace industries.

Markus A. Höllerer is Professor in Organization Theory at UNSW Sydney, Australia. He is also affiliated with the Research Institute for Urban Management and Governance at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria. His scholarly work is focused on the study of institutions, meaning, and novel forms of organization and governance. His research interests include, among others, issues of collaborative governance at the interface of the private sector, public administration, and civil society. He has published in scholarly outlets such as the Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Discoveries, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Science, Organization Studies, Public Administration, Strategic Organization, and Urban Studies. Currently, he is serving as the Chairman of the Executive Board of the European Group for Organizational Studies.

Stefan Kirchner is Professor of Sociology of Working Worlds’ Digitalization at the Technical University Berlin, Germany. In his current research, he is especially interested in the transformative effects of digital technology for the organization of digital markets and the ensuing reorganization processes of work and value capture. He has published in journals such as Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Socio-Economic Review, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie and Zeitschrift für Soziologie.

Jennifer Klutt is a Research and Teaching Assistant at the Chair of Organization and Corporate Development, University of Göttingen, Germany. Her research deals with the governance of business models of the sharing economy, especially within new forms of working contexts such as coworking spaces as shared workspaces. Recently, she has published her empirical work in the Journal of Business Ethics. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis.

Christoph Lutz is an Associate Professor with the Nordic Centre for Internet and Society, Norway, and with the Department of Communication and Culture, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway. He received the Ph.D. degree in Management from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. His research interests cover a broad spectrum of topics and lie in the field of social media and Internet-mediated communication. More specifically, he investigates digital inequalities, privacy, the sharing economy, new forms of work, and social robots. Over the last years, he has published in leading Internet, communication, information systems and business/management journals such as New Media & Society; Information, Communication & Society; Social Media + Society; First Monday; the Journal of Management Information Systems; New Technology, Work and Employment; Academy of Management Discoveries; Big Data & Society; and the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Johanna Mair is Professor of Organization, Strategy and Leadership at the Hertie School in Berlin. She is a Distinguished Fellow and co-directs the Global Innovation for Impact Lab at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. Her research examines how organizations tackle societal challenges and alter institutional contexts. She is particularly interested in specifying alternative forms of organizing and transformative mechanisms involved in this work. She has published articles in Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Journal of Management, and other scholarly journals. She obtained her PhD in Management from INSEAD.

Indre Maurer is Professor of Organization Studies and Corporate Development at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Her research focuses on the governance of inter-organizational relationships and social capital. Her recent empirical work in these areas examines entrepreneurial, temporary and sharing economy organizations. She has published articles in Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Research Policy, and other scholarly journals. She holds graduate degrees in business administration and in socio-economics from Augsburg University, where she also received her doctoral degree in business administration.

Mareike Möhlmann is Assistant Professor in Information Systems and Management at Warwick Business School, UK. Furthermore, she is a Teaching Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics, UK. Previously, she worked as a Postdoc at New York University. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg. Her current research focuses on digital innovation, digital platforms, the sharing economy, digital trust, and algorithmic management. Her work and comments have been featured in media outlets such as The Times, the Financial Times, the World Economic Forum, and the BBC.

Philipp C. Mosmann is a Research and Teaching Assistant at the Chair of Organization and Corporate Development, University of Göttingen, Germany. His research interests focus on the governance of communities in new organizational forms such as in the sharing economy. From a business history perspective, he is further interested in how both historical and modern forms of shared resource use are connected. He holds the doctoral degree from the University of Göttingen.

Gemma Newlands is a Ph.D. candidate with the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and a Doctoral Stipendiary Fellow with the Nordic Centre for Internet and Society, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway. Her research explores the transformation of work in the digital economy, especially focusing on issues of platform-mediated workplace recognition and obfuscation in heterogeneous management settings. She is currently working on extending Axel Honneth’s critical social theory of recognition to account for the spread of nonhuman agents in the workplace. Her research to date has been published in leading Internet, communication, and business journals such as New Technology, Work and Employment, First Monday, Internet Research, the Journal of Business Research, and the Law and Ethics of Human Rights.

Achim Oberg is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Organization Studies at the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria, and Senior Researcher at the Institute for SME Research at the University of Mannheim, Germany. His research focuses on digital social science and has been published in journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Scandinavian Journal of Management, Policy & Politics, and Higher Education. In his research, institutional theory and network analysis are combined to explore the structuration of new organizational fields. He holds a degree in Business Administration and Computer Science from the University of Mannheim, Germany, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Jena, Germany.

Pinar Ozcan is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Saïd Business School, Oxford University, UK. She specializes in strategy, entrepreneurship, and technology markets. She regularly publishes articles at academic journals such as Academy of Management Journal and Strategic Management Journal and chapters at prominent books such as The Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurship and Collaboration. Pinar holds a Ph.D., a Master of Science, and dual Bachelor’s degrees from Stanford University. She is the 2015 recipient of the British Academy Newton Grant for open innovation, the 2016 SWIFT award for disruption in the UK Banking sector. In 2017, Pinar was selected for the Top 40 Business School Professors under 40 by Poets and Quants. In 2018, she was selected for the Global Thinkers 50 list for emerging thinkers. Finally, in 2019, Pinar was chosen as a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow.

Laura Piscicelli is an Assistant Professor with the Innovation Studies Group, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Prior to this, she was a Research Fellow in Strategy, Innovation & Business Models with Cass Business School – City, University of London, UK, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the University of Twente, The Netherlands. Her research interests are in the area of sustainable business and innovation, including the sharing economy, the circular economy, business models, digital platforms, and consumer behavior. She received her Ph.D. degree in sustainable consumption and design from Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her work on the sharing economy has been published in journals such as the Journal of Cleaner Production, Transportation Research Part D, and Sustainability.

Tino Schöllhorn is Researcher at the Institute for SME Research at the University of Mannheim, Germany. His research focuses on digital science and he has presented his work at international conferences and workshops such as the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, the European Group of Organizational Studies Colloquium, and the New Institutionalism Workshop. His research focuses on methods and techniques of collecting data about self-representations of organizations on the Internet and their interpretation from different theoretical perspectives. He holds a degree in Business Administration and Computer Science from the University of Mannheim.

Elke Schüßler is Professor of Business Administration and Head of the Institute of Organization Science at Johannes Kepler University in Linz. Her research interests include creativity and innovation, social and institutional change, and work and employment relations. She currently examines labor standards in global supply chains and new forms of digital organizing. She holds a doctorate in Business Administration from Freie Universität Berlin, an MSc in Industrial Relations from the London School of Economics and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Sussex.

Taneli Vaskelainen is an Assistant Professor with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. His research interests lie in the emergence dynamics of new industries and market categories. His studies mostly focus on empirical contexts with a promise of contributing to a more sustainable society (e.g., the sharing economy). His work has been published in academic journals in the fields of management, sustainability, and business ethics.

Laëtitia Vasseur is a Ph.D. candidate at the ESCP Europe Business School, France. She is working on planned obsolescence. She explores the institutional emergence of the public problem of extending products’ lifespan and its impact on organizations as well as its links with the concept of circular economy. She has authored a master thesis on the emergence of the sharing economy by analyzing the OuiShare organization in 2015. She is also the Director and the Co-founder of the Association HOP.

Sebastian Vith is Research Associate at the Research Institute for Urban Management and Governance at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria. He holds degrees in Social and Political Theory as well as in Organization Studies from the University of Innsbruck. Between 2012 and 2016, he gained insights into various private and public sector organizations as a consultant, trainer for innovation management, and expert for new business development. He is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on the sharing economy from a public governance perspective.

Dominika Wruk is Senior Researcher at the Institute for SME Research at the University of Mannheim, Germany. She has published articles in journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Economics, and the Zeitschrift für KMU und Entrepreneurship. Her research focuses on the emergence and diffusion of new organizational forms and concepts and on how such processes shape and are shaped by institutional environments. She holds a doctoral degree from the University of Mannheim.