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A core premise of the paper is that participative, democratic organizational forms have a direct effect on openness. A key proposition is that organizational forms that promote inclusion, transparency and shared decision-making more broadly as part of their structure and culture would enhance greater openness. However, democratic forms are not a panacea when it comes to openness, there are inherent paradoxes, leading to inevitable tradeoffs that democratic organizations must manage.

The theoretical framework in the study explores the interaction between open strategy making and organizational democracy. This paper reviews the literature on open strategy and organizational democracy and presents propositions linking openness and elements of democratic organizations.

Open strategy requires a level of inclusion and transparency not typically associated with hierarchical organizations. This paper proposed that an organizational context where there are institutionalized processes that promote both transparency and inclusiveness, shared decision-making and a supportive organizational culture would promote openness. At the same time, these organizations need to manage key paradoxes associated with organizational democracy to benefit from its positive effect on openness. The idea is not that hierarchies cannot be open; they may simply need to be more creative and work harder at providing the scaffolding for participation.

This is a conceptual paper and we cannot make any claims of causality. It is also possible to refine the framework by adding or eliminating some of the conceptual variables.

Opening up the strategy process to non-traditional stakeholders can improve the strategy formation process. Non-traditional stakeholders can bring new insight, and be motivated and prepared for strategy implementation when they are part of the strategy formation process. Organizations need to focus on creating a climate that supports openness by emphasizing structural forms that promote openness. Sharing decision-making, profits and creating a democratic culture are important for successful openness. In addition, organizations need to manage the tradeoffs that arise as they link organizational democracy to openness.

This paper discusses the link between open strategy and organizational democracy. The research sheds light on how organizational forms, specifically structure affects openness, as well as the limits to structure and openness.

The purpose of this paper is to explore sustainability paradoxes in sharing economy initiatives by focusing on logistics management in last-mile logistics.

In this exploratory study, a total of 10 case studies were conducted in three categories of companies: anti-waste platforms, food delivery platforms and bicycle delivery companies. Twenty-seven face-to-face interviews with founders and/or managers and contractors (couriers, logistics service providers or volunteers) were the primary source of data collection. The heterogeneity of the sample enabled the authors to build an understanding of sustainability paradoxes in the logistics of sharing economy initiatives.

The findings indicate how logistics management impacts the sustainability of sharing economy initiatives in last-mile delivery. The authors identify seven paradoxical tensions (five of them social) generated by the contradictions between the organizations' promised environmental and social values and the impacts of their operations.

This exploratory research is based on a qualitative study of 10 cases and 27 interviews from heterogeneous samples; further empirical research is needed to ensure generalization.

The paper increases the understanding of environmental and social paradoxical tensions and awareness of logistics challenges.

The paper helps identify ways to reconcile promised values and impacts generated by sharing economy initiatives while managing last-mile delivery.

The results enrich the literature about the paradoxes in sharing economy initiatives by providing illustrations in last-mile logistics and exposing the underlying challenges for sharing economy logistics actors.

This paper aims to extend the existing views of coopetition into the broader context of open coopetition.

The authors build on the literature about open innovation cooperation between competitors in the open-source software industry, which we generalize to show that open coopetition between competitors and third parties can be observed in other industries and institutional settings.

The authors outline a research program on the management challenges of open coopetition-related and argue that open coopetition can not only be observed between business rivals but also between partners from university, industry, government and further institutional backgrounds.

The authors introduce to so-far neglected roots of the emerging research program on open coopetition and extend the prevailing business focus of open coopetition research to also systematically include open coopetition between partners from business and other spheres of society.

We are currently witnessing a new wave of the digital economy. A prime example is the sharing economy where an organization operates a platform for its online community, the sum of individuals who interact to exchange goods and services. The sharing economy blurs several boundaries of economic life – a fact that extant theory on platform organizing has yet paid little attention. We argue to consider two aspects of the sharing economy and revisit related theory to address this lacuna. First, we revive the concept of hybrid community to denote a variant of an online community that mirrors the boundary-blurring nature of the sharing economy. In a hybrid community, individuals interact both online and offline (instead of only online) and consume as well as produce. Second, we revisit the range of strategic responses suggested by extant literature to minimize the dependence of a platform organization on its hybrid community and show that the sharing economy requires management research to adapt and potentially recast existing claims.

This volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or understandings of organizational possibilities, with a focus on how collectivist-democratic organizations offer alternatives to conventional for-profit managerial enterprises. These include worker and consumer cooperatives and other enterprises that, to varying degrees, (1) emphasize social values over profit; (2) are owned not by shareholders but by workers, consumers, or other stakeholders; (3) employ democratic forms of managing their operations; and (4) have social ties to the organization based on moral and emotional commitments. The contributors to this volume examine how these enterprises generate solidarity among members, network with other organizations and communities, contend with market pressures, and enhance their larger organizational ecosystems. In this introductory paper, the authors put forward an inclusive organizational typology whose continuums account for four key sources of variation – values, ownership, management, and social relations – and argue that enterprises fall between these two poles of the collectivist-democratic organization and the for-profit managerial enterprise. Drawing from this volume’s empirical studies, the authors situate these market actors within fields of competition and contestation shaped not just by state action and legal frameworks, but also by the presence or absence of social movements, labor unions, and meta-organizations. This typology challenges conventional conceptualizations of for-profit managerial enterprises as ideals or norms, reconnects past models of organizing among marginalized communities with contemporary and future possibilities, and offers activists and entrepreneurs a sense of the wide range of possibilities for building enterprises that differ from dominant models.

The objective of this contribution is to pinpoint the practices of users' interactions with sharing economy platforms in Russia, as well as explore the source of motivation to use such platforms on the three cases of sharing economy platforms in Russia: Darudar [Gift-to-gift] (sharing goods), Bank Vremeny [Timebank] (sharing time and services) and Couchsurfing (sharing accommodation and leisure).

Empirical data were gathered from 25 in-depth interviews conducted for active users of the platforms and ethnographic observations of users' offline meetings as well as digital observations.

The results reveal that participants of the platforms tend to establish their own rules and norms of interaction, thus, fostering social connection. Findings suggest that users of sharing economy platforms are driven by the potential of minimising transaction costs and intrinsic motivation, such as getting experiences which have no market alternatives, upcycling and disposal of belongings, self-promotion and self-realisation.

In this study, sharing as based in the sharing economy is conceptualised as a separate principle of resource allocation. The theory was applied to the empirical material of three Russian platforms, which has not been done previously in the paradigm of sharing. The current literature on the sharing economy is largely switched to the for-profit North American platforms, while case studies from other settings are lacking. This article aims to fill this gap by providing insights into non-profit platforms' operation in Russia.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a categorization of sharing practices from a structured interdisciplinary literature review on the Sharing Economy. Instead of striving for a new definition, the authors distinguish nine types of sharing practices and provide an overview of prior investigations on sharing practices across three levels of analysis and 15 research areas. The structured analysis is translated into opportunities for future research on the Sharing Economy.

The study follows a structured literature review approach to uncover practices related to the Sharing Economy and similar phenomena. The authors analyze 210 articles from a broad number of disciplines, and develop a categorizing framework for Sharing Economy practices.

The paper identifies nine different types of sharing practices and provides a structured way for analyzing, comparing and positioning research on the Sharing Economy and related phenomena.

The categorization of sharing practices and the embedded interdisciplinary overview of studies on the Sharing Economy help to explain potentially contradictory research results and uncovers opportunities for future research in the topic area.

Given the variety of disciplines dealing with the Sharing Economy and the plenitude of definitions and related concepts, the categorization and research overview provides a consolidated view of the knowledge in the topic area and an effective tool for identifying paths for future research.

Though paradoxes constitute a basic ontological condition of organizational processes, the modernist approach has always been to find ways to resolve them. In this chapter, an alternative approach called hermeneutic appreciation is proposed. By accepting and affirming paradoxes through the process of hermeneutic appreciation, the generative potential inherent in them can be recognized and unfolded. This chapter presents a case study of an organization that demonstrated such a sophisticated understanding of hermeneutic appreciation. By not dismissing the paradoxes but by affirming and reframing them, members of this organization were able to reverse a visible organizational decline and instead infuse it with new energy and vitality leading to an eventual organizational renewal. Lessons learned from this appreciative inquiry project suggest that a hermeneutic appreciation of paradoxes may act as a change intervention and is likely to enable innovation and organizational transformation.

This paper aims to focus on collaborative consumption, that is, the peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange of goods and services facilitated by online platforms. Anchored in the access paradigm, collaborative consumption (e.g. accommodation rental and ridesharing services) differs from commercial services offered by firms (e.g. business-to-customer [B2C] carsharing). The aim of this study is to examine the nuanced styles of collaborative consumption in relation to market-mediated access practices and socially mediated sharing practices.

Following the general research trend on mobility services, the context of long-distance ridesharing is chosen. Data collection was conducted using participant observation as peer service provider, 11 ethnographic interviews of consumers and a netnographic study of digital artifacts.

Using practice theory, ten ridesharing activities were identified. These activities and the nuances in the procedures, understandings and engagements in the ridesharing practice led to the distinction of three styles of collaborative consumption: communal collaborative consumption, which is when participants seek pro-social relationships in belonging to a community; consumerist collaborative consumption, performed by participants who seek status and convenience in the access lifestyle; and opportunistic collaborative consumption, when participants seek to achieve monetary gain or personal benefits from abusive activities.

By taking a phenomenological approach on collaborative consumption, this study adds to the understanding of the sharing economy as embedded in both a utilitarian/commercial economic system and a non-market/communal social system. The three styles of collaborative consumption propose a framework for future studies differentiating P2P exchanges from other practices (i.e. B2C access-based services and sharing).

Most of the research on collaborative consumption platforms (CCPs) has focused on motivational drives, and little research has been conducted on the problem of unbalanced information sharing, also known as the “lemons problem,” and signals. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study conducted a netnography and an experiment.

The netnographic study showed that participants tend to use low ratings and negative reviews as cues implying more searches, use ratings as an anchor to adjust other information, and employ differing cognitive information-processing styles. The experimental results show that, in a normal environment (when ratings are high), visualizers (verbalizers) have more of an intention to use CCPs when they are exposed to abundant pictures (textual cues); however, when the cues lead to a further information search (when the ratings are low), this search behavior pattern is reversed: visualizers (verbalizers) have more of an intention to use CCPs when they are exposed to abundant textual cues (pictures).

This study extends previous research by showing that people frequently use differing heuristics depending on the context; that ratings have an anchoring effect and guide people in selecting a signal to use and condition how they use it; and that visualizers prefer text cues to pictorial cues when trying to make informed decisions under a condition that points to a further information search. These results are opposite of previous assertion.

Marketers are advised to provide a mechanism by which users can extract the cues they need and reduce the less urgent ones; devise a mechanism that screens participants and divides them into two categories: those who post honest evaluations and those who do not; and reduce the opportunistic behaviors of partners on both sides.

The current study addresses consumers’ use of information posted by other consumers on CCPs and demonstrates that participants use low ratings and negative reviews as cues implying more searches, use ratings as an anchor to adjust other information, and employ differing cognitive information-processing styles. Previous research rarely addressed these information search behaviors of consumers on CCPs.