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This paper aims to examine the recommendation system of the video-sharing website YouTube to study how control of users is effected on online platforms.

This paper conceptualises algorithmic systems as protocols – technological and social infrastructures that both facilitate and govern interactions between autonomous actors (Galloway and Thacker, 2004, 2007). It adopts a netnographic approach (Kozinets, 2002) to study not only the formal, technological systems of the platform but also the systems as they were made sense of, understood and enacted upon by actors. It relies both on information as revealed by the organisation itself, as well as discussions between lay users in online forums and press coverage.

The results of this study indicate that the ways in which platforms selectively facilitate interactions between users constitute a form of control. While maintaining the appearance of an open and neutral marketplace, interactions on the platform are in fact highly structured. The system relies on the surveillance of user interactions to rapidly identify and propagate marketable contents, so as to maximise user “engagement” and ad revenue. The systems place few demands or restrictions on individual users, instead control is effected in a probabilistic fashion, over the population of users as a whole, so as to, in aggregate, accomplish organisational goal.

This paper contributes to the literature on accounting and control practices in online spaces, by extending the notion of control beyond overt rankings and evaluations, to the underlying technical and social infrastructures that facilitate and shape interactions.

E-commerce content platforms are a typical type of multi-sided platform that combines transactions with social media platforms. To solve the managerial dilemma of balancing the tension between control and autonomy of influencers' output performance, this study aims to investigate how exercising output controls through performance rewards and performance punishments impact the quantity and quality of influencers' content generation.

Choosing JD WeChat Shopping Circle as the research context and leveraging the introduction of a double commission subsidy policy and a removal policy as quasi-natural experiments, this study applied the difference-in-differences (DID) method to empirically test hypotheses.

Performance rewards incentivize influencers to generate high-quality content, but such incentivizing effects attenuate over time. Performance punishment drives influencers to generate expected pieces of high-quality content, and such safeguarding effects accentuate over time.

This study proposes output controls as an important form of governance mechanism in multi-sided platforms and substantiates how rewards and punishments as two facets of incentives affect complementors' behaviors. In addition, by distinguishing performance-contingent rewards from completion-contingent rewards, this study helps resolve the mixed findings on the effects of monetary rewards in the user-generated content (UGC) literature.

The term “crowdwork” describes a new form of digital work that is organized and regulated by internet-based platforms. This chapter examines how crowdwork platforms ensure their virtual workforce’s commitment and control its performance despite its high mobility, anonymity, and dispersion. The findings are based on a case study analysis of 15 microtask and macrotask platforms, encompassing 32 interviews with representatives of crowdwork platforms, and crowdworkers, as well as an analysis of the platforms’ homepages and community spaces. The chapter shows that performance control on crowd platforms relies on a combination of direct control, reputation systems, and community building, which have until now been studied in isolation or entirely ignored. Moreover, the findings suggest that while all three elements can be found on both microtask and macrotask platforms, their functionality and purpose differ. Overall, the findings highlight that platforms are no neutral intermediaries but organizations that adopt an active role in structuring the digital labor process and in shaping working conditions. Their managerial structures are coded and objectified into seemingly neutral technological infrastructures, whereby the underlying power relations between capital and labor become obscured.

A growing body of research finds that gig economy platforms use gamification to enhance managerial control. Focusing on technologically mediated forms of gamification, this literature reveals how platforms mobilize gig workers’ work effort by making the labour process resemble a game. This chapter contends that this tech-centric scholarship fails to fully capture the historical continuities between contemporary and much older occurrences of game-playing at work. Informed by interviews and participatory observations at two food delivery platforms in Amsterdam, I document how these platforms’ piece wage system gives rise to a workplace dynamic in which severely underpaid delivery couriers continuously employ game strategies to maximize their gig income. Reminiscent of observations from the early shop floor ethnographies of the manufacturing industry, I show that the game of gig income maximization operates as an indirect modality of control by (re)aligning the interests of couriers with the interests of capital and by individualizing and depoliticizing couriers’ overall low wage level. I argue that the new, algorithmic technologies expand and intensify the much older forms of gamified control by infusing the organizational activities of shift and task allocation with the logic of the piece wage game and by increasing the possibilities for interaction, direct feedback and immersion. My study contributes to the literature on gamification in the gig economy by interweaving it with the classic observations derived from the manufacturing industry and by developing a conceptualization of gamification in which both capital and labour exercise agency.

The purpose of this paper is to understand which controlling and enabling practices are used, how the numerous supplying partners are managed and how positive network effects are generated in online service triads (multi-sided platform – supplying partners – consumers).

A single representative in-depth case study was conducted to refine theory on managing service triads. The main data source consists of field notes collected by one author, who held a temporary position within the organization. Additional data were collected from observations, internal documents, informal talks and 20 interviews.

The authors found controlling and enabling organizational practices in four main categories on two levels as follows: managing network composition (system level), managing order fulfillment and returns (operations level), category management (both levels) and capability enhancement (both levels).

The authors show that both controlling and enabling practices are present in online service triads. This enables platform owners and supplying partners to share responsibilities for creating positive network effects, i.e. to increase scale, which increases value, which again attracts more suppliers and consumers, which creates more value, etc.

The authors present a range of and controlling and enabling practices that describe how multi-sided platforms can manage numerous supplying partners in an online context.

This study is the first to show that contractual and relational governance is insufficient in service triads in online settings with numerous supplying partners. Further, the authors provide empirical evidence that supply networks continuously adapt over time.

The e-business platform has become a major driver for economic growth and development. The economic success of an e-marketplace greatly depends on the extent to which buyers and sellers are attracted to enter and actively participate in the e-business platform. Existing literature lacks empirical examination of factors influencing e-business platform attractiveness (EBPA) from a seller's perspective and understudies the interplay between technical and managerial considerations.

Based on the literature on network economy, modular systems theory, control theory and social exchange theory, the paper proposed that platform flexibility and platform control (PC) would affect EBPA through both direct and interaction effects. From a survey of platform sellers, the paper explored the influencing mechanisms of EBPA using hierarchical regression and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to understand the statistical associations and the set relations of the conjunctions and conditions.

The paper found that platform flexibility (PF), process control and clan control (CC) positively affected EBPA. In addition, the interaction between PF and process control demonstrated a substitution effect on EBPA, and the interaction between PF and CC demonstrated a complementary effect on EBPA. Also, the authors found that the interaction between process control and CC demonstrated a complementary effect on EBPA. fsQCA provided the configurations of causal recipes associated with EBPA.

From a seller's perspective, the paper presents both theoretical explanation and empirical evidence for how design factors (e.g. PF) and governance factors (e.g. process control and CC) may interplay to influence EBPA.

Rather than organize as traditional firms, many of today’s companies organize as platforms that sit at the nexus of multiple exchange and production relationships. This chapter considers a most basic question of organization in platform contexts: the choice of boundaries. Herein, I investigate how classical economic theories of firm boundaries apply to platform-based organization and empirically study how executives made boundary choices in response to changing market and technical challenges in the early mobile computing industry (the predecessor to today’s smartphones). Rather than a strict or unavoidable tradeoff between “openness-versus-control,” most successful platform owners chose their boundaries in a way to simultaneously open-up to outside developers while maintaining coordination across the entire system.

This paper aims to examine the structure of the control strategy that is being deployed on the control of the mobile materials handling platform, from the higher level onboard interface software to the low‐level control system that is tasked with the dynamic stability of the platform.

The application of the principle of the inverted pendulum in mobile robotics has only recently been made possible by advances in the technology of electronics. A mobile materials handling platform has been designed and built for use in manufacturing systems of the future. The principle of the inverted pendulum has been incorporated into the design. This means that the platform is able to maintain dynamic stability during specific periods of operation. The mechatronic engineering approach was adopted in the design of the platform, which produced an integrated embedded system.

Open source software being implemented onboard the platform for interfacing between the platform and remote client computers is found to be easily customisable according to the requirements of one's application. A solution to the problem of nonholonomic motion constraints that concern any differential drive mobile robot was found in a nonlinear state transformation algorithm. The algorithm was implemented on an intermediate level between the interface software and the low‐level control system. The low‐level feedback control system was designed using a linear quadratic regulator design method. Simulations of this control system showed that it was robust enough to reject predetermined disturbances in system characteristics.

The application of a mobile platform specifically designed for materials handling based on the principle of the inverted pendulum has not been attempted to date.

This paper aims to explore the governance of external entities that lie outside the boundaries of digital platform firms by using the theoretical lens of the transaction cost theory (TCT). TCT offers alternative modes of governance for effectively managing transactions in market, hierarchy or hybrid scenarios providing a perfect framework to study platform governance.

The paper explores governance issues between restaurant partners and online food delivery platforms in India via qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews of various stakeholders, including restaurant partners and platform managers.

The study reveals that information asymmetry, opportunism, control and trust deficit are the major strategic governance issues in online food delivery platforms.

Though care had been taken to cover all types of restaurants, due to lockdown number of restaurants studied was restricted in number. Despite the restrictions, findings provided valuable insights into the governance issues of the digital platform. Challenging times like Covid-19 make the study even more crucial from the strategic perspective. The study also adds to the literature on platform governance and provides practical implications for account managers and policymakers.

The study uncovers various critical governance issues. These, if resolved using the right combination of governance mechanisms, will lead to increased partner participation and value creation on the platform.

Platforms outsource the value creation to external entities without having any hierarchical control over partners. The paper studies governance outside the boundaries of the firm using TCT. Hence, it helps to extend governance outside the boundaries of the firm.

This study aims to focus on the impact of multi-level knowledge sharing between and within organizations on the risk control of rural inclusive finance. The paper presents a synergistic risk control system integrating external and internal factors for rural inclusive finance by constructing different knowledge-sharing platforms in an environment, which is full of many uncertainties.

This study is based on survey methods. To achieve the research objectives, the authors adopt a single case study approach. For data collection, the authors apply a wide variety of methods such as semi-structured interviews, field visits, second-hand databases and official websites.

The results emphasize that using multi-level knowledge sharing such as the inter- and intra-organizational level, can facilitate the risk control of rural inclusive finance during the post-COVID-19 era. Furthermore, it is also noted that achieving knowledge sharing at different levels by building diverse knowledge-sharing platforms can promote the risk control of rural inclusive finance from the individual-organization level to the chain level of multi-organization collaboration, which contributes to the formation of symbiotic risk control ecology.

The authors have formed the “Chinese wisdom” to deal with inclusive financial risks and to promote in-depth development in relation to the “last mile” practice of inclusive finance, which means the final and the most important phase of a project. The conclusions contribute to enriching the outcomes regarding the risk control of rural inclusive finance, provide experiences to its sustainable development and offer a reference to other countries with their risk control of rural inclusive finance.

Drawing on the knowledge-sharing approach, this study creatively resolves the persistent problems in the risk control of rural inclusive finance, which forms a powerful supplement to the extant literature. Meanwhile, the paper combines the two contextual factors of the post-COVID-19 era and emerging economies, which can be deemed as a novel attempt.