Call for Papers

Platforms are digital infrastructures that connect actors in a flexible way, thereby intermediating between (at least) two sides of users who can be individual and collective actors. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft are popular examples of platform organizations – organizations that operate several platforms. Past scholarship yielded rich explanations on what makes platform organizations a distinct and novel form of organizing and how they organize users. What is far less understood is the role of platform organizations in societal change. Recent studies in three domains within organization studies have put forward relevant insights to understand this relationship.
 
One group of scholars has examined the link between institutional change and platform organizations (Boon et al., 2019; Frenken et al., 2020; Gawer & Phillips, 2013; Gegenhuber et al., 2022; Mair & Reischauer, 2017; Uzunca et al., 2018), providing insights on how platform organizations create, redefine, and weaken cognitive, normative, and regulative structures and practices that stabilize social behaviour (Scott, 2001). For instance, Alaimo (2022) showed how a platform organization specializing in automatized real-time exchange of information transformed the linkages between a fields’ institutions and practices. Gurses, Yakis-Douglas, and Ozcan (2022) found that platform organizations communicatively drive institutional change by championing alternative discourses and frames.
 
A second line of research has studied the change of knowledge paradigms and platform organizations. There has been a longstanding interest in examining the (dis)organizing power of information technologies, and how they reframe knowledge, mediate affects, and carry specific rationalities (Hasselbladh & Kallinikos, 2000; Orlikowski, 2000). Some of these discourses have taken new currency in the world of platforms (Alaimo & Kallinikos, 2022; 2024; Beyes et al., 2022; Reischauer & Mair, 2018). These studies point out how data infrastructures and various digital artifacts make visible the world in new ways, leading to the emergence of novel practices within and across organizational boundaries as well as increase the potential of disorganization and new forms of visibilities (Alaimo, 2022; Power, 2022; Ratner & Plotnikof, 2021; Reischauer & Ringel, 2023; Saifer & Dacin, 2021).
 
A third group of scholars has explored the link between societal change and responses to platform organizations from established organizations and forms of organizing, such as firms, public administrations, local and online communities, social movements, firms, standard setting organizations, and interest groups. One of these responses is to operate a novel established and owned digital platform with the objective to not lose ground against platform organizations and to collaborate with others in new ways (Khanagha et al., 2022). Another response is to both cooperate and compete with rival platforms (Reischauer et al., 2024; Reischauer & Hoffmann, 2023). Other studies indicate that established organizations and forms of organizing may also respond by taking a stance against platform organizations. For instance, local communities may organize protests to reduce platform offerings in their neighbourhood (e.g., local and virtual protests to reduce Airbnb offerings in tourist areas) (Cameron & Rahman, 2021; Ricart et al., 2020). Scholars have also begun to examine how organizational members react after platform organizations enter their space (Fraser & Ansari, 2021) and how they alter and open up formal structures, practices, and capabilities (Heimstädt & Reischauer, 2018; Keller et al., 2022; Reischauer et al., 2021).
 
Despite these advances, our knowledge of the role of platform organizations in societal change remains selective. Specifically, we know too little about the processes, practices, and rhetorical strategies through which platform organizations promote new knowledge paradigms, social structures, politics, and culture; how, when, and with what effects platform organizations alter established organizations and forms of organizing; and how these actors respond to platform organizations. This sub-theme seeks to provide a forum to address these (and many others) unexplored questions. We invite all kinds of papers that are rooted in various disciplines. Submissions include but are not limited to papers addressing questions such as:

• How do platform organizations create, interfere with, and weaken cognitive, normative, and regulative structures and practices that stabilize social behaviour?

• What is the role of data and digital technologies in reframing processes and practices of platform (dis)organizing? How does this impact cultural frames and knowledge paradigms?

• How and under which conditions do cultural frames, knowledge paradigms, and institutional logics of platform organizations emerge and become dominant?

• How do platforms construct and/or destroy specific societal and political discourses?

• What are the alternative discourses and frames championed by platform organizations? How are self-portrayals of platform organizations put forward to convince others?

• What is the role of social evaluations (e.g., stigma, legitimacy, identification), network embeddedness, and institutional logics in how platform organizations broaden their scope?

• How and when do responses alter formal structures, processes, practices, and identities of established organizations and forms of organizing?

• How and under which conditions do platform organizations shape the emergence, growth, convergence, and decline of fields and ecosystems?

• How do platform organizations capitalize on crises and field-configuring events?

• How do platform organizations interfere with existing notions of markets? How do market mechanisms transform because of platforms and platform competition?

• What dilemmas and paradoxes do responses to platform organizations cause for whom and how are they navigated?

• How do platform organizations react to responses directed at them, and with what effects?

• What is the role of organizational routines in responding to platform organizations?

• What is the role of sociotechnical arrangements in shaping collective action within and/or in response to platform organizations?

• How do members navigate the tensions of responding to platform organizations over time?

• How are responses interrelated across hierarchical levels and communities of practice?

References

• Alaimo, C. (2022): “From people to objects: The digital transformation of fields.” Organization Studies, 43 (7), 1091–1114.

• Alaimo, C., & Kallinikos, J. (2022): “Organizations decentered: Data objects, technology and knowledge.” Organization Science, 33 (1), 19–37.
• Alaimo, C., & Kallinikos, J. (2024): Data Rules. Reinventing the Market Economy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
• Beyes, T., Chun, W.H.K., Clarke, J., Flyverbom, M., & Holt, R. (2022): “Ten theses on technology and organization: Introduction to the special issue.” Organization Studies, 43 (7), 1001–1018.
• Boon, W.P.C., Spruit, K., & Frenken, K. (2019): “Collective institutional work: the case of Airbnb in Amsterdam, London and New York.” Industry and Innovation, 26 (8), 898–919.
• Cameron, L.D., & Rahman, H. (2021): “Expanding the locus of resistance: Understanding the co-constitution of control and resistance in the gig economy.” Organization Science, 33 (1), 38–58.
• Fraser, J., & Ansari, S. (2021): “Pluralist perspectives and diverse responses: Exploring multiplexed framing in incumbent responses to digital disruption.” Long Range Planning, 54 (5); https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024630120302156.
• Frenken, K., Vaskelainen, T., Fünfschilling, L., & Piscicelli, L. (2020): “An Institutional Logics Perspective on the Gig Economy.” In: Maurer, I., Mair, J., & Oberg, A. (eds.): Theorizing the Sharing Economy: Variety and Trajectories of New Forms of Organizing. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 66. Leeds, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited, 83–105.
• Gawer, A., & Phillips, N. (2013): “Institutional work as logics shift: The case of Intel’s transformation to platform leader.” Organization Studies, 34 (8), 1035–1071.
• Gegenhuber, T., Schüßler, E., Reischauer, G., & Thäter, L. (2022): “Building Collective Institutional Infrastructures for Decent Platform Work: The Development of a Crowdwork Agreement in Germany.” In: Gümüsay, A.A., Marti, E., Trittin-Ulbrich, H., & Wickert, C. (eds.): Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 79. Leeds, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited, 43–68.
• Gurses, K., Yakis-Douglas, B., & Ozcan, P. (2022): “Digitalization Versus Regulation: How Disruptive Digital Communication Technologies Alter Institutional Contexts Through Public Interest Framing.” In: Gegenhuber, T., Logue, D., Hinings, C.R., & Barrett, M. (eds.): Digital Transformation and Institutional Theory. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 83. Leeds, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, 133–166.
• Hasselbladh, H., & Kallinikos, J. (2000): “The project of rationalization: A critique and reappraisal of neo-institutionalism in organization studies.” Organization Studies, 21 (4), 697–720.
• Heimstädt, M., & Reischauer, G. (2018): “Open(ing up) for the Future: Practising Open Strategy and Open Innovation to Cope with Uncertainty.” In: Krämer, H., & Wenzel, M. (eds.): How Organizations Manage the Future. Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Insights. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 113–131.
• Khanagha, S., Ansari, S., Paroutis, S., & Oviedo, L. (2022): “Mutualism and the dynamics of new platform creation: A study of Cisco and fog computing.” Strategic Management Journal, 43 (3), 476–506.
• Mair, J., & Reischauer, G. (2017): “Capturing the dynamics of the sharing economy: Institutional research on the plural forms and practices of sharing economy organizations.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125, 11–20.
• Orlikowski, W.J. (2000): “Using technology and constituting structures: A practice lens for studying technology in organizations.” Organization Science, 11 (4), 404–428.
• Keller, A., Konlechner, S., Güttel, W.H., & Reischauer, G. (2022): “Overcoming path-dependent dynamic capabilities.” Strategic Organization, online first: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14761270221125807.
• Power, M. (2022): “Theorizing the Economy of Traces: From Audit Society to Surveillance Capitalism.” Organization Theory, 3 (3), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/26317877211052296.
• Ratner, H., & Plotnikof, M. (2021): “Technology and dis/organization: Digital data infrastructures as partial connections.” Organization Studies, 43 (7), 1049–1067.
• Reischauer, G., Engelmann, A., Gawer, A., & Hoffmann, W.H. (2024): “The slipstream strategy: How high-status OEMs coopete with platforms to maintain their digital extensions’ edge.” Research Policy, 53 (7), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733324000817.
• Reischauer, G,. & Fuenfschilling, L. (2023): “Digital sustainability: Tackling climate change with bits and bytes.” In: Starik, M., Rands, G., Deason, J., & Kanashiro, P. (eds.): Handbook of Multi-Level Climate Actions. Sparking and Sustaining Transformative Approaches. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 173–186.
• Reischauer, G., Güttel, W., & Schüßler, E. (2021): “Aligning the design of intermediary organisations with the ecosystem.” Industry and Innovation, 28 (5), 594–619.
• Reischauer, G., & Hoffmann, W. (2023): “Digital coopetition: Creating and capturing value with rivals in the age of algorithms, big data, and platforms.” In: Cennamo, C., Dagnino, G., & Zhu, F. (eds.): Research Handbook on Digital Strategy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 360–375.
• Reischauer, G., & Mair, J. (2018): “How organizations strategically govern online communities: Lessons from the sharing economy.” Academy of Management Discoveries, 4 (3), 220–247.
• Reischauer, G., & Ringel, L. (2023): “Unmanaged transparency in a digital society: Swiss army knife or double-edged sword?” Organization Studies, 44 (1), 77–104.
• Ricart, J.E., Snihur, Y., Carrasco-Farré, C., & Berrone, P. (2020): “Grassroots resistance to digital platforms and relational business model design to overcome it: A conceptual framework.” Strategy Science, 5 (3), 147–291.
• Saifer, A., & Dacin, M.T. (2021): “Data and organization studies: Aesthetics, emotions, discourse and our everyday encounters with data.” Organization Studies, 43 (4), 623–636.
• Scott, W.R. (2001): Institutions and Organizations. Ideas, Interests, and Identities (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
• Uzunca, B., Rigtering, J.P.C., & Ozcan, P. (2018): “Sharing and shaping: A cross-country comparison of how sharing economy firms shape their institutional environment to gain legitimacy.” Academy of Management Discoveries, 4 (3), 248–272.
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