To Örebro University

Purpose: This article explores the various stakeholders' perceptions of the ways digital work is organised within the sharing economy and the social implications of the transformation of work.

Design/methodology/approach: Applying social media analytics (SMA) concerning the sharing economy platform Foodora, a total of 3,251 user-generated content was collected and organised throughout the social media landscape in Sweden over 12 months, and 18 stakeholder groups were identified, discussing digital work within seven thematic categories.

Findings: The results show that the stakeholder groups in the Swedish context primarily expressed negative views of Foodora's way of organising digital work. The social media posts outlined the distributive and procedural justice related to the working conditions, boycott and protests and critical incidents, as well as the collective bargaining of Foodora.

Originality/value: By utilising a novel SMA method, this study contributes to the extant literature on the sharing economy by providing a systematic assessment concerning the impact of the sharing economy platform on the transformation of work and the associated social consequences.

The year 2020 feels like the beginning of a crescendo of change. As environmental and social challenges reach an all-time high, the organization of our societies is coming under scrutiny. We, as a society, turn to technology to reinvent the organization of social life after disruptive episodes. Inspired by Bauman's theorizing to describe the cultural and societal zeitgeist, this thesis explains the institutionalization of one of the most promising alternative forms of organization of the past decade: the sharing economy.

Comprised of nine essays centered around three focal areas: (1) Organizational change, (2) Market change, and (3) Societal change, this thesis aims to explain the institutionalization of digital sharing platforms in liquid modern society.

This thesis finds that digital sharing platforms act as societal organizers on several dimensions of “in-betweenness.” As this moment in time can also be characterized as a period of “interregnum”—another moment of in-betweenness—where old structures are continuously disrupted but no clear new path has emerged, digital platform providers fill a structural void in our highly individualized society. Digital platform providers use community as an anchor, a belief, and sets of practices to create an emerging (intermediary) institution around which different forms of organization manifest.

Digital sharing platforms have, however, remained a grace note on systemic change: ornamental and practically non-essential. Still, digital platforms are setting new norms in all areas of organizational, market, and societal life. By evoking both elements of community and market, digital platforms are playing an important part in creating a symphony of our future societal order.

Purpose: Using the case of Foodora, this paper aims to assess the impact of technological innovation of an emerging actor in the sharing economy through stakeholders' perceptions in the market and non-market domains.

Design/methodology/approach: Using a methodological approach called social media analytics (SMA) to explore the case of Foodora, 3,250 user-generated contents in social media are systematically gathered, coded and analysed.

Findings: The findings indicate that, while Foodora appears to be a viable provider in the marketplace, there is mounting public concern about the working conditions of its employees. In the market domain, Foodora manages its status as an online delivery platform and provider well, but at the same time, it struggles with its position in the non-market sphere, suggesting that the firm is vulnerable to regulatory change. These insights highlight the importance of simultaneously exploring and balancing market and non-market perceptions when assessing the impact of disruptive innovation.

Originality/value: This study offers originality by providing an integrative approach to consider both the market and non-market domains. It is also novel in its use of SMA as a tool for knowledge acquisition and management to evaluate the impact of emerging technologies in the sharing economy.

This paper aims to assess the impact of the sharing economy on ways in which online commerce is evolving. By utilising Social Media Analytics to systematically track the developments of the sharing economy visà-vis online commerce, we analyse an empirical material of 8,755 user-generated content covering a time period of 24 months. Our findings illustrate that the sharing economy fuels platforms focusing attention to sharing commerce but also platforms engaged in social commerce and more general forms of e-commerce. Furthermore, our findings show the sectors in which sharing commerce, social commerce and general forms of e-commerce have become particularly prevalent. The paper contributes to previous literature by providing a systematic empirical contribution on the impact of the sharing economy on the evolution of online commerce and by conceptually explaining why the sharing economy gives rise to a relatively wide plethora of online commerce initiatives.

Purpose: Digitally intermediated peer-to-peer exchanges have accelerated in occurrence, and as a consequence, they have introduced an increased pluralism of connotations. Accordingly, this paper aims to assess user perceptions of the interplay between the sharing, access, platform, and community-based economies.

Design/methodology/approach: The sharing, access, platform, and community-based economies have been systematically tracked in the social media landscape using Social Media Analytics (SMA). In doing so, a total material of 62,855 publicly posted user-generated content concerning the four respective economies were collected and analyzed.

Findings: Even though the sharing economy has been conceptually argued to be interlinked with the access, platform, and community-based economies, the empirical results of the study do not validate this interlinkage. Instead, the results regarding user perceptions in social media show that the sharing, access, platform, and community-based economies manifest as clearly separated.

Originality/value: This paper contributes to existing literature by offering an empirical validation, as well as an in-depth understanding, of the sharing economy's interlinkage to other economies, along with the extent to which the overlaps between these economies manifest in social media.

The sharing economy can be regarded as a discontinuous innovation that creates increased abundance throughout society. Extant literature on the sharing economy has been predominantly concerned with Uber and Airbnb. As little is known about where the sharing economy is gaining momentum beyond transportation and accommodation, the purpose of this paper is to map in what sectors of the economy it is perceived to gain traction. Drawing on data from social and traditional media in Sweden, we identify a long tail of 17 sectors and 47 subsectors in which a total of 165 unique sharing-economy actors operate, including sectors such as ondemand services, fashion and clothing, and food delivery. Our findings therefore point at the expanding scope of the sharing economy and relatedly, we derive a set of implications for firms.

This conceptual paper aims to continue the debate initiated by Vince (2019) to deepen the understanding of institutional logic by further bringing psychoanalytical concepts into organizational and institutional scholarship. The paper argues the (re)enactment of institutional logics is based on the crucial dialectic between conscious manifestations and the unconscious ones. Institutional illogics as the hidden 'other' side of institutional logics may be a missing piece in the puzzle of understanding how institutions are (re-)enacted in institutionalization and institutional change processes. The conceptual arguments this paper illustrates review and analyze the contemporary phenomenon of the platform-mediated sharing economy. Based on the previous academic and public discourse, the sharing economy's institutionalization process can be described as having become a sharing fantasy where collectively structured fantasies unfold due to hidden and unseen patterns. By framing sharing as a structured fantasy, three institutional illogics emerge dehumanizing illogic, as-if illogic, and illogic of unconscious guilt. By combining micro-level analysis of the market society, such as psychoanalytical decision-making processes, with macro-level perspectives of institutions, we can understand how the (re)enactment of dominant (il)logics as collective fantasies jeopardize fundamental institutional change.

To what degree do participating and nonparticipating brands enjoy engagement of social media users in the setting of multibrand events? Based on empirical material comprising 4,424 user-generated content published before, during, and after Fashion Week Stockholm in February 2016, this article illustrates how the studied multibrand event both concentrated engagement for participating brands and created spillover engagement to other, nonparticipating brands. Therefore, these findings question whether individual brands benefit from being official participants in multibrand events. This article contributes to the field of event management by illustrating the dynamic interplay between engagement created in social media and multibrand events, while also highlighting associated conceptual and managerial implications.