ORGANISATIONAL RESPONSE STRATEGIES TO COVID-19 IN THE SHARING ECONOMY
Oksana Mont, Steven curtis and Yuliya Voytenko Palgan
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted production and consumption patterns across the world and forced many organisations to respond. However, there is a lack of understanding as to how sharing platforms have been affected by the pandemic, how they responded to the crisis, and what kinds of long-term implications the pandemic may have on the sharing economy. This study combined systematic literature review and qualitative web analysis of 30 mobility, space, and goods sharing platforms of different business models and geographies. An empirically-driven framework of organisational responses to COVID-19 was developed that comprises eight overarching response strategies targeting the organisation, users, and society. It is a novel framework that structures organisational responses to a high-impact, low-probability crisis. This study also discusses the long-term implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sharing economy, and explores how this may impact future responses among sharing platforms in the society that seeks sustainability. The learnings of this study have real-world significance. Sharing platforms can learn from each other about how to continue to respond in the face of the ongoing pandemic, and consider actions for future preparedness to potential forthcoming crises. With this we hope to encourage perseverance, long-term viability, sustainability, and resilience in organisations that may offer more sustainable ways of consumption and production.
A DECADE OF THE SHARING ECONOMY: CONCEPTS, USERS, BUSINESS AND GOVERNANCE PERSPECTIVES
Oksana Mont, Yuliya Voytenko Palgan, karin breadley and Lucie Zvolska
Sharing economy platforms have been transforming production and consumption systems in cities around the world. While the sharing economy may contribute to addressing sustainability issues, its actual economic, social and environmental impacts remain poorly understood. Advancing more sustainably promising forms of sharing and leveraging its benefits, while circumventing its pitfalls, is becoming increasingly important in the era of Covid-19 and climate crisis, economic downturn and uncertainty, and loss of social connectedness, particularly in anonymous urban environments. The ways to capitalise on strengths of the sharing economy are still poorly understood. In particular, the roles and perspectives of users, businesses and municipal governments in institutionalising the sharing economy in various geographical contexts are essential to examine. This volume seeks to advance the research field by focusing on four research areas: 1) understanding the sharing economy conceptually; 2) user perspectives on the sharing economy; 3) business perspective on the sharing economy; and 4) urban governance perspective on the sharing economy. The twenty articles in this volume discuss sustainability implications of the sharing economy from different perspectives, in various geographical contexts, and drawing on a range of disciplines. The volume makes a significant contribution by bringing in empirical findings from emerging and developing economies, including Brazil, China, Indonesia, Poland, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, thereby supplementing more frequently discussed perspectives from high-income countries. The volume also outlines the course for future research.
GOVERNING THE SHARING ECONOMY: TOWARDS A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK OF MUNICIPAL GOVERNANCE
Yuliya Voytenko Palgan, Oksana Mont and simo sulkakoski
The sharing economy is having a transformative impact on our cities, and many municipalities are facing a challenge – how to systematically engage with the sharing economy to both mitigate its negative and enhance its positive impacts. Academic understanding of municipal governance mechanisms of the sharing economy remains poor. To address this gap, we develop a comprehensive analytical framework for municipal governance of the sharing economy, comprising five mechanisms (regulating, providing, enabling, self-governing, collaborating) and eleven roles. We employ a mixed-method approach comprising literature analysis, 139 semi-structured interviews, five workshops, three focus groups, and seven mobile research labs conducted in Amsterdam, Berlin, Gothenburg, London, Malmö, San Francisco and Toronto. We then go on to demonstrate how municipalities have positive and negative interactions with SEOs through various mechanisms. Explaining why municipalities differ in their governance approaches towards SEOs is an important area of future research. The framework contributes to knowledge on municipal governance by offering a holistic classification of mechanisms and roles of municipal governance relating to the sharing economy. In addition to its academic value, the framework has value for urban policy and planning, as it can help municipalities navigate the governance complexity and become more agile when engaging with SEOs.
Sharing and the City: Roles, Relations and Governance Mechanisms
Yuliya Voytenko Palgan, Oksana Mont and Lucie Zvolska
The emerging phenomenon “sharing economy” comprises diverse arrangements where under-utilised assets are shared, exchanged or rented, often enabled by online platforms. With increasing urbanisation, cities face numerous sustainability challenges, to address which many cities work through formal and informal networks with promising concepts, such as the sharing economy. Cities play an important role in shaping the landscape of the sharing economy and in defining conditions for success or failure of individual sharing organisations. Despite the proliferation of multiple forms of urban sharing in the recent decade, the dynamics and mechanisms of how cities engage with sharing and how urban sharing organisations (USOs) influence cities has not been extensively explored. The institutionalisation of urban sharing takes place through two principal sets of dynamic processes. Firstly, a top-down institutionalisation process whereby a city government employs its agency to promote or inhibit certain USOs through the governance mechanisms of regulating, providing, enabling and self-governing (Zvolska et al. 2018). Secondly, a bottom-up process, which is a result of USOs’ institutional work. This chapter aims to advance our research on the first institutionalisation dynamic, and to develop further our conceptual framework (Zvolska et al. 2018), which demarcates four roles of municipal governance: city as regulator, provider, enabler and consumer. The research question is: How do city governments engage with sharing and what is their role in its institutionalisation?
Sustainability framings of accommodation sharing
Yuliya Voytenko Palgan∗, Lucie Zvolska, Oksana Mont
The existing research often overlooks the fact that accommodation sharing is not a homogeneous sector but comprises rental, reciprocal and free platforms. This paper aims to compare sustainability narratives held by operators and users of the three platform types with the narratives identified in the literature. First, drawing on framing theory, environmental, economic and social framings of accommodation sharing are mapped based on the extant literature and expert interviews. Second, sustainability framings of operators and users from the three types of accommodation sharing platforms are presented. The data is collected via 10 in-depth interviews and 86 responses to a qualitative structured online questionnaire. We find that current framings of sustainability implications of accommodation sharing vary among those who formulate them as well as among the three platform types. This has implications for the role of these platforms in advancing different types of sustainability.
Urban sharing in smart cities: the cases of Berlin and London
Lucie Zvolska, Matthias Lehner, Yuliya Voytenko Palgan, Oksana Mont & Andrius Plepys
Addressing urban sustainability challenges requires changes in the way systems of provision and services are designed, organised and delivered. In this context, two promising phenomena have gained interest from the academia, the public sector and the media: “smart cities” and “urban sharing”. Smart cities rely on the extensive use of information and communications technology (ICT) to increase efficiencies in urban areas, while urban sharing builds on the collaborative use of idling resources enabled by ICT in densely populated cities. The concepts have many similar features and share common goals, yet cities with smart city agendas often fail to take a stance on urban sharing. Thus, its potentials are going largely unnoticed by local governments. This article addresses this issue by exploring cases of London and Berlin – two ICT-dense cities with clearly articulated smart city agendas and an abundance of sharing platforms. Drawing on urban governance literature, we develop a conceptual framework that specifies the roles that cities assume when governing urban sharing: city as regulator, city as provider, city as enabler and city as consumer. We find that both cities indirectly support urban sharing through smart agenda programmes, which aim to facilitate ICT-enabled technical innovation and emergence of start-ups. However, programmes, strategies, support schemes and regulations aimed directly at urban sharing initiatives are few. We also find that Berlin is sceptical towards urban sharing organisations, while London took more of a collaborative approach. Implications for policy-makers are discussed in the end.
How do sharing organisations create and disrupt institutions? Towards a framework for institutional work in the sharing economy
Lucie Zvolska, Yuliya Voytenko Palgan, Oksana Mont
The sharing economy is a new form of resource distribution that is affecting traditional markets, cities and individuals, and challenging the prevalent regulatory frameworks, social norms and belief systems. While studies have examined some of its disruptive effects on institutional actors, there has been less focus on the ways in which sharing economy organisations work to create new or disrupt prevalent institutions. This study aims to fill this gap by 1) applying a framework for institutional work by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006) to help understand, map out and classify a variety of mechanisms for urban sharing organisations to engage in institutional creation and disruption, and by 2) testing and adjusting the framework to the context of the sharing economy. The analysis builds on empirical data from case studies, field observations and almost 70 interviews with representatives of urban sharing organisations and actors in their organisational field.