Abstract
Digital platforms pervade contemporary societies, but sociology currently lacks a general concept for investigating them. Platforms combine technology and organizational elements in particular ways, but existing concepts consider these combinations in a one-sided manner: Business approaches focus on technological features solely in economic relationships, sociological approaches underestimate the relevance of technology for the multiple relationship forms. Extending on the understanding that all digital platforms share a core-periphery architecture, we develop the concept of platform organization for the many instances where this architecture enables and governs a social order through digital interfaces. Our paper contributes to a necessary debate on general concepts for sociological research that reconcile the role of technology with the social orders brought about by diverse digital platforms.
Zusammenfassung
Digitale Plattformen sind weit verbreitet, aber in der Soziologie fehlt derzeit ein allgemeines Konzept zu ihrer Untersuchung. Plattformen kombinieren technologische und organisatorische Elemente auf besondere Weise, aber bestehende Konzepte betrachten diese Kombinationen einseitig: Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Ansätze fokussieren ausschließlich technologische Merkmale und ökonomische Beziehungen, soziologische Ansätze unterschätzen die Bedeutung der Technologie für die soziale Ordnung. Ausgehend von einem allgemeinen Verständnis der Plattform als Architektur mit Kern-Peripherie-Struktur entwickeln wir das Konzept der Plattformorganisation für die Fälle, in denen aus dieser Architektur über digitale Schnittstellen eine soziale Ordnung ermöglicht und beeinflusst wird. Der Artikel ist ein Beitrag zu einer notwendigen Debatte über allgemeine soziologische Konzepte, mit denen die Rolle von Technologie für die unterschiedlichen sozialen Ordnungen, die digitale Plattformen hervorbringen, untersucht werden kann.
1 Introduction
Digital platforms pervade contemporary societies, where they enable distinct forms of organizing labor (e. g. Vallas & Schor 2020), public discourse (e. g. Gillespie 2018), cultural production (e. g., Nieborg & Poell 2018), and many other aspects of social life (e. g., van Dijck et al. 2018). Sociology engages with digital platforms in various discourses but struggles with the basic concept of “digital platform”. Sociologists have taken up notions like “sharing economy” (e. g., Schor & Fitzmaurice 2015), “platform economy” (e. g. Kenney & Zysman 2016) or “platform capitalism” (e. g., Srnicek 2017) and address digital platforms in grand narratives of (imagined) societal transformations. These narratives are largely based on the perceived dominance of platform companies like Alphabet, Meta or Amazon and the frequent use of the term “platform” for various socio-technical phenomena in the public discourse. Digital platforms have also attracted a substantial number of empirical case studies (e. g., Rosenblat & Stark 2016; Schor et al. 2020; Pongratz & Bormann 2017; Veen et al. 2020). Such studies provide detailed insights into individual cases but are not designed to contribute a general understanding of digital platforms to sociology. Facing the plentitude of largely unconnected case studies, general overviews list and sort the various platforms, mostly according to their functions. Such overviews do not develop a basic concept of the digital platform either but instead unintentionally (Schmidt 2017) or deliberately (Dolata 2019a: 188) highlight the vast diversity of empirical cases.
Several recent contributions regard digital platforms mainly from an organizational perspective, but seem to be undecided whether platforms depart from traditional organizational forms sufficiently to warrant conceptual attention (Dolata 2019b: 186; Arnold et al. 2021: 352 f). Without a general concept of a digital platform, however, key questions remain: How can we decide whether a case called “platform” by informants is a digital platform in any conceptual sense? How do we find out what organizational elements of a company make it a platform company? How can we distinguish the organizational form of platforms from (seemingly) similar organizational forms, like company networks? Additionally, a platform debate that overemphasizes the classical organizational aspects may satisfy researchers interested exclusively in organizations but runs the risk of ignoring the relevance of platforms for broader changes in the relation between technology and social organization (see Grenz 2014; Seibt et al. 2019; Häußling 2020; Besio & Meyer 2022). While most sociologists would agree that digital platforms combine technological and organizational elements in characteristic ways, the conceptual basis for investigating this combination remains underdeveloped.
Sociologists who look for concepts that account for the joint role of technology and organization for digital platforms often turn to one of two salient approaches. One approach investigates digital platforms as business models whereas the other one conceptualizes digital platforms as governance mode:
Researchers regarding digital platforms as business models have developed elaborate conceptual tools to analyze how markets change through the technology-driven rise of this new form of organizing supply and demand (Sanchez‐Cartas & León 2021) or innovation processes (Gawer 2020; Langley & Leyshon 2017; Sturgeon 2021; Kretschmer et al. 2022). While this approach has uncovered the specific technological properties of digital platforms and portrayed the economic relationships emerging from their use, it remains highly focused on firm strategies and the impact platform technology and related business models have on the economy. This research analyzes how firms employ platform technology to compete and innovate in markets, yet tends to disregard the rich societal underpinnings that are known to enable market relations (Granovetter 1985) and the consequences of economic changes for other societal domains. Such topics might be only a niche interest to the economists who dominate the approach. The same cannot be said for sociologists, who have been especially active in debating what a true “sharing economy” could mean beyond shallow marketing claims (for an overview see Arcidiacono et al. 2018) and also investigate non-profit platforms (e. g., Bauwens & Pantazis 2018). A way to analyze digital platforms beyond market boundaries is to assume that they represent a more general type of social order.
The idea that digital platforms constitute a general type of social order is the common denominator of a second research approach. Its adherents try to understand digital platforms as governance mode (Stark & Pais 2020; Dolata 2019a; Grabher & König 2020; Flyverbom et al. 2019; Kornberger et al. 2017). Aiming to fit digital platforms somewhere between, or on par with, established forms of governance like network, market and hierarchy, researchers who adhere to this approach emphasize the embeddedness of digital platforms in society with its manifold problems of coordination. In this context, researchers treat digital platforms as a novel mode of governance that helps to coordinate actors in various spheres of social life. The narrow focus on societal features, however, underestimates how much the specific technological properties of digital platforms matter for coordination (similar point made by Faraj & Pachidi 2021).
This state of research leads to a situation where the two most prominent approaches used in sociology focus either on the role of platform technology for markets or on highly general forms of social order without a particular focus on platform technology. Sociologists’ comprehension of digital platforms lacks an analytical tool to capture how platform technology and social order relate.
We approach this problem by assuming that most digital platforms discussed in sociology exhibit a specific form of organization that is reliant on digital technology. We develop the concept of platform organization to capture the characteristic features of this organizational form. We argue that digital platforms are platform organizations if they share a common basic architecture (Baldwin & Woodard 2009) and rely on digital technology to enable a social order. According to our argument, a platform organization consist of a formal organization at the core using digital interfaces to enable and coordinate the activities of participants in the platform periphery. Furthermore, we posit that a specific social order manifests in this periphery, which can be analyzed as a particular configuration of the five elements of organization outlined by the partial organization approach (Ahrne & Brunsson 2011). We illustrate our argument by comparing the social orders of three prominent examples from the current debate: Uber, Twitter and Wikipedia. Treating our three illustrative cases as platform organizations, we demonstrate that the organization of digital platforms can vary by degree of organization and showcase how sociologists can analyze and compare the interplay of technology and social order across diverse digital platforms.
2 Architecture and Social Order of Digital Platforms
Taking an organizational perspective and extending on seminal research, we propose to capture the basic structure of platform organizations with the design pattern of the platform architecture. We suggest combining this view with the insights of the partial organization approach to provide general categories for the characteristics of each platform organization’s social order.
2.1 The Platform Architecture: Core, Interfaces and Periphery
In the technology and innovation management literature, the term “platform” denotes a specific form of modular technology that enables companies to connect to external actors in particular ways (Gawer 2020; Tiwana et al. 2010). It also describes a business model where firms try to attract external actors using their platform technology to generate value for the firm (Langley & Leyshon 2017; Thomas et al. 2014). Researchers in this field investigate how technology design or strategic decisions influence the success of the business model (Gawer 2020) or how the success of this business model influences traditional markets (Sturgeon 2021).
In this research stream, the study of platforms notably predates the current debate about the consequences of digitalization (Gawer 2009b). Early on, researchers have used the term “platform” to define technologies as well as organizations (Thomas et al. 2014). Applied to organizations, the term has so far remained limited to emphasizing a special form of structural flexibility (cf. Ciborra 1996). Applied to technologies, it denotes by contrast that a system’s structure follows a stable pattern, also called an architecture. According to Baldwin & Woodard (2009), a system has a platform architecture if it contains a core of tightly coupled elements, a periphery of components loosely coupled to the core, and interfaces to connect the loosely coupled parts of the platform. The interfaces define the rules of interaction between core and periphery as well as those between the components in the periphery.
The periphery of platforms is highly dynamic: Components can enter and exit the system or change their internal structure with relative ease. The stability of platform systems results from the core, which provides basic functionality for the system, and from the interfaces, which integrate core and periphery. Interfaces codify a small set of obligatory features for all interactions in the system. All components must abide by the interface definitions to be able to connect reliably to the core. In this respect, interfaces constrain the variability of components where the specified aspects are concerned. However, components are free to vary in respect to everything else. By setting transparent conditions for connectivity, interfaces thus facilitate the diversity of components beyond the small set of explicitly defined constraints.
Architecture, interfaces and components constitute established concepts in platform research. As yet, researchers mostly use them to describe platform technology (Bossetta 2018; Gawer 2020; Tiwana et al. 2010). The distinction between this technology and the social order it enables is often overlooked. This substantially blurs the focus of sociological research on digital platforms. Consequently, researchers run the risk of equating the digital platform with (aspects of) the core organization (Dolata 2019b; Gawer 2009a; Langley & Leyshon 2017; Rahman & Thelen 2019) or with activities in the periphery (Davis 2016; Viégas et al. 2007; Weller et al. 2014). Extending on a proposition made by Ametowobla (2020), we apply the terms of the technology-informed architecture concept to engage with the general patterns that underlie social order on digital platforms[1]. To capture the details of this social order we resort to the partial organization perspective.
2.2 Partial Organization: Elements of Decided Social Order
A major approach in sociology that deals with the social orders brought about by digital platforms draws on governance concepts to understand problems of social coordination (Grabher & König 2020; Stark & Pais 2020; Vallas & Schor 2020). Traditionally, governance research tries to ascertain whether patterns of coordination conform to the form of network, market or hierarchy (Powell 1990). In the debate on digital platforms, several researchers have highlighted cases that show a high similarity with well-known forms like network (Grabher & König 2020), market (Rochet & Tirole 2006), organization (Kornberger et al. 2017; Mair & Reischauer 2017) or community (Dolata & Schrape 2016). The established governance concepts have shed light on salient features of such empirical cases, yet only partially captured the phenomenon. Researchers have started to extend the collection of established forms to include new governances that rely on digital technology (Dolata & Schrape 2016; Kretschmer et al. 2022; Stark & Pais 2020). As traditional categories fail to adequately capture the characteristics of digital platforms, some researchers simply add a new form and conceptualize a placeholder, defining “Platforms as Platforms” (Stark & Pais 2020: 53). In contrast, others argue (Schüßler et al. 2021) that digital platforms neither fit into a well-known governance category nor clearly represent a single (new) type. Rather, digital platforms could constitute novel configurations of traditional types or fluidly move between known categories.
In this ambiguous situation we turn to a theoretical framework that was devised for equivocal forms of social order and delineates phenomena that lie between the neatly organized terminologies of traditional governance approaches. Ahrne and Brunsson (2011) developed the concept of partial organization to distinguish forms of social order based on decisions from other forms, where order emerges from informal relationships or institutions. In contrast to those emergent forms of order, decided orders result from conscious and deliberate choices. As such, they emphasize uncertainty, assign responsibility, and invite contestation.
Here, formal organizations present the most obvious, but not the only form of decided order. To identify forms of decided order outside of formal organizations, Ahrne and Brunsson put forward five elements of organization: membership, rules, monitoring, sanctions, and hierarchy. Membership identifies the individuals to be included and personally addressed in the social order. Rules define specific expectations that individuals should follow. They also establish ways to monitor how well individuals conform to these expectations, and positive or negative sanctions for (a lack in) conformity. A hierarchy involves processes to decide on rules and designates individuals who can hold others accountable to the rules. Since regular formal organizations exhibit all five elements, they can be considered a “complete organization”, in contrast to cases that exhibit only some or weak forms of the five elements and are thus forms of “partial organization”. Hence, they can also relate decided and emergent aspects of social order (Laamanen et al. 2020).
The perspective of partial organization provides a template that allows researchers to analyze social orders systematically by distinguishing them according to the solutions found for central problems of social coordination. Employing the elements as a general taxonomy (Apelt et al. 2017) allows researchers to transfer insights from organizational theory to other application domains (Ahrne et al. 2016) or to capture the social order of digital platforms, as for example showcased by Kirchner & Schüßler (2019) or Nielsen (2018).
2.3 Defining the Platform Organization: Architecture and Social Order
To define our concept of a platform organization, we now integrate the insights from the platform architecture literature and the partial organization approach to social order.
Following Baldwin & Woodard (2009), we regard platform architecture as a general design pattern. We propose that the organizational models of digital platforms conform to a platform architecture (Ametowobla 2020) whenever digital platform technology enables or shapes organizational patterns in a meaningful way. From this organizational perspective, a platform organization is enabled by a core, i. e., a formal organization operating a computer system which forms the backbone of the platform. We call this core the platform organizer. In many salient cases the platform organizer is a company, like Twitter, Inc. or Uber Technologies. Sometimes it belongs to another type of organization, e. g., a voluntary association like the Wikimedia Foundation. The platform organization also comprises a periphery made up by external components, e. g., users or organizations that engage with the digital platform to interact with each other. These components remain merely loosely coupled with the platform core (Kirchner & Beyer 2016): They can easily join or leave the platform periphery and do not act as employees or directly contracted agents of the core.
The relationships between the core and the periphery of a platform organization are governed by digital interfaces, e. g., interactive features of websites or smartphone apps. Interfaces regulate the inputs and outputs of the platform system and thereby essentially specify how components of the periphery can relate to the core and to other components, what forms of interactions are possible and what data is collected and returned. The digital interfaces enable and inhibit certain activities on the platform, e. g., because inputs need to conform to defined formats or because certain outputs are simply not possible. With this regulatory capacity, interfaces can also configure multiple roles in the periphery by assigning different labels, restrictions or capabilities to different user groups. In this way, interfaces define the standards that govern the technical capabilities as well as enable and shape the social behavior at the platform periphery (general point made by Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000).
A platform organization – more precisely – emerges from the amalgamation of two kinds of social order, arranged in the platform architecture: The core is made up by a complete organization, comprising, e. g., employees, formal rules and hierarchical structures.[2] This complete organization at the core directly controls the interfaces. The periphery lacks the fully fletched features of a complete, formal organization as, e. g., registered platform users do not sign employment contracts and remain only loosely coupled to the core. Empirical studies of diverse digital platforms have shown that the social order of the platform periphery can be captured with the partial organization approach (Kirchner & Schüßler 2019; Nielsen 2018). These studies have highlighted that the peripheries of digital platforms can predominantly resemble one established form of governance, e. g., a market (Kirchner & Schüßler 2019), or exhibit features of several forms, e. g. a network and an organization (Nielsen 2018), each in relevant proportions.
Activities at the platform periphery function not merely as appendix to the core but form an arena of social relationships in their own right. Through interface design, the platform organizer decides on central features of the periphery. Interfaces define, or at least shape strongly, who can take part in interactions in the periphery by registering as a user with an account at the platform (account membership, see Kirchner & Schüßler 2019), what interactions are possible or legitimate (rules), how rule-followers and rule-breakers can be distinguished (monitoring) and treated accordingly (sanctions), and what actors can decide on platform rules or hold others accountable to them (hierarchy). The main functions of the platform are generated by software, and all users connect to the platform through websites or apps. The platform organizer decides on and operates the digital platform technology, embeds the interfaces in it, and thereby enables activities and governs interactions at the platform periphery.
While the interfaces embedded in the platform technology are designed by the platform organizer and are therefore the result of decisions, other aspects of the social order of the periphery emerge through user activities and interactions. In this respect, platform organizations always build on an infrastructure of decided elements that allows for the unfolding of emergent elements in the course of technology use. A typical example is the interplay of rating technology and norms of reciprocity on online marketplaces, where trust between buyers and sellers relies in large parts on reputation. On such platforms, rating interfaces provide the technical basis for the system of reputation necessary for trust-based coordination, but the motivation to use the interfaces relies on norms of reciprocity and altruism (Diekmann et al. 2014; Diekmann & Przepiorka 2019). While such generalized norms seem to underly all online reputation systems, interface design influences which specific rating practices emerge (Bolton et al. 2013). Monitoring and sanctioning thus depends on both the platform organizer’s decisions about features of the interfaces and the emergent practices in which generalized norms of reciprocity are translated into specific norms for rating others under the circumstances of interaction on this online marketplace.
This interplay between decided and emergent elements relates to research on gradations and ambiguous states of organizational patterns that have been described with terms like “degrees of organization” or “organizationality” (Ahrne et al. 2016; Dobusch & Schoeneborn 2015; Grothe-Hammer et al. 2022; Kirchner 2019). The social order at the platform periphery is thus enabled by the digital platform technology, but remains distinct from it. Platform organizers decide which aspects of the platform periphery they attempt to design through interfaces and which aspects they leave up to emergence, but they do not fully control the outcomes and thus the emergent aspects of the social order in the periphery.
In the following sections, we illustrate our argument by using our concept of platform organization to describe the architecture and social order of three prominent digital platforms and exemplify how technology and organizational aspects relate in these examples.
3 Three Cases to Illustrate How Technology and Organization Relate
The concept of platform organization reveals that the relation of technology and organization on digital platforms is twofold: Firstly, the formal organization at the core of the platform uses digital interfaces to influence the behavior of platform users. Secondly, the interfaces shape selected elements of the social order in the periphery. The concept thus uncovers how the core can employ technology as an instrument to exert control on the periphery and highlights the limitations of this instrumental use. In the following section we illustrate that this general relation can be observed across diverse digital platforms by comparing the social orders of three prominent, yet disparate examples: Uber, Twitter, and Wikipedia.
Each of our examples represents a different variety of the platform organization. The presentation builds on existing literature (Bossetta 2018; Kirchner & Schüßler 2019; Rosenblat & Stark 2016; Schor et al. 2020; van Dijck 2013) and our own additional evaluations of the platforms’ user documentations. More comprehensive descriptions of the examples are documented in the appendix. The following illustrations focus on salient aspects of each platform’s social order and the role of technology therein.
3.1 Uber
The mobility platform Uber connects people in search of transport (for themselves, their food, or other items) with people who can provide it, and arranges the whole process from pickup to payment. The platform is most successful in the field of personal transport services.
Platform architecture. Uber is operated by Uber Technologies, a listed corporation that charges commissions for the transactions on the platform. As Uber Technologies owns only the platform technology but not the vehicles used to transport customers, the company defines itself as a mere intermediary between transport entrepreneurs and their customers. Drivers, competitors and regulators regularly disagree, accusing the company of mislabeling to evade regulation. In consequence of such conflicts, Uber Technologies is one of the most controversial providers of on-demand labor (Vallas & Schor 2020; De Stefano 2015). Users can access the platform only through mobile apps, and many of Uber’s interfaces rely on geolocation, using data about users’ position and movement to match drivers and riders, calculate the relation of supply and demand in an area, track ongoing rides or evaluate drivers’ performance. The interfaces of Uber determine almost all relevant aspects of the interactions on the platform. All online interactions are highly standardized. This means that users can, e. g., click on buttons or images to order or accept rides but rarely have any choice beyond accepting or rejecting predefined options. Core functions like the matching of riders to drivers are automated. Algorithmic systems processing users’ behavioral data determine prices, user ratings or the amount of commission drivers have to pay for each ride. The platform is designed to function as a digital marketplace, and market rules vary to increase the volume of transactions (e. g., surge pricing).
Elements of organization. The periphery of Uber has two groups of users: drivers and riders. Both types can access platform functions only with an active user account, which constitutes an account membership. Platform rules are almost completely embedded into the interfaces and define many aspects of online behavior. Registered users take part in monitoring and sanctioning as they rate the offline interactions during transport. With this rating they supplement the data generated by the automated monitoring of online behavior. Both types of data are input for automated sanctions which impact users’ rating scores or block their access to the platform when their score falls below a certain threshold. Uber has no hierarchy between or among individuals of the two user groups.
Decided and emergent elements of social order. The high amount of automation leaves little space for emergent aspects of social order. All online interactions are tightly controlled by the digital interfaces, and thus, by decisions made at Uber Technologies. An example for this is the combination of interfaces for rating and access in Uber’s reputation system. Uber’s rating interfaces enable drivers and riders to evaluate past interactions. In contrast to the rating-based reputation systems in other online marketplaces (see 2.3), these evaluations are primarily used to inform the platform organizer: Uber assigns drivers and riders automatically to each other, so neither drivers’ nor riders’ reputation matter much for their counterparts. Instead, the interfaces that enable login or calculate bonuses use drivers’ cumulative rating score as input. Each individual sanction thus formally emerges from riders’ evaluations and is not decided by employees of the core organization. However, Uber Technologies regulates all sanctions indirectly through decisions on interface design.
3.2 Twitter
The social media platform Twitter enables registered users to communicate via short messages directed to the public, specific sub-groups of users (e. g., followers) or individual users. It is regarded as the prototype of its own genre, the “microblogging” platform (van Dijck 2013), and one of the most frequented social media platforms worldwide (Bruns & Stieglitz 2014).
Platform architecture. Twitter is operated by the company Twitter, Inc., a private corporation that sells advertising on the platform and access to user data. Non-commercial communication on Twitter is free of charge, and the platform has become a highly popular channel for political communication. Twitter, Inc has changed revenue sources and ownership various times trying to translate the platform’s prominence into a profitable business model, so far without success. Instead of sustainable profits, the core organization attracts conflicting demands from both commercial stakeholders and the general public. The platform interfaces offer the registered users a small set of interaction options that enable them to exchange messages, react to them in standardized ways and mark other users as preferred communication partners. Similar to Uber, Twitter tracks users’ behavior and processes it to adapt details of the platform functions dynamically. On the one hand, the data is used to create an individualized stream of messages for each user and determine a list of currently popular topics that are visible to all. On the other hand, user data influences the positioning and price for the adverts that are a major source of revenue for Twitter, Inc. By following each other and reacting to messages, Twitter users create direct and indirect relations on the platform. These relations form an ever-changing network in the periphery of Twitter.
Elements of organization. All internet users can access Twitter to read messages. However, unregistered Twitter users cannot take part in interactions and are also frequently interrupted by automated prompts inviting them to create an account and thereby register in the periphery. There are almost no formal preconditions for this registration, which constitutes an account membership. The rules that govern the periphery regulate messages and interactions. In both cases, only the rules governing format are defined by digital interfaces. The platform technology determines, e. g., that a message ends after 280 characters or that users can show support for a message by clicking on an image. In contrast, the rules governing content are mostly defined by verbally formulated guidelines. Content rules are explicit, but not directly embedded in interfaces. Only the embedded rules are monitored and sanctioned automatically. The sole exception are positive sanctions for content: The platforms’ algorithmic systems recommend popular messages to many users, and thus, reward their authors by increasing their reach. Although the periphery of Twitter has no hierarchy among its registered users, extreme differences in reach result in widely disparate levels of influence on the platform.
Decided and emergent elements of social order. By governing the message format but hardly any aspects of the message content through interfaces, Twitter Inc. leaves it up to registered users which forms of communication they support or curtail. The recommendation systems do not form decided elements of order, but reinforce emergent dynamics. By contrast, negative sanctions may rely on users reporting messages (and thus on emergent interpretations of acceptable content) but are ultimately the result of decisions made by reviewers, who are employees or contractors of Twitter, Inc. As the rules for these decisions are not embedded directly in the platform technology, the role of the core organization in sanctioning, and thus the address for appeals, is much more obvious than, e. g., on Uber. All visible decisions by the core can become topics for Twitter conversations and spark appeals to revoke or otherwise change them. While Twitter, Inc. sometimes reacts to such emergent demands, the registered users of the Twitter periphery have no direct say on its rules.
3.3 Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free-of-charge online encyclopedia based on wiki software, i. e., software enabling users to read and edit websites inside a web browser. The platform is a showcase for peer production: Volunteers create, edit and monitor all articles, develop the software, and are involved in almost all aspects of platform operation (Viégas et al. 2007; Niederer & van Dijck 2010). Versions of Wikipedia exist in over 300 languages, and the platform is one of the globally most visited sites on the internet (Wikipedia 2021).
Platform architecture. Wikipedia is operated by the Wikimedia foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the open production and sharing of knowledge. To this end, it collects donations, develops the platform technology and ensures that all the autonomous country versions of the platform adhere to a common set of basic principles. The core organization of Wikipedia owns the platforms’ trademark and its physical infrastructure but neither the content nor the software. The interfaces of Wikipedia allow all internet users to read, write and discuss articles and to keep track of the constant changes all these interactions bring to the platform. Besides the actual encyclopedia, the platform contains many webpages dedicated to its administration and the organization of the Wikipedia community. This community consists of dedicated volunteers who produce most of the encyclopedic content, administer the platform and uphold the shared norms of collaboration it is based on. These “Wikipedians” are the most active users of the platform. By interacting with each other and with less committed users, they stabilize the network in the platform periphery. This network also includes the registered users who only read articles or edit them sporadically but do not engage in discussions or otherwise participate in organizing the periphery. Since Wikipedia’s purpose is the provision of knowledge to as many people as possible, outside actors, especially readers without user account, are also essential to the platform. Informing users from the general public, not just fellow registered users, is a major motivation for many who contribute to Wikipedia.
Elements of organization. As openness is central to Wikipedia’s purpose, many of the platform features are available to registered and unregistered users alike. Registration for an account membership is open to everybody with internet access. Wikipedia has many rules that define quality standards for encyclopedic content and regulate interactions among platform users. All is built on a small set of invariant principles supposed to safeguard the ideal of openness. Most other rules are defined through collective decision processes in the periphery and are basically open to permanent revision. The only rules embedded in platform technology either relate to formal requirements of encyclopedic articles or to the differentiated levels of access to platform functions users have according to their position in the hierarchy.
The platform technology monitors changes in articles and indicates if these changes violate rules of format. Encyclopedic content and interactions are not monitored automatically. Instead, users fill the discussion pages of the platform to determine if articles fulfill the requirements or if behavior is acceptable. Sanctions only become relevant if these discussions fail to produce consensus. For negative sanctions, users with higher positions in the hierarchy of the periphery curtail the rights of lower-positioned users to interact on the platform in specific ways. For positive sanctions, collective decisions (mostly votes) advance respected users in this hierarchy and thus confer to them the right to sanction others formally. The periphery of Wikipedia exhibits an elaborate hierarchy that combines formal rights with informal duties, and this hierarchy is determined in the periphery.
Decided and emergent elements of social order. Wikipedia blends a set of decided rules with decision-making processes that rely fundamentally on emergent consensus in the periphery. The Wikimedia foundation keeps a fragile balance between realizing the principle of openness by leaving decisions up to the periphery and safeguarding this principle by providing the tools through which registered users in the peripheral hierarchy can enforce the complex ruleset that results from these decisions. All interfaces, along with the rest of the platform software, are licensed in a way that precludes ownership by individuals or organization. The Wikimedia foundation thus neither owns Wikipedia’s interfaces nor decides directly on their design. This construction deliberately minimizes the influence that decisions by the foundation can have on the periphery. However, the Wikimedia foundation remains fundamental for the platform. By its statutes, it keeps the right to terminate individual account memberships or change the platform policies. As owner of Wikipedia’s physical infrastructure and sole point of reference for formal requirements, e. g., website registration or donations, it also controls many of the resources that are essential for the platform’s operation. Overall, the core organization of Wikipedia retains the possibility to take fundamental decisions about the platform, in spite of all the provisions to delegate authority to the periphery.
3.4 Summary and Comparison
The concept of platform organizations enables us to illustrate commonalities and differences across our three exemplary platforms. All three examples can be regarded as platform organizations according to our definition of the concept:
Uber belongs to a listed corporation operating the platform as a means to generate profit for its stakeholders. To this end, the core organization Uber Technologies organizes the platform periphery as a marketplace which provides revenue to the core. The interfaces are designed to enable and stabilize market exchanges, foster platform growth and sustain a steady stream of commissions. The social order enabling this gainful arrangement combines relatively high restrictions for account membership, closely monitored rules for most interactions and rigid sanctions for drivers. It has no hierarchy among users of the periphery, but a simple hierarchy based on the platform architecture: The core organization takes all decisions about the platform, and registered users in the periphery abide by them or leave.
Twitter belongs to a private corporation and is also this corporation’s sole basis for income. Twitter, Inc. does not organize a market but a network of microbloggers engaged in lively conversations. By writing, reading and commenting, the users in the periphery produce data which can be monetized by the core. The interfaces are designed to ensure that the conversations never stop and that Twitter, Inc. is supplied with a continuous flow of new user data. The social order of the platform is highly permissive, with (limited) access to conversations for registered and unregistered users alike, a low threshold for account membership, and rules, monitoring, and sanctions designed to primarily restrict the format of conversations but not their content. This content is secondary to the core but most relevant to the registered users of the periphery. Spurred on by Twitter’s algorithmic systems, their individual decisions to prefer the content of some users over that of others accumulate and produce the exponential differences in reach that are characteristic for the social order in Twitter’s periphery. However, these differences do not constitute a hierarchy, since all rights to the sanctioning of registered users remain with the core. Twitter, like Uber, only exhibits the basic architectural hierarchy between core and periphery. In both cases, the core organization can decide on the rules and digital interfaces, as well as unilaterally revoke the account membership of registered users (“de-platforming”).
In contrast to our two commercial examples, Wikipedia belongs to a non-profit organization founded by members of the Wikipedia community as a means to safeguard this community and its creations. The periphery comprises a network of contributors and readers dedicated to the creation of an open encyclopedia as well as to the idea of self-organization. The interfaces are designed to simplify participation, support collaboration and foster transparency. The line between registered and unregistered users is fluid, reflecting the ideal of openness. The social order of the periphery is backed by a large number of rules, emergent responsibilities for monitoring, precisely defined sanctions, and a steep formal hierarchy. Surprisingly, the strong norms of openness and participation guiding interactions on the platform produce a fairly bureaucratized form of social order, albeit one based on continuous discussions and regular votes. The Wikimedia foundation owns the technical infrastructure of the platform and ensures that the dynamic rules conform to the fundamental principles of Wikipedia. The platform thus also exhibits the basic architectural hierarchy between core and periphery, including the right to revoke account membership, even though the platform organizer delegates much authority to the periphery.
The periphery of all three platforms has a characteristic social order which can be regarded as a partial organization. Some of the elements of organization in the periphery are the result of decisions, some are emergent, and these differ from platform to platform. On Twitter, platform-wide decisions define only a loose frame for interactions. Rules, monitoring and sanctions mostly emerge when registered users decide who to follow, favor, or block. The platform periphery has a stratified order of influence, but that, too, is emergent, as it results from the accumulated preferences of individual registered users. All in all, the degree of organization in Twitter’s periphery is low, its social order forms a network.
The periphery of Wikipedia is much more organized than that of Twitter, with many formal rules, a partly automated system for monitoring, and a legalistic apparatus for sanctions and appeals backed by an elaborate hierarchy. The first main difference to formal organizations is that few of the organizational elements are the result of decisions in the narrower sense. They are explicit and formalized, yet accountable only to the community and their continuous discussions. The second difference is the lack of expectations; neither account membership nor positions in the hierarchy come with binding duties. Whoever feels responsible writes articles, engages in quality control, or votes on positions in the hierarchy. All in all, the degree of organization in Wikipedia’s periphery is medium, with a mixture of decisions and emergence in all elements. The social order of the periphery resembles a network, stabilized by a small set of highly active registered users forming a community (according to the definition of community advanced in Dolata & Schrape 2016).
While the periphery of Twitter and Wikipedia might unambiguously be accepted as an instance of partial organization, the same cannot be said of Uber. Uber’s configuration of interfaces fosters market transactions yet limits the individual autonomy of registered users, especially the drivers. Among our examples, this platform is most akin to a complete organization, with account membership as prerequisite for access to the platform, the highly regulated processes and the predefined role-set for the periphery. While the periphery is structured as a marketplace, it is exactly this very high degree of organization that exposes Uber Technologies to lawsuits in which Uber drivers claim that they are in fact employees of a for-profit company suffering a misclassification of their legal status (e. g. Vallas & Schor 2020). According to the core organization Uber Technologies, the platform does not regulate activities to such an extent that drivers’ account membership status would constitute an employment relationship. Instead, the algorithmic systems allegedly merely offer recommendations to support registered users’ autonomous decisions.
This self-portrayal as organizer of a platform marketplace is essential for Uber Technologies’ business model (Uber 2021), which is currently disputed in science (Prassl & Risak 2016) as well as in courts around the world (De Stefano et al. 2021). If we rephrase the arguments from our perspective, the core organization claims that relevant aspects of the social order in Uber’s periphery are emergent while its opponents in these disputes argue that they all result from decisions made by the core that leave drivers with very little choice. If Uber Technologies would be obligated to legally acknowledge an employment relationship with Uber’s drivers, the digital platform would cease to exist as a platform organization (as we conceptualize it) and instead become part of a regular transport service organization with app-enabled, employed drivers providing services for general customers.
4 Discussion and Conclusion
In this paper we conceptualized dominant instances of digital platforms as a distinct form of organization reliant on digital technology – the platform organization. We argued that digital platforms constitute platform organizations when they exhibit a common architectural pattern where a formal organization at the core deploys digital technologies as interfaces to enable a social order among external users who make up the periphery by coupling loosely to the platform via the interfaces. We claimed that the social order in the periphery can be understood as a configuration of organizational elements which depends on the digital interfaces the platform organizer implements to enable and govern interactions among users. Our concept of platform organization highlights how decisions about technology made by the platform organizer enable the social order in the periphery. We outlined the application of our concept to Uber, Twitter, and Wikipedia to illustrate the argument. Thus, we delineated how the concept of platform organization enables sociological research to uncover the relation between digital technology and social order across a diversity of digital platforms. Drawing on this outline, we now discuss the general implications of our concept.
Our examples illustrate that digital platforms with seemingly highly diverse forms are in fact organized according to the same architecture. In two of our examples the core of the platform is formed by corporations, in one the platform organizer is a non-profit foundation. Each of the organizers deploys different interfaces to enable and govern interactions in the periphery. The social order emerging from these interactions varies and can resemble, e. g., a marketplace (Uber), a network (Twitter) or a community (Wikipedia).
The concept of the platform organization captures the underlying features of the periphery through the five elements of organization proposed by the partial organization approach. By using the elements of organization as taxonomy, we can compare seemingly unrelated platform features and understand in which way they impact social order. In this perspective, differences between platform organizations arise from the ways in which platform organizers embed rules, monitoring and sanctions into the digital interfaces of the platform. Through organizational elements, platform organizers can also specify the account membership status for registered users and implement forms of hierarchy at the platform periphery. In line with the partial organization approach, we argue that the underlying features of the periphery come about by decisions of the platform organizer. This also holds true for the fact that the platform organizer at the core can decide not to decide on certain elements of the periphery and to enforce or not enforce some of them at will.
With our concept of the platform organization, we can distinguish cases by their degree of organization and reveal a continuum of platforms ranging between higher and lower degrees. A platforms’ positioning on this continuum derives from the extent to which the platform organizer tries to intervene in the social order of the periphery. Uber, for instance, constitutes a highly organized example with extensive rules, extensive monitoring and extensive sanctions. Wikipedia lies in the middle as its periphery has extensive rules and extensive monitoring, yet it only deploys sanctions sporadically. Twitter’s periphery has only a very limited set of rules and conducts sporadic monitoring and sanctioning, which makes Twitter an example of a platform with a low degree of organization.
Concluding from our argument, we can identify the platform organization as a form of decided social order with a basic hierarchy between core and periphery: The platform organizer’s decisions configure the digital technology by which interactions and relationships on the platform periphery are enabled. By providing this technology and controlling it, platform organizers invariably have the capability to decide on elements in the periphery. While they always leave aspects of the social order up to emergence, they can reconfigure the interfaces to trim and adjust emerging patterns in accordance with their organizational objectives. However, the capability of platform organizers to design the periphery to their liking through interfaces is necessarily limited: As long as users are not fully dependent on the platform, they can reject unfavorable conditions and leave the platform altogether when it loses attractiveness (Schor et al., 2020)[3]. But if organizers were to force the users into stronger dependence and couple them more tightly, they would gradually remove the difference between core and periphery, reshaping activities to de facto match traditional coordination modes as they can be found within a formal organization.
Our concept of platform organization goes beyond established research as we show that platforms are much more than technologies combined with business models that facilitate innovations or market transactions. We argue that any given platform establishes a particular social order at its periphery. This general perspective allows us to seamlessly integrate platforms like Wikipedia, which neither pursue profits nor participate in market competition, into sociological platform research. Conversely, the concept of platform organization easily connects platform research to other debates in sociology. By focusing on social order, it enables researchers to recur to established sociological theories and concepts from other debates when they consider the many societal preconditions and consequences of the development, success or failure of digital platforms. The perspective can also be used in the ongoing debates about “innovation” and “transaction” platforms (Gawer 2020). Here, researchers could apply the concept of platform organization to empirical cases to analytically differentiate between layers of social order and layers of platform technology that interrelate through digital interfaces. This approach could help to overcome the oftentimes confusing, sometimes technically incorrect usages of the term “digital platform” by distinguishing a primarily technological understanding of digital platforms from one that comprises technological and organizational aspects alike. The latter understanding, made explicit and elaborated, is necessary for sociological investigations that seek to comprehensively capture the societal embeddedness and consequences of digital platforms.
We also extend on research in which platforms are considered as governance mode by showing that platforms always require a formal organization at the core, but exhibit various forms of coordination among their peripheral elements. Here, we highlight the importance of digital interfaces for establishing and maintaining social order in the platform periphery. Our concept enables researchers to identify two distinct layers of governance: an architectural layer where the core governs the periphery and a component layer where coordination in the core and in the periphery follow different modes. More specifically, we show that platform organizations always amalgamate two types of social order: a formal organization as platform organizer and a configuration of partial organization in the periphery. We also demonstrate that digital platforms can be more or less organized, as the magnitude of decided and emergent aspects of the partial organization in the periphery varies considerably between cases. Depending on their degree of organization, digital platforms might appear more like a highly organized market, as in the case of Uber, more like a network, as in the case of Twitter, or more like a community, as in the case of Wikipedia. While the peripheries of our examples mostly conform to established types of governance, the social order of a platform organization’s periphery can also comprise elements of various governances and thus constitute hybrid forms as noted in the literature (see Nielsen 2018). Our concept of platform organization enables researchers to analyze the social order of digital platforms, whether it might resemble one dominant form of governance or exhibit characteristics of hybrid, layered or segmented forms.
Finally, we emphasize the fundamental relevance of digital technology for platform organizations. Core-periphery patterns like that of the platform architecture constitute a common issue in organizational research and related empirical fields. For instance, seminal research on work systems (Atkinson 1984; Kalleberg 2001) or industry networks (Piore & Sabel 1986) have long highlighted the interrelations between core and peripheral elements. The emergence of digital platforms (Davis 2016), too, has been portrayed from a historical perspective as a gradual erosion steadily transforming organizational structures into core and periphery patterns, e. g., through outsourcing or franchising. Against this background of known patterns and transformations, we posit that the platform organization constitutes a qualitative leap: The unique property distinguishing digital platforms from all other forms of organizing core-periphery structures derives from their reliance on digital interfaces. The way in which digital interfaces regulate the relationships between core and periphery as well as between peripheral components through the platform core differs from the regulation by personal relationships, formal rules, contracts, or norms. Essentially, digital technology amplifies and focuses the core’s ability to regulate, monitor and sanction states and activities of peripheral components. The interfaces used in platform organizations thereby raise core-periphery relations to a new level of a centralized-decentralized governance. With our contribution we point to digital interfaces and their role for social order and highlight them as the distinguishing feature of the platform organization as an organizational form.
The perspective we advance in this article suggests various avenues for further research. Our concept of platform organization offers the chance to debate systematically what aspects of digital platforms need to be in focus when investigating various sociological research questions, and how different empirical cases should be classified and conceptualized. While we posit that both platform technology and platform organizations conform to a platform architecture of core, periphery and interfaces, we acknowledge that platform technology can be applied in various organizational forms. This includes, for example, the internal usage of platform technology within a formal organization, which can oblige its members to use the technology through formal rules, or in a network of organizations, where the use of platform technology can be mandated through contracts. Similarly, research on so-called “innovation platforms” (Gawer 2020), i. e., digital platforms whose peripheral components consist of complementary technological artifacts, suggests that there are adjacent phenomena that have considerable overlap with those we capture with our concept of platform organization. We believe that research about the societal embeddedness of innovation platforms in particular could benefit from our proposed understanding of digital platforms that seeks to address the role of digital technology for social order.
In this sense, our concept of platform organization and our illustrations of salient cases in the current debates provides a starting point for further empirical investigations and conceptual elaborations. This includes the many variants of digital platforms in the empirical fields where digital platforms have gained some prominence in research as well as platforms that current debates do not yet consider. We expect that digital platforms will remain highly versatile and malleable, in line with the adaptive, programmable nature of their underlying digital technology. This might also lead to evolutions of the organizational form of digital platforms that are yet unknown. Overall, however, we believe that the key to understanding the relevance and impact of digital platforms (in all their diversity) in contemporary societies is sociological research informed by concepts that can relate the unique features of platform technology to the social orders its application enables.
Overall, our paper develops a basic concept for sociological research that defines the platform organization as a specific organizational form. By combining the perspective of a general platform architecture with the approach of partial organization, we derive a taxonomy for determining how the social order of digital platforms is configured through technology. We illustrate how this taxonomy can be used to investigate the organization of diverse digital platforms, thus adding to a common basic understanding of this phenomenon in sociology. Following our argument, digital platforms can be regarded as a particular combination of technological and organizational elements which can result in a distinct organizational form. The concept of platform organization reconciles a general understanding with the vast empirical diversity that digital platforms exhibit. It thereby overcomes the limitations of grand narratives and heterogeneous case studies by providing a deeper, overarching understanding of what digital platforms are and what they do.
About the authors
Dzifa Ametowobla, PhD in sociology, is a research assistant at the chair for Working Worlds’ Digitalization at the Technical University Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on the role of software in society, especially on the relevance of software development for processes of digitalization.
Research interests: Organizational Sociology; Sociology of Technology; Sociology of Software; Methods of Digitalization Research
Grasping Processes of Innovation Empirically. A Call for Expanding the Methodological Toolkit. In: Historical Social Research 40, 7–29. (2015, with Robert Jungmann and Nina Baur).
Stefan Kirchner is Professor of Sociology of Working Worlds’ Digitalization at the Technical University Berlin. He is especially interested in the transformative effects of digital technology for digital marketplaces and the ensuing reorganization processes of work and the economy. In his current research, he focuses on conceptual foundations to better understand how digital platforms operate and alter relations in various fields and societal arenas.
Research interests: Economic Sociology; Digital Platforms; Organizational Research; Digital Methods.
Who is leading the digital transformation? Understanding the adoption of digital technologies in Germany. In: New Technology, Work and Employment 37: 445–468. (2022, with Clemens Ohlert und Oliver Giering).
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Acknowledgments
We are particularly indebted to the participants of the EGOS 2021 sub-theme “Organization outside Formal Organizations” for their extensive comments on an early draft of this paper. We also thank the participants of the 2021 annual meeting of DGS-section Organizational Sociology, the 2021 retreat of the DFG priority program “Digitalisation of Working Worlds” and the 4th Workshop of Working Group “Digitalisierung und Organisation” for valuable feedback on our argument. The authors received funding from the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (FIS.00.0014.18) and the German Research Foundation (Priority Programme 2267, KI 2462/1-1).
© 2023 bei den Autorinnen und Autoren, publiziert von De Gruyter.
Dieses Werk ist lizensiert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International Lizenz.
