Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Special issue: Digital platforms for development

2021; Wiley; Volume: 31; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/isj.12364

1365-2575

Brian Nicholson, Petter Nielsen, Johan Ivar Sæbø,

Sharing Economy and Platforms

Digital platforms are the hot topic in research and practice today and are now an area of multidisciplinary research in its own right, involving economics, accounting, entrepreneurship, management and beyond. It is also a core subject in Information Systems (IS), research comprising tracks in all major IS conferences and the topic of multiple special issues (e.g., Constantinides et al., 2018) with another currently ongoing in this journal focussing on "Digital Platforms and Ecosystems". The now mainstream research on digital platforms reflects the significance of the platform economy. Cusumano et al. (2020) points out that the top-ranked companies by market capitalization are Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google's parent company), and Amazon. Facebook, Alibaba and Tencent are not far behind. As of January 2020, these seven companies represented more than $6.3 trillion in market value, and all of them are platform-based businesses. Impressive though these figures may be on the commercial importance of digital platforms, the purpose of this special issue is to identify and foster a relatively unexplored research area concerning the nature, significance and impact of digital platforms for development. It is a response to the call from the ICT for development (ICT4D) community (e.g., Koskinen et al., 2018; Nielsen, 2017) to stimulate the development of a research agenda by inviting a variety of perspectives on digital platforms, including social, technical, economic, organisational, personal and environmental. Moreover, while existing research on digital platforms primarily focuses on the private sector, new business models and architectures in the context of the global North, we challenged the IS community to also explore non-profit platforms, platforms in the public sector and platforms in low resource and developing country settings. To proceed, contextualise and showcase the three articles in this issue, we must first get our hands around two key questions: what are digital platforms? and what is development? We leave it to the reader to explore the detailed review and definitions in this special issue, but our starting point for the first question is the definition from OECD (2019) (of 'online' platforms, a term used interchangeably with 'digital') as '… digital service that facilitates interactions between two or more distinct but interdependent sets of users (whether firms or individuals) who interact through the service via the Internet' (p. 23). This broad definition includes platforms of different types across different domains of application such as for example search engines, app stores, social media, gig work, marketplaces, dating, music, video sharing and so on. By necessity, a high-level perspective must suffice and in this issue Bonina et al. (2021) offer a classification into transactional, innovation and hybrid platforms. This differentiates between transactional mediated marketplaces (e.g., Uber) and platforms offering a broad audience tools to innovate (e.g., the Android platform). There are also 'hybrid' platforms that display characteristics of both transaction and innovation. An example of a hybrid platform from the commercial sector is the 'Valve' gaming platform that enables transactional sales of the products and also the social networking on the 'Steam' platform. The innovation platform component known as 'Steamworks' contains developer resources and an app store for products built by 3rd party professional developers and amateurs. In this issue, Madon and Schoemaker (2021) consider the relevance of this typology of transaction, innovation and hybrid platforms to a development context. In addition, they build on the concept of 'platformisation' which refers to the process by which a closed system is transformed into an open platform for commercial purposes or for collaboration. For the understanding of digital platforms and development, Sein and Harindranath (2004) point out that ICT has come to be recognised as an important contributor to industrial and economic development, classified into three main perspectives: modernization, dependency, and human development. To this list, we can add the sustainability perspective encapsulated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN, 2021). In short, the modernization perspective focuses on development as linked to the insertion of ICT in an economy (without much attention to context), and how 'under-developed' markets can leapfrog. The dependency perspective argues that economic growth in 'developed countries' leads to the 'underdevelopment' of poorer countries, (mostly former colonies) that may as a result, be subject to negative terms of trade and technology and industrial dependency. The human development perspective in the ICT4D field involves applying the work of Amartya Sen on capabilities in scholarly work and practical engagements (see for instance Zheng et al., 2018). A capabilities analysis focuses on realising individual potential, centred on the development of people economically, environmentally, socially and politically. Finally, sustainable development offers a departure by taking a view of development that is not Global South centric and instead emphasises a broad perspective on development that encapsulates the notion that 'development' may be encountered and needed also in the Global North. This is reflected in the 17 SDGs (UN, 2021). Modernization and dependency theory has to a large extent lost influence in contemporary academic and policymaking practice. Therefore, in the sections to follow we align with the overall premises of the human development and sustainability perspectives to consider how are digital platforms implicated in development. A previous special issue in this journal on 'Making the Developing World a Better Place with High-Impact IS Research' (Diaz Andrade et al., 2019) argued for a moral imperative for members of the IS community to contribute to a theoretical understanding of the role digital technologies can play in making the world a better place. In this issue, Bonina et al. (2021) does an excellent job of identifying how digital platforms may link to the SDGs and so we do not repeat those arguments here. There is also evidence that platforms may link to human development in terms of livelihoods. Hinings et al. (2018) point out that there are unprecedented novel opportunities for entrepreneurship in the form of 'digital building blocks', they write: 'Davis (2013) depicts an entrepreneur building an application without needing to leave his/her couch. The entrepreneur creates a webpage via Wordpress, can hire programmers via the platform Upwork and sell the application either via an Appstore or use a payment system such as Square' (p. 55). Amazon and Google reinforce the relative ease of engaging in digital entrepreneurship by providing software development resources that entrepreneurs can utilise to develop apps and sell them in a readily accessible market. The argument is thus that digital entrepreneurship may flourish in both Global North and South where Internet bandwidth and skills are available; consider the example of R Labs, which is a community based centre in the marginalised Cape Flats area of Cape Town, South Africa (https://rlabs.org/). The centre has been instrumental in offering alternatives to crime through engagement in digital entrepreneurship using platform principles (see https://rlabs.org/innovations/). The RLabs Zlto digital rewards platform is where members are incentivised for validated work and self-directed learning or training programmes. These are stored as a working asset on the blockchain that can be easily accessed and used to validate the capability of members on the market network platform. E-commerce platforms such as Amazon Marketplace and Shopify offer the tagline that 'Anyone, anywhere, can start a business'. Avgerou and Li (2013) exemplify this in their story of the Taobao platform entrepreneurs in China. Other examples include Malaysia's ERezeki (www.mdec.my/erezeki/) platform, digital labour schemes in prisons (Lacity et al., 2016) and refugee camps (www.techfugees.com). Malik et al. (2021) explain how policymakers have attempted to put in place wide scale training programmes for marginalised groups in the Pakistan Himalayas. Other examples include Samasource (www.sama.com), a crowd work platform, and Virtulahan (www.virtualahan.com) operating in the Philippines training disabled people in crowd work and as virtual assistants serving clients in the USA (Eskelund et al., 2018). Furthermore, in Sri Lanka, an innovation platform was established to allow suggestion and public consultation on new education reforms.11 https://egenuma.moe.gov.lk/public/showInstructions.mvc Education platforms such as edX offer access to high-quality online learning some of which are offered for free. There is also undoubtedly a positive effect of platforms as the basis for improved consumer experience in for example ride-hailing and delivery. In a study of Uber and Careem workers in Pakistan, Malik and Wahaj (2019) report benefits including an improved culture of trust, family confidence and female empowerment. Furthermore, there is evidence that there are benefits of social media consumption such as digital platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, blogs) used to organise and protest against oppressive regimes (Ameripour et al., 2010). Ezeomah and Duncombe (2019) review a series of examples of platforms in agriculture in the global South demonstrating many positive effects. However, there is a flip side of negative effects that we identify below in the following cross cutting themes: monopoly and greater inequality, shifts of power from state to platform, state use of platforms for digital authoritarianism and labour exploitation. From the statistics in our opening paragraphs, it is pertinent that there is a concentration in the USA with a disproportionate number of $1bn valued 'Unicorns'. Further, it appears that the potential for digital platforms to offer human and sustainable development is countered by serious negative effects. For example, a recent special issue of the academic journal Organisation was dedicated to 'The Dark Side of Digitalisation' and included articles focussing on the negative societal effects of US headquartered Uber and Upwork. Activists, scholars and regulators complain of digital platforms' association with surveillance, fake news, poor relations with Unions and exploitation of monopolies (see for example Foroohar, 2019; Graham, 2019; Taplin, 2017; Zuboff, 2018). In this issue, Masiero and Arvidsson (2021) also consider the dark side focussing on India's Aadhaar digital identity platform 'degenerative' effects in three main areas: exclusion, distortion and redirection. Heeks et al. (2021) asked the question whether digital platforms might offer beneficial mechanisms to overcome the 'institutional voids' (e.g., efficient payment systems, contract enforcement) present in developing countries. A promise of digital platforms is that they will fill these voids and change markets for the better. However, using evidence from Colombia and South Africa collected before and after the advent of three ride-hailing platforms: Bolt, EasyTaxi and Uber, the authors found that conversely these platforms expanded voids, such as lack of information available to government and created voids by circumventing the regulatory roles performed by government agencies and driver collective bodies. The preliminary results of a similar study (Nastiti, 2017) focussing on Indonesia's Gojek indicate a tendency towards exploitative labour practices. Regarding the opportunities for entrepreneurship and meaningful work via digital labour platforms, Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft (2013) are pessimistic about the sustainable livelihoods promise from app development due to the precarity and uncertainty involved. Heeks (2021) takes this argument a step further and considers the premise of adverse effects of digital incorporation including exploitative practices on digital labour platforms and criminal networks. Further, the forlorn hope that social networks may eradicate repressive regimes has been debunked by Morozov (2011) who identify more negative effects of fake news and online hate speech. Roberts and Mohamed Ali (2021) focus attention on the turn to digital authoritarianism in many developing countries and the systematic state use of digital technologies to close down deliberation and debate and with it any possibility of achieving the SDG goal of 'inclusive, participatory decision-making at all levels'. Reading the 'flipside' aspects of digital platforms may appear gloomy, but we are hopeful there are examples that definitely offer developmental outcomes or prospects of alternatives. On epistemology, Jimenez and Roberts (2019) review how Souza Santos and Linda Tuhwai Smith require us to (re)think what innovation and technologies are produced using Buen Vivir epistemologies of the Global South. Another stream of research considers collective action and the role platforms as digital global public goods can play (Sæbø et al., 2021). Finally, there is a small but growing interest in digital platform cooperatives (see e.g., https://platform.coop/). We now turn to the articles in this issue: Bonina et al. (2021) investigate what digital platforms mean for development. The authors first discuss the theoretical foundations of digital platforms, including the distinction between transaction and innovation platforms, their purpose, research foundations, material properties and business models. The authors then link these foundations to sustainable development and Global South contexts. This discussion provides the basis for a comprehensive literature review conducted for the article, from which two main themes emerge that shed light into the developmental role of digital platforms. First, digital platforms enable the access to services and products that might otherwise be out of reach especially for the more marginalised groups of societies. Second, digital platforms can also facilitate the operation of existing functions and processes by reducing some of the frictions and complexities that currently form part of performing those. The authors do however note that digital platforms are not without problems or a panacea for development, which is further evidenced in the six research questions that the article identifies for gaining deeper understanding of the connection between digital platforms and development. These six research questions are concerned with: issues of flexibility and openness to enable indigenous innovation, digital platforms and the effects on institutions, the exacerbation of inequalities, alternative forms of value, the dark side of platforms and the clarification of platform typologies for development. As digital identity platforms pervade the development and humanitarian sector, Madon and Schoemaker (2021) address the need for a deeper critical engagement with the transformation of identification systems used in support of refugee management and protection. Drawing on the concept of platformisation, the authors study the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) transition from a closed transactional system to an open innovation platform focusing on core processes of identification, value creation and platform governance. The study shows that UNHCR's data transformation strategy towards an open identification platform offers the possibility of increasing the accuracy and efficiency of the registration process and expanding the opportunity for third-party service providers to offer additional services that can add value for refugee wellbeing. However, they find that these technological opportunities do not necessarily translate to greater value if they do not mesh with current work practices, incentives and activities of service provider organisations and refugees, and if platform expansion is not accommodated within appropriate governance frameworks. Overall, the study highlights the limitations of using categories and analytic frameworks derived from the experience of commercial platforms from the Global North for the design of systems that are intended to protect vulnerable populations often in the contexts of the Global South. This finding holds important practical implications for UNHCR's currently evolving data transformation strategy as well as more broadly for understanding the opportunities and challenges for humanitarian organisations embarking on similar digital innovation strategies. Masiero and Arvidsson (2021) note how digital identity platforms, which are often regarded as a way to improve social protection systems, have been implicated in several unintended outcomes for beneficiaries. Their study focuses on one such outcome that the authors call degenerative, because it results in the weakening and deterioration of target systems. To clarify how such an outcome is produced, the study focuses on the incorporation of Aadhaar, the world's largest digital identity platform, in India's Public Distribution System (PDS), the largest food security scheme in the nation. Data from two south Indian states enable the authors to illustrate degenerative effects in the access, monitoring, and policy layers of the social protection system, theorising how Aadhaar enabled the degenerative outcome via exclusion, distortion, and redirection. The study introduces the concept of degenerative outcomes in the literature on platforms, engaging the profound changes that digital identity platforms effect in social protection schemes, and invites further theorisation of the several unintended outcomes associated with digital platforms for development. The publication of this special issue is the culmination of a journey that began with discussions between the three editors taken forward to a proposal to Robert Davison who has subsequently supported this special issue throughout. We held a workshop at the IFIP9.4 conference in Tanzania in 2019 and we express our thanks to participants at that workshop who subsequently submitted their work for review. Thanks to colleagues who served as associate editors: Margunn Aanestad, Richard Heeks, Eric Monteiro, Sundeep Sahay and Yingqin Zheng. We also thank the anonymous reviewers who contributed their time and knowledge to this initiative. Thanks to Richard Heeks & Tony Roberts for comments on this editorial.