Dynamics of control on digital platforms

Abstract

Digital platforms are supraorganizational entities that usedigital technology to facilitate interactions between diverseactors, leading to novel formsof organisation and accompany-ing forms of control. The current Information Systems (IS)literature, however, struggles to describe control on digitalplatforms in a way that does justice to the dynamic characterof the phenomenon. Taking this as an opportunity, we followthe enactment of control over time and across parties in ahybrid ethnographic study of the social commerce platformPoshmark. Specifically, we conceptualise the dynamics of con-trol as changes in the means of control—formal or informal—and the sources of control—operator or participants—overtime. Tracking these conceptual dimensions, we identify thedistinct ways control has changed on Poshmark. Synthesisingthese findings into four dynamics of control, we show thatcontrol on digital platforms is rarely static due to aggregateeffects arising from the operator and from participant interac-tions with each other through the digital features deployed onthe platform. Based on these insights, our study contributes tothe IS literature on control by broadening the conception ofcontrol on digital platforms.The theoretical and practicalinsights generated in this paper thereby lay the foundation forthe systematic study of the dynamics of control that areunique to platform environments