University of Edinburgh Business School July 4–6, 2019
Reinhard Bachmann, SOAS University of London, UK
Antonina Bauman, Emporia State University, USA
Jörg Sydow, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
As a transaction within a sharing economy occurs in a virtual environment, one of the challenges is that, very often, users do not have any prior knowledge or experience dealing with each other. They are vulnerable in a situation of uncertainty and risk despite several mechanisms installed to control quality and reliability of a product or service. Typically this type of a situation requires trust (Cho, Kwon, & Lee, 2007).
There are several phenomena in the sharing economy which make the development of trust in this environment difficult. First, there is a lack of personal contact and face-to-face interaction, often considered crucial of trust emergence. Second, the line between providers and users is blurred as providers of one product can act as consumers of another product via an online platform that serves as an intermediary between the parties (Puschmann & Alt, 2016). Third, since the sharing economy keeps its competitive advantage through its often illegal actions (Miller, 2016), the development of trust may be undermined not only by lack of experience and face-to-face interaction but also the institutional environment. Fourth, the trust/control duality (Bachmann et al., 2001; Sydow & Windeler, 2003; Möllering, 2005) is little understood in this environment.
This sub-theme seeks to encourage discussion of, among other issues, the following topics:
· Sharing economy: advantages and disadvantages for participating businesses
· Sharing economy: advantages and disadvantages for individual contributors or entrepreneurs
· Emergence of trust in the sharing economy and the role of control in this process
· The role of interpersonal and inter-organizational relations and trust/control in the sharing economy
· Implications of the sharing economy for work and labor relations and the consequences for trust emergence
· Technological and organizational controls and their role in trust emergence
· Safety and security in the sharing economy
· Trends in trust and control research in the sharing economy
For submission information https://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egos/main.jart?rel=de&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1539047741567&subtheme_id=1511424479061
References
Bachmann, R., Knights, D., & Sydow, J. (2001): Trust and control in organizational relations. Special Issue of Organization Studies, 22 (2), 337-365.
Cho, D-Y., Kwon, H. J., & Lee, H-Y. (2007) Analysis of trust in Internet and mobile commerce adoption. Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
Miller, S. R. (2016). First principles for regulating the sharing economy. Harvard Journal on Legislation, 53(1), 147-202.
Möllering, G. (2005). The trust/control duality. International Sociology, 20 (3), 283-305.
Puschmann, T., & Alt, R. (2016). Sharing Economy. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 58(1), 93-99.
Schor, J. (2016). Debating the sharing economy. Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 4(3), 7-22.
Sydow, J., & Windeler, A. (2003). Knowledge, trust, and control: Managing tensions and contradictions in a regional network of service firms. International Studies of Management and Organization, 33(2), 69-99.