Do Creators of New Markets Meet SDGs? Analysis of Platform Companies

Abstract

The platform economy is the embodiment of the activities carried out by its influential players, which by their very nature are new markets, facilitating the matching of suppliers and customers. A new market entails access to or even joint use of underused assets, provision of new working places, and simplification of human life with online transactions and services, which serves the assumption that the platform economy is able to undertake sustainable development and may meet a number of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) introduced in 2015. First, this paper aims to study whether the platform business model entails sustainability as its integral core concept. Second, it attempts to assess if platform companies from two selected industries—ride-sharing services and EdTech—meet SDGs comparably better than their predecessor linear companies in transportation and education. The study carries out an empirical analysis of eight companies. The results indicate that platform companies demonstrate a relatively lower commitment to SDGs compared to linear transnational firms, which can be explained by the level of maturity of platform companies and their still mostly non-public nature.