Matching financial closeness with social distancing: Networking digital platforms within a corporate governance ecosystem

Abstract

The Covid-19 – Coronavirus pandemic has rapidly spread around the world, demanding for social distancing measures as a strategy to soften contagion. Whereas social closeness proves dangerous, financial proximity is increasingly needed and can be guaranteed by FinTechs or applications, like digital platforms. Networking platforms may be represented by bridging nodes like Mobile banking (M-banking) hotspots. M-banking and FinTech applications are fully consistent with distancing prescriptions and ease financial inclusion, allowing for 24/7 operativity. This study proposes an innovative interpretation of the networking properties of digital platforms and M-banking that represent a new – virtual – stakeholder, showing how they improve corporate governance interactions. Due to their scalability, platforms foster cooperative value co-creating patterns, with deep albeit still under-investigated governance implications. Network governance is a novel approach to describe the stakeholders’ ecosystem, and its value-adding physical and virtual interactions. The paper shows how to match virtual financial proximity with apparently contradicting social distancing. This study represents an advance in the literature, as it investigates about its smart (digital) extensions that can represent a shield against pandemic adversities, reducing transaction costs, and information asymmetries.