Coordination in a Digital Platform Organization

Abstract

The value of a digital platform (DP) can only be achieved through the coordinated actions of participating sides. Therefore, the question of how platform owners can coordinate multiple side actions is central. By positioning platform sides as part of the DP organization rather than viewing DP as a market or technological architecture, we highlight the differences in platform sides and how these differences must be acknowledged and managed as they are a source of misalignment among platform sides. Given that DP owners do not possess formal power over the sides (they are free to join other DPs simultaneously), our study demonstrates how a DP owner, in addition to putting in place structures to enable or constrain certain actions of platform sides, must also influence their narrowing of possibilities of action toward achieving coordinated actions. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to offer a process model of digital platform coordination that explains digital platform coordination in terms of the contextual conditions (when platform sides could enact their agency), the mechanisms of the platform sides’ agency enactment and digital orienting (an expanded repertoire of actions in coordinating platform sides through technology), and the resultant outcome.