Understanding Power in Digital Platform Ecosystems (PlatformPower)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Manuel Wiesche
• Subject Area: Operations Management and Computer Science for Business Administration
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 521353095

Digital platform ecosystems take a fundamental role in today’s economy and are a significant research topic in the economics, computer science, management, and information systems (IS) discipline. Research understands digital platform ecosystems as sociotechnical systems connecting at least one supply side and one demand side on a market through digital technology. IS research aims to explain the mechanisms that enable value creation in digital platform ecosystems. A key mechanism is generativity, the ecosystem’s capability to encourage product and service innovation by external complementors. Many digital platform ecosystems exhibit a powerful platform owner that controls the ecosystem and can therefore implement governance mechanisms that increase value creation through generativity and put the owner in a position to capture a significant share of that value. As digital platforms are diverse, and each platform ecosystem consists of many different heterogeneous actors that interact with one another, there are different power structures across digital platforms. In these structures, power asymmetries exist, meaning that some players in platform ecosystems are more powerful than others. Current research however insufficiently explains the drivers of the distribution of power in platform ecosystems and its impact on generativity. In particular, specific antecedents of power remain opaque, for example, concerning the power advantage of platform owners in their ecosystem. This research project examines what constitutes power in digital platform ecosystems, the effect of a platform owner power advantage on the generativity of the ecosystem, and how platform owners and complementors shape the power distribution in the ecosystem. We conduct a longitudinal analysis of power in multiple digital platform ecosystems that tests a research model drawing on general power theories as a lens to understand the mechanisms underlying different power distributions. Moreover, we analyze the discourse on the digital platform ecosystem power distribution in the contextual change of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) to understand positions, narratives, and actions that both platform owners and complementors rely on to shape the power distribution in the ecosystem. With the expected findings, we contribute to IS research on digital platforms by (1) identifying and testing antecedents of power in platform ecosystems, (2) conceptually linking the power distribution in digital platform ecosystems to generativity, and (3) taking into account the role of the public discourse in the efforts of platform owners and complementors to shape the power distribution in their ecosystems.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria
• Partner Organisation: Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF)
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Maximilian Schreieck