Orchestration and governance in digital platform ecosystems: a literature review and trends
| Published date | 10 June 2019 |
| Pages | 329-351 |
| Date | 10 June 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/DPRG-11-2018-0067 |
| Author | Sandip Mukhopadhyay,Harry Bouwman |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information policy |
Orchestration and governance in digital
platform ecosystems: a literature review
and trends
Sandip Mukhopadhyay and Harry Bouwman
Abstract
Purpose –Because of the attention increasingly being focused on digital transformation, interest in
business models of platform-enabled ecosystems is rising rapidly. Although there are different
theoretical views on the role of ecosystems, a synthesis of research, with a focus on governance and
orchestrationin dynamic, multi-industry eco-systems,is lacking.
Design/methodology/approach –A systematicliterature review was conducted by following a rigorous
search protocol in the scholarly databases coveringboth journal articles and conference papers These
paperswere subsequently filtered, and finally,48 relevant papers were selected for analysis.
Findings –The review identifies five key aspects of platform governance design that need close
consideration: the meta-organisation or ecosystem design, coordination mechanisms, mechanisms for
value co-creation, value appropriation mechanisms and architectural principles.To achieve balance among
a set of competing demands, platform leaders need to devote adequateattention to these aspects.
Practical implications –Based on a literature review, the authors provide an overview of underlying
theoretical views, research methods and key trends to develop a sound theoretical gro unding for research on
platform governance design. The paper also suggests research gaps in the existing literature and sets
directions for researchers to strengthen the understanding of ef fective platform governance design. The paper
also provides valuable information to managers in developing or leading a successful platform ecosystem.
Originality/value –The paperuses existing literature published in thistopic and original in nature.
Keywords Control, Governance, Ecosystems, Literature review, Business models, Digital platforms
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
With ther apidprogress of digital technology and new business models to support those, platforms
and related eco-systems have received attention from scholars from such diverse disciplines as
industrial economics, strategicmanagement, information systems (IS), product management and
innovation management (Gawer, 2014; McIntyre and Srinivasan, 2017; Nambisan and Sawhney,
2011). Theincreased interest in this phenomenon can be attributed to a number of factors:
䊏Instead of analysing competition between stand-alone firms, market leadership can be
explained more adequately by studying platform-mediated networks of competing and
collaborating firms (McIntyre and Srinivasan, 2017; Mukhopadhyay et al., 2016b).
Organisations with a balanced ecosystem (for example, Apple and Google) are more
likely to dominate the industry and to capture most of the values.
䊏Platform-mediated ecosystems have emerged as a preferred method of collaboration
for innovation and value co-creation (Eaton et al., 2015; Valkokari et al., 2017). This is
corroborated by the fact that Apple Store offers more than 2 million mobile applications
for consumers (Statista, 2018), provided primarily by independent developers.
Sandip Mukhopadhyay is
based at the Department of
Marketing, Institute of
Management Technology
(IMT), Ghaziabad, India.
Harry Bouwman is based at
the Department of
Technology Policy and
Management, Delft
University of Technology,
Delft, The Netherlands and
at the Department of
Information Systems, Abo
Akademi, Turku, Finland.
Received 14 November 2018
Revised 9 February 2019
Accepted 11 February 2019
The authors are grateful to Mark
de Reuver of Delft University of
Technology (The Netherlands),
whose valuable advice and
review helped to improve this
article.
DOI 10.1108/DPRG-11-2018-0067 VOL. 21 NO. 4 2019, pp. 329-351, ©Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2398-5038 jDIGITAL POLICY, REGULATION AND GOVERNANCE jPAGE 329
䊏From being a niche phenomenon in technology-intensive industries, digital platforms
and their associated ecosystems are now transforming and impacting all important
industries like health-care, education, banking, energy, public transport and
government services.
While researchers with a background in industrial economicsview the concept of a platform
as intermediating between two or more market segments (Evans and Schmalensee, 2008;
Gawer, 2010; McIntyre and Srinivasan, 2017), IS and technology-focused researchers view
a platform primarily as a technicalinfrastructure designed for the facilitation of collaboration
and innovation between multiple entities (Gawer, 2014). It is evident that the platform
concept is closely related to ecosystem concepts (de Reuver et al., 2018). The ecosystem
concept allows to study how platform leaders collaborate with a larger community of
complementors, instead of limiting their partnerships only to their supply chain partners
(Rong et al.,2013) and that, too, without having a formal authority over these partners
(Gulati et al., 2012).
In existing IS research with a focus on governance and control, there is limited research on
the governance aspects of largeecosystems. More frequently, existing governance studies
are focused on single firms and projects (Tiwana et al.,2013), mainly in a software
development context. Results from a software development context are biased because of
their focus on the principal–agent relationship and have limited applicability to platform
ecosystems (Tiwana et al., 2010; Jansen and Cusumano, 2013). These types of relations
cannot be found in many innovative multi-industry platform ecosystems. In these
ecosystems, complementors are not contracted by the platform owner (Goldbach and
Kemper, 2014). Accordingly, it is difficult for ecosystem leaders to exert control over other
organisations, because of the absence of a contractual or hierarchical relationship
(Goldbach et al., 2017). Besides, the number of complementors in an ecosystem can be
very large, which calls for a more cost-effective governance mechanism (Huber et al.,
2017). As a result, the large body of IS research on governance cannot be directly applied
in the context of platform ecosystems.
A few studies have also examined the aspects of governance in the context of platform
ecosystems, which are consolidated in the next section. But we have foundthat researchers
in platform governance possess varied backgrounds and they have used different
theoretical prisms to explainthe governance of digital platforms.
Given the high diversity of studies, theories and foci, it is imperative to consolidate the
fragmented studies. The objective of our literature survey is to establish a robust foundation
for future research on the dynamics of governance and orchestration in platform setting by
summarising present state of researchas well as identifying important research gaps. To be
more specific, we address thefollowing research questions in our literature survey:
RQ1. What is the research output per yearin the ‘digitalplatform ecosystem’ governance
field?
RQ2. What are the type of research methodologiesthat platform ecosystem governance
research reports?
RQ3. What are the key managementtheories used by researchers in this domain?
RQ4. What are the key thematic areas or topics those can be derived from the existing
platform governanceresearch?
For doing the same, we cover 48 articles published between 2010 and 2017, primarily
dealing with governance and control aspects of digital platform ecosystem. The reason for
selecting this time frame is that the topicis relatively new and it has caught the researcher’s
interest during this period. To have a clear focus, we have concentrated primarily on the
perspectives of platform leaders. Complementors in a platform ecosystem can also
influence platform governance(Eaton et al., 2015), but have limited capability for driving the
PAGE 330 jDIGITAL POLICY, REGULATION AND GOVERNANCE jVOL. 21 NO. 4 2019
To continue reading
Request your trial