Promises and paradoxes of the sharing economy:

An organizing framework

Aurélien Acquiera, Thibault Daudigeosb & Jonatan Pinksec

a ESCP Europe, Paris, France, aacquier@escpeurope.eu

b Grenoble Ecole de Management, Grenoble, France, Thibault.daudigeos@grenoble-em.com

c Alliance Manchester Business School, Manchester, United Kingdom,

jonatan.pinkse@manchester.ac.uk

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, In Press

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Promises and paradoxes of the sharing economy:

An organizing framework

Abstract

In this article, we take stock of the ambivalent and contested nature of the sharing economy.

Considering the ‘sharing economy’ as an umbrella construct and an essentially contested

concept, we position the sharing economy as resting on three foundational cores: (1) Access

economy, (2) Platform economy, and (3) Community-based economy. We show how each

core holds distinct promises and paradoxes. This organizing framework shows how

combining the cores can help sharing-economy initiatives to navigate certain tensions, but

can also lead to new tensions. We highlight the paradoxical nature of the sharing economy

and make a case for balanced initiatives that combine the promises of each core while

mitigating contradictions. We conclude by introducing the nine articles of the special issue,

connecting their contributions to our organizing framework.

Key words: sharing economy; collaborative consumption; access-based consumption;

platform capitalism; paradox

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1 Introduction

While sharing is an old social practice (Belk, 2010), it is currently being expanded

and redefined into an exploding ‘sharing economy’ by leveraging the power of Web 2.0

technologies (Belk, 2014b). Even though the term has become popular, there is no agreement

on what the sharing economy is exactly. The notion encompasses very heterogeneous

practices and sectors, and covers a wide spectrum of organizational forms, ranging from for-

profit to non-profit initiatives (Acquier, Carbone, & Massé, 2016; Schor, 2014; Sundararajan,

2016). In the accommodation industry, for example, initiatives such as Airbnb (online rental

marketplace), Couch Surfing (free home sharing), Guest to Guest (home exchange), and

Fairbnb (fair and non-extractive vacation-rental movement) have disrupted the traditional

rules of the game.

While the sharing economy experiences fast growth and has a pervasive impact on

society, it is presently replete with paradoxes and tensions about its boundaries, effects and

logics (Richardson, 2015). Some view the sharing economy as an alternative to market

capitalism, yet it might actually bolster capitalism instead (Murillo, Buckland, & Val, this

issue; Richardson, 2015; Schor, Fitzmaurice, Carfagna, Attwood-Charles, & Poteat, 2016).

And, even if the sharing economy promotes ‘more sustainable consumption and production

practices, [it also] reinforce[s] the current unsustainable economic paradigm’ (Martin, 2016:

159).

This article – and the special issue as a whole – presents an approach to research that

takes account of the internal diversity, complexity and contradictions of the sharing economy.

In the following, we first discuss the nature of the sharing economy as a theoretical concept

in social science. Starting with a discussion about definitions, we conceptualize the sharing

economy both as an umbrella construct and an essentially contested concept. Instead of

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adding a new definition to an already long list, we argue that there is a need for an organizing

framework that allows mapping out and making sense of the different perspectives on the

sharing economy. We position the sharing economy as resting on three foundational cores –

(1) Access economy, (2) Platform economy, and (3) Community-based economy –, and show

how each core holds distinct promises and paradoxes.

This organizing framework makes sense of the variety of sharing economy initiatives,

by showing how they relate to the different cores. The framework shows how combining

these cores help sharing economy initiatives to navigate some tensions and paradoxes, but

can also generate new ones. Considering the paradoxical nature of the sharing economy, we

make a case for balanced initiatives that combine the promises of each component while

mitigating contradictions. Lastly, we discuss how our framework contributes to current

research on the sharing economy and introduce the papers of the special issue.

2 The sharing economy: conceptual and definitional challenges

One of the rare points scholars agree on is how hard it is to define the sharing

economy and to draw clear conceptual and empirical boundaries. The sharing economy has

become a catch-all label with strong normative underpinnings. To add to the confusion, many

neighbouring concepts have been proposed including platform capitalism, on-demand

(Cockayne, 2016) or gig economy (Friedman, 2014; Sundararajan, 2013), collaborative

consumption (Botsman & Rogers, 2010), gift economy (Cheal, 1988), peer-to-peer economy

(Bauwens, 2005), and access economy (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012). Before turning to

definitions and the links and differences between all these concepts, we first assess the nature

of the sharing economy as a theoretical concept.

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2.1 The sharing economy: an umbrella construct

The sharing economy is an umbrella construct, i.e. a ‘broad concept or idea used

loosely to encompass and account for a set of diverse phenomena’ (Hirsch & Levin, 1999:

200). There is considerable variation in the way scholars have conceptualized and

operationalized ‘sharing’, using different theories. The sharing economy also straddles

disciplinary boundaries including marketing (Lamberton & Rose, 2012), consumer behaviour

(Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012; Habibi, Kim, & Laroche, 2016), sociology (Schor et al., 2016),

geography (Richardson, 2015), anthropology (Belk, 2014a), management (B. Cohen &

Kietzmann, 2014), innovation (Guttentag, 2015) and law (M. Cohen & Sundararajan, 2015;

Kassan & Orsi, 2012; Redfearn, 2016). It is not clear, therefore, how to define the sharing

economy (Arnould & Rose, 2016; Belk, 2010; Frenken & Schor, 2017), if scholars can agree

on a common definition, and whether currently thriving business models live up to

conceptual ideas of what sharing is (Belk, 2014a).

Umbrella constructs are commonplace in social science. Still, umbrella constructs

create challenges for academic communities because they generate tensions between

proponents of practical relevance (‘umbrella advocates’) and those of academic rigour

(‘validity police’) (Hirsch & Levin, 1999). For umbrella advocates, umbrella constructs are

attractive because of their broad scope and usefulness to connect new phenomena, to keep

track of empirical innovations, to build academic communities, and to be of practical

relevance for managerial audiences. However, for the validity police, umbrella constructs are

unattractive because a broad scope limits academic rigour. After an initial stage of emerging

excitement, driven by umbrella advocates, the validity police tends to contest umbrella

constructs for a lack of rigour and impose narrow definitions in order to move towards a more

unified theoretical paradigm (Hirsch & Levin, 1999).

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Transposing the debate about umbrella constructs to the emerging field of the sharing

economy elucidates the different definitional strategies that umbrella advocates and the

validity police have followed (see Table 1 for an overview of definitions). Those promoting

the sharing economy concept to different audiences tend to define the field broadly, including

peer-to-peer and business-to-peer initiatives, market and non-market mechanisms, as well as

centralized and flat peer-to-peer systems (Botsman & Rogers, 2010; Filippova, 2015;

Owyang, 2014; Sundararajan, 2016). From this perspective, ‘it would be near-impossible to

dislodge the terms without the risk of fracturing a growing movement of people who largely

have no problem with the term, and who are building something that – for the most part – is a

social and economic good’ (Sundararajan, 2016: 12). At the other end of the spectrum,

scholars increasingly complain about the confusing breadth of the field, because it includes

too many elements to allow proper theorization (Frenken, Meelen, Arets, & van de Glind,

2015). In response, they adopt narrow definitions based on an ex-ante, normative

characterization of sharing, framing it as a more restricted and workable empirical object.

Frenken and Schor (2017: 4) argue, for example, that ‘the sharing economy tent has become

quite capacious’. They propose defining the sharing economy in a more restricted fashion as

‘consumers granting each other temporary access to under-utilized physical assets (‘idle

capacity’), possibly for money’ (Frenken & Schor, 2017: 4-5). With their definition, they

exclude practices such as peer production, second-hand peer-to-peer selling, business-to-

consumer rental, and services-driven transactions.

While narrow definitions may be more rigorous, they also have their disadvantages.

They restrain the complexity of the sharing economy as a field of practice, and ‘exclude too

many interesting problems’ (Hirsch & Levin, 1999: 209). Moreover, the criteria used for each

definition may be too specific, resulting in a list of individually coherent, but overall

incompatible definitions. For example, some observers argue that Uber should be excluded

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from the sharing economy. They either denounce Uber’s pure market orientation as non-

sharing (Godelnik, 2014), or argue that Uber drivers should be considered as professional,

full-time taxi drivers (Meelen & Frenken, 2015). At the same time, many critics take an

opposite view: they only consider the sharing economy through peer-to-peer and profit-

driven platforms, such as Uber and Airbnb (see for example Slee, 2016). Such a restrained

view is problematic because it neglects other initiatives that rely on alternative logics of

action and value creation (such as cooperative governance, non-profit or free access logics).

Hirsch and Levin (1999) suggest that the positions of umbrella advocates and validity police

should coexist in order to maintain balance in academic fields, so that neither extreme can

achieve total victory over the other. However, what constitutes the right balance is open to

debate. It is therefore important to find a way to organize a dialogue among the different

perspectives.

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2.2 The sharing economy: an essentially contested concept

To add to the conceptual complexity, the sharing economy also constitutes an

illuminating example of what Gallie (1956) calls ‘essentially contested concepts’. With this

notion, Gallie (1956: 169) refers to concepts, such as democracy in political science, imbued

with normative values, which ‘inevitably involve endless disputes about their proper uses on

the part of [their] users’. While an extensive discussion of Gallie’s seven criteria

characterizing essentially contested concepts is beyond the scope of this article, highlighting

a few elements will show that the sharing economy qualifies as such.

The sharing economy’s normative character is a case in point. Sharing has a positive

connotation and is considered as a valued achievement. However, many scholars dispute the

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‘true’ nature of sharing and the proper use of the term by sharing economy initiatives. Such

debates have led to distinctions between ‘true’ and ‘pseudo’ sharing (Belk, 2014a), based on

the idea that ‘true’ sharing involves non-reciprocity (Belk, 2010). Arnould and Rose (2016)

criticize sharing for overemphasizing exchange and suggest re-conceptualizing sharing

around a more inclusive concept of mutuality. Other scholars take positions ‘against the

sharing economy’. They denounce the sharing economy’s ‘feel good’ story (Murillo et al.,

this issue; Slee, 2016), and criticize what is in their eyes a mystification and a misleading

discourse on sharing, trust and community, hiding a darker reality.

The sharing economy’s contested nature is also reflected in its internally complex

nature. The sharing economy aggregates different types of environmental, social and

economic promises, each corresponding to different framings, values and debates. The

‘environmental’ promise refers to the sharing economy as promoting a more sustainable use

of resources by favouring access over ownership (Botsman & Rogers, 2010; Heinrichs, 2013;

Martin, 2016). However, empirical research suggests that users’ environmental motivations

are often of secondary importance (Böcker & Meelen, 2017; Wilhelms, Henkel, & Falk, this

issue). Others put forth a ‘social’ promise, viewing the sharing economy as a way to promote

cheaper access to services, as a tool to generate non-reciprocal exchange (such as gift-giving

or bartering), or as new forms of collaboration, solidarity and social bonding among

individuals (Bauwens, 2005; Belk, 2010; Benkler, 2017). In contrast to this idealistic vision,

recent research suggests that sharing platforms may in fact recreate the inequalities of the

capitalist markets, but in different ways (Schor et al., 2016). The ‘economic’ promise refers

to the the sharing economy as an opportunity to break through the limitations of centralized

economic and political institutions controlled by bureaucracies and professions by harnessing

the power of trust, decentralized peer-to-peer networks and markets. The sharing economy is

seen as supporting strong emancipatory ideals for individuals and communities by promoting

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new types of organizations and exchange. This economic promise is contested as well by

scholars drawing attention to the social closure and the inequalities sharing initiatives

generate (Murillo et al., this issue; Schor et al., 2016).

When dealing with essentially contested concepts, it is not important that scholars

agree on common single definitions and solve ideological disputes, but acknowledge their

own empirical and conceptual basis and bias (Gallie, 1956). Yet, while differences may well

be acknowledged, there is a risk of falling into conceptual relativism and undermining

standards for evaluating concepts (Collier, Daniel Hidalgo, & Olivia Maciuceanu, 2006).

Hence, we propose to build an organizing framework that accounts for the sharing economy’s

complex nature without ignoring the ideological disputes at play in the field.

2.3 Defining or mapping the sharing economy?

Given the essentially contested and umbrella nature of the sharing economy, it can get

stuck in endless academic and normative debates about what it is, what it fails to be, or what

it should be. The inability to set aside differences could lead to a construct’s collapse and its

replacement by a new ‘clone’, re-creating similar debates and challenges (Hirsch & Levin,

1999). Consequently, a key issue is finding a path between two extreme positions: an

‘anything goes’ perspective resting on broad definitions and relativism, or a ‘too restrictive’

approach associated with narrow definitions. We believe that instead of new definitions, the

sharing economy is in need of an organizing framework that allows mapping different

perspectives on the sharing economy. In the next section, we develop a framework that is

broad enough to make sense of the various perspectives, enabling each researcher to position

their work from a theoretical and empirical point of view.

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3 Mapping out the sharing economy: three organizing cores

Based on a review of the literature, we position the sharing economy as resting on

three foundational cores: (1) Access economy, (2) Platform economy, and (3) Community-

based economy (see Figure 1). In the following, we define each organizing core and explain

how they relate to the promises and paradoxes of the sharing economy (see Table 2 for a

summary).

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3.1 Access economy

The access economy covers a set of initiatives sharing underutilized assets (material

resources or skills) to optimize their use. Many definitions of the sharing economy are built

on the idea of optimizing underused assets to promote access instead of ownership (Belk,

2014). Access-based transactions that rely on temporal access instead of a transfer of

ownership are not new. They have long existed in for-profit business models, e.g. rental or

leasing, and non-profit models, e.g. borrowing books in public libraries (Bardhi & Eckhardt,

2012). However, Rifkin (2000) envisioned the emergence of an ‘Age of Access’, predicting a

global shift of capitalism towards post-ownership societies, relying on short-term use and

experience rather than long-term ownership of property.

Recently, the access economy has materialized in the form of companies increasingly

offering services instead of products, a process which has been referred to as product service

systems, servitization, and functional business models (Mont, 2002). Many products are now

shared instead of purchased including cars, houses, luxury clothes, and household appliances

(Botsman & Rogers, 2010). The access economy covers a wide array of organizational and

governance configurations. In some cases, the organization of access relies on a high

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centralization of assets where one organization owns and manages the assets, such as car-

pooling systems like Zipcar and Autolib (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012; Lamberton & Rose,

2012). In other cases, access rests on a decentralized ownership of assets within a network of

peers, such as peer-to-peer car rental (Sundararajan, 2013). Besides, the access economy does

not prescribe a specific governance form; it can either be for profit, non-profit, a public-

private partnership or a cooperative model.

The access economy holds different promises. On the economic and social side, the

access economy offers broader and cheaper access to services for customers in the short term.

Access avoids the need to invest in acquiring ownership (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012). On the

environmental side, the access economy is promoted as a sustainable solution (Firnkorn &

Müller, 2011). Sharing and mutualisation enable a more intensive use of products, offering

better ‘leverage’ of natural capital that is ‘trapped’ in a given product. Besides, as producers

remain the owners of the assets, they are responsible for environmental externalities, and

have the incentive to design green and durable products (Braungart & McDonough, 2002).

However, the access economy also suffers from tensions and paradoxes, which limit

their social and environmental impact. A first problem concerns the incentives, moral hazard

and information asymmetries involved with shared resources (Arrow, 1963). Since

individuals are paying for a temporary service, they lack incentives to treat products gently.

Bardhi and Eckhardt (2012) show that sharing does not always lead to a caring attitude and

offer some explanations why users do not care for shared cars. They argue that a lack of

identification with a shared product, a weak community-based social control and a low

probability of negative reciprocity in case of misbehaviour are the main reasons for a careless

use of shared resources. Likewise, Tukker (2004) suggests a clear tension between economic

and environmental objectives. He shows how functional business models with the strongest

sustainability potential involve strong risk premiums and liability risks for companies. The

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owners of the shared resources have to bear costly investments to enforce efficient control

mechanisms to monitor customers and prevent deviant user behaviour.

The “Jevons Paradox” constitutes another type of environmental paradox applicable

to the access economy. In the 19th century, Jevons (1865) observed how technological

progress and efficiency gains in steam engines did not lead to a reduction in the overall

consumption of coal. Instead, they resulted in increased consumption due to a decrease in

relative cost and a rise in market demand. While the access economy might tackle the

underutilization of resources that stand idle (environmental promise), they also make

products more accessible and generate new uses (social and economic promise), ending up

with additional resources being used by the community as a whole. By making access to cars

cheaper and more practical than other collective transportation services, car-sharing systems

generate additional miles (Phipps et al., 2013). Sharing economy initiatives thus generate

‘rebound effects’ that are detrimental to environmental stewardship (Demailly & Novel,

2014), or stimulate unsustainable consumer behaviour such as indulgent consumption

(Parguel, Lunardo, & Benoit-Moreau, this issue).

3.2 Platform economy

The platform economy forms a second core of the sharing economy. We define the

platform economy as a set of initiatives that intermediate decentralized exchanges among

peers through digital platforms. Platforms are gaining considerable weight in contemporary

capitalism (Srineck, 2016). According to Evans and Gawer’s (2016) survey, about 70% of

unicorns (private start-up companies with a valuation higher than $1 billion without going

public) are built on a platform model. Platforms totalled more than $4.3 trillion in market

capitalization in 2016. Such platforms create value by connecting and organizing transactions

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rather than producing themselves. They also create strong network effects, as their relative

value rises with the number of actors – users and suppliers – joining their ‘ecosystem’.

Platforms refer to many different organizational forms in the field of strategy and

innovation. Innovation platforms, such as Intel, Microsoft or Cisco, shape innovation

processes by providing central technological building blocks on which other actors can

develop complementary products and/or services (Gawer & Cusumano, 2014). They differ

from transaction platforms, such as Amazon, eBay or Apple with its Appstore, that act as

intermediaries or marketplaces that organize and facilitate transactions between users, buyers

and suppliers (Evans & Gawer, 2016). The sharing economy is often associated with peer-to-

peer transaction platforms, a type of platform where individuals exchange goods and services

(and not only information) (Weber, 2014), which exemplifies what some have labelled

“crowd-based capitalism” (Sundararajan, 2016). The platform economy, as used in our

framework, predominantly refers to such transaction platforms (cf. Mair & Reischauer, this

issue), but the term transaction is not restricted to market-based transactions, it can also

include non-monetary transactions. As Sundararajan (2016: 38) notes, the ‘sharing economy

spans the market-to-gift spectrum’, including platforms that enable gift-giving, bartering or

swaps and are based on altruistic motivations and non-monetary exchange.

Transaction platforms have disrupted established markets and bureaucratic

organizations that build on asset integration, such as transportation, accommodation, and

financial services (D'aveni & Ravenscraft, 1994; Srineck, 2016). While these post-

bureaucratic platforms explicitly refer to communities, they use draw heavily on market

mechanisms to coordinate transactions. Platforms use digital technologies to externalize most

production activities to individuals that interact in a peer-to-peer manner, and to secure and

control transactions remotely. Digital technologies reduce the transaction costs that

traditionally hamper market exchange (Williamson, 2000). They decrease the cost of finding

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information as well as concluding and monitoring contracts. In addition, they mitigate

opportunistic behaviour and uncertainty, and generate trust through rating systems and

insurance mechanisms. Digital technologies also enable platforms to remotely perform

coordination and management tasks through algorithms, such as evaluation, information

flows, and pricing (Malone, Yates, & Benjamin, 1987). They facilitate a massive scaling of

transactions among strangers, a phenomenon labelled ‘stranger sharing’ (Benkler, 2004),

which used to be confined to tight communities involving clan-based mechanisms. As a

result, they extend the market logic to new frontiers by organizing marketplaces where small

transactions can be scaled massively.

The platform economy’s promises are consistent with the predominant market logic

and post-bureaucratic ideals. Platforms offer the economic promise of new market

developments based on large, secure, and decentralized access. For those that promote the

platform economy, these markets provide opportunities to individuals, either as consumers

(giving cheaper and secure access), or as producers (creating entrepreneurial ventures).

Imbued with liberal and libertarian values that have influenced the digital culture and their

entrepreneurs (Turner 2006), platforms promote themselves as a way to fight centralized

institutions, such as the state, professions or large corporations. This view of disruption and

disintermediation as an emancipatory ideal, which questions the legitimacy of established

institutions, is likely to play a role in the conflictual relationship platforms tend to have with

regulatory institutions (Edelman & Geradin, 2015).

Due to their scaling potential, platforms generate massive controversies and

paradoxes (Slee, 2016; Srineck, 2016). Behind their professed ideology of free markets, flat

organizational models and dis-intermediation, it is hard to overlook the increasingly visible

hand of intermediaries and market makers. While platforms promote market disruption and

increased competition, their scaling potential (backed up with massive venture capital funds),

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combined with strong network effects, tends to lead to new technological giants such as

Airbnb, Uber and Blablacar (Srineck, 2016). These platforms use power asymmetries to

capture most of the value that independent workers and customers create (Bauwens &

Kostakis, 2014). Srineck (2016) argues that once ecosystems have been created, platforms

naturally drift towards an ‘enclosure of ecosystems’. Recent controversies about Uber and

Airbnb progressively raising their commission constitute examples of such tendencies.

Critics also condemn platforms for promoting a paradoxical discourse. For some,

references to ‘sharing’ and ‘communities’ tend to mask pseudo-sharing practices (Belk,

2014a) and a logic of neoliberal financialization (Martin, 2016; Murillo et al., this issue). Far

from the stated emancipatory ideals, the development of algorithmic management (M. K.

Lee, Kusbit, Metsky, & Dabbish, 2015) shows how technology extends the reach of

managerial control far beyond the traditional company frontiers. Many observers point to the

strong subordination, lack of protection, and insecurity of platform workers, who are legally

independent but economically dependent on platforms (Carboni, 2016; Redfearn, 2016).

3.3 Community-based economy

The community-based economy forms the third core of the sharing economy. It refers

to initiatives coordinating through non-contractual, non-hierarchical or non-monetized forms

of interaction (to perform work, participate in a project, or form exchange relationships).

Rather than the creation and maximization of economic value, the primary purpose of

initiatives belonging to the community-based economy is to contribute to a community

project, to create social bonding, to promote values or to achieve a social mission through a

collective project. While communities traditionally involve strong social ties among close

members interacting at a local level (Bowles & Gintis, 2002; Marquis, Lounsbury, &

Greenwood, 2011), digital innovations have created forms of ‘social sharing’ across

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communities of weakly connected individuals (Benkler, 2004). Community is thus

increasingly conceptualized as a type of organizing that involves meaningful and affective

relationships based on shared experience or interests (Marquis et al., 2011: xiv).

The digital culture has given birth to new forms of communal sharing (both for

production and distribution), as exemplified by the open-source movement and associated

projects such as Linux (Raymond, 1999; Von Hippel, 2001) and Wikipedia (Jemielniak,

2014). These organizations seem to fit Belk’s definition of ‘true sharing’ (Belk, 2014a), as

neither contributors nor users are expecting explicit or direct reciprocity for their actions

(Benkler, 2004; Demil & Lecocq, 2006). Contributors are driven by intrinsic motivations

rather than material ones (Benkler, 2017). These contemporary forms of commons are

produced cooperatively by benevolent community contributors and made freely accessible to

all (Bradley & Pargman, 2017). They rely on specific coordination and governance

mechanisms that are distinct from market, hierarchy, and public or government control

(Bauwens, 2005; Benkler, 2004; Demil & Lecocq, 2006; G. K. Lee & Cole, 2003).

Accordingly, these organizations are moving beyond the classic management vocabulary

(Laloux, 2014), producing new archetypes such as ‘swarm organizations’ (Falkvinge, 2013),

‘holacracy’ (Robertson, 2015), or ‘do-ocracy’ (Kostakis, Niaros, & Giotitsas, 2015). They

have also revived pre-existing forms of the community-based economy, such as social

economy or non-profit organizations and cooperative governance structures (Bauwens &

Kostakis, 2014; Scholz, 2016b).

The willingness to transform society in the direction of decentralized and post-

bureaucratic organizations constitutes a common feature of both the community-based

economy and the platform economy. However, the community-based perspective tends to

reject market coordination, in a quest to promote a post-market society. The market co-

optation of the sharing economy by profit-driven platforms is seen as an undesirable drift

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because it strips away promises of emancipation as well as social and environmental change

(Bauwens, 2005; Martin, 2016; Scholz, 2016b). In contrast, the community-based economy

encompasses a set of initiatives with strong political, legal and ideological dimensions,

leaning towards post-market societies. As Bauwens and Kostakis (2014: 358) explain, peer

production can be viewed as a ‘counter-economy that could be the basis for reconstituting a

“counter-hegemony” with a for-benefit circulation of value. This process […] could be the

basis of the political and social transformation of the political economy.’ While they were

formalized in the digital sphere, these organizing principles and values have been transposed

to fablabs, hackerspaces, repair cafés and makerspaces, where communities form around

physical commons that promote an ideology of individual creativity, free access, mutual help

and community development (Kostakis et al., 2015).

The community-based economy’s promises are consistent with these ideals. Initiatives

are meant to empower communities and serve as a vehicle for wider social change,

emancipation and solidarity. However, as Bradley and Pargman (2017: 2) note, ‘despite

grand visions of the effects of current and future collaborative commons, in reality these face

a number of challenges and are often reliant on a small number of highly engaged

individuals. This […] make[s] it difficult to scale up and gain critical mass and access to the

resources necessary to compete with mainstream market alternatives’. Likewise, communities

based on social relationships tend to produce social closure and inequalities among

participants, thus creating ‘paradoxes of openness and distinction’ (Schor et al., 2016). These

paradoxes occur between the official discourse advocating openness, fairness or equal access,

and actual practices of distinction, which tend to reproduce social inequalities based on

cultural and social capital, class, race or gender.

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3.4 Accounting for the multiplicity of the sharing economy: Combining the sharing economy

cores and navigating tensions and paradoxes

Each of the three organizing cores constitutes one foundation of the sharing economy.

While our framework is meant to make sense of the sharing economy rather than impose a

restrictive definition, it must be noted that ‘single-core initiatives’ – those which rest on one

prevailing logic only – may constitute extreme cases and their belonging to the sharing

economy is more likely to be contested. For example, traditional business-to-consumer rental

models, based on asset centralization by a for-profit service provider (e.g., Avis or Hertz in

car rental), constitute an example of a ‘core’ access economy initiative. However, those who

place more importance on decentralized, peer-to-peer transactions typically do not consider

them to be part of the sharing economy. Likewise, peer-to-peer platforms (e.g., craigslist)

illustrate a ‘core’ platform economy initiative, but are often not considered part of the sharing

economy due to a failure to leverage under-used assets or explore alternative governance

models. Finally, ‘core’ community-based economy initiatives, such as non-profit associations

or workers cooperatives, are rarely considered part of the sharing economy because they do

not involve a platform or access dimension. What follows, then, is that initiatives are more

likely to be considered part of the sharing economy when they combine different cores,

building on dual or triple cores (Figure 2). In building on multiple cores, sharing-economy

initiatives can navigate some of the tensions and paradoxes related to each core. Yet, they

may also generate new tensions, as we will explain below.

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A first set of dual-core initiatives – Access platforms – give access to underutilized

resources, or services, through digital platforms. Famous sharing economy companies such as

Airbnb and Blablacar that connect users with owners of dwellings and cars, respectively,

belong to this category. They optimize the usage of durable goods and allow greater access to

expensive goods, and thus help to fulfil the environmental and social promise of the access

economy (Eckhardt & Bardhi, 2016). In addition, they benefit from the advantages of the

platform economy (Srineck, 2016). They drastically reduce the risk of moral hazard by

leveraging the monitoring properties of digital platforms such as digital tracking, peer-

evaluations, and insurance contracts. Transaction costs are reduced considerably by

facilitating connections between supply and demand (Williamson, 2000). If access platforms

adopt a capitalistic governance scheme, they can aim for high scalability on a global scale in

the short run.

However, access platforms are not entirely without critique. By adopting platform

logics, they suffer from the tensions that come with such logics. The major critique is the

unbalanced contribution to the wellbeing of all stakeholders involved and thus a lack of

consideration for the community at large (Dreyer, Lüdeke-Freund, Hamann, & Faccer, this

issue). Access platforms suffer from the adverse effects of high scalability and a skewed

focus on benefits for shareholders and users to the detriment of others. In addition, the

conjunction of scalability and access gives rise to new tensions or amplify those related to the

access and/or platform economy. The broad and cheap access offered could worsen the

‘rebound effects’ (Demailly & Novel, 2014) and stimulate even more indulgent consumption

leading to uncertain environmental benefits (Parguel et al., this issue). The social and

economic promises of greater access to resources might thus run counter to the environmental

promise of greater resource efficiency.

19

A second set of dual-core initiatives – Community-based platforms – try to make the

most of the promises of the platform economy without losing sight of the promises of the

community-based economy. They harness the scaling power of platforms for the good of the

community, either by using a governance mechanism that ensures redistribution to balance

stakeholder interests or by orienting the purpose of the platform towards the community

interest. The first case refers to what has recently been called ‘platform cooperativism’, a

label referring to platforms that open their governance structures to a broader group of

stakeholders than investors alone (Scholz, 2016a). Citiz, a French network of car sharing

companies that share around 1000 cars in 80 different cities is a good example of such an

alternative governance scheme. Consumers, employees, investors, public authorities, main

contractors and suppliers are all partners in the cooperative and vote on the main decisions.

The Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC) is made up of dozens of cooperative

platforms such as Loomio or Peerby that follow similar governance principles. The second

case refers to ‘mission-driven platforms’ whose main purpose is increasing a community’s

well being. For example, the mission of the Austrian initiative Refugeeswork is improving

refugees’ access to the labour market and breaking down negative stereotypes of refugees. It

connects potential workers and employers through digital platforms and prepares the

applicants through dedicated training.

Notwithstanding their promise for coming up with alternative modes of organizing the

sharing economy, community-based platforms suffer from intractable tensions between

scalability and community interests. Platform cooperatives have to deal with the trade-off

between attracting regular impact investors and adopting alternative redistribution schemes

that may frighten off such investors. Such platforms therefore struggle with competition from

pure market players that can more easily raise funds. Mission-driven platforms experience a

tension between global reach and local audience. Their initial goal to serve community

20

interests can get diluted in the expanding their activities and they struggle to find the right

scope of action to avoid mission drift (Jones, 2007; Weisbrod, 2004). A case in point is the

online platform, Etsy, that partly let go of its initial mission to stimulate local, home-made

handicraft in order to scale up the organization as well as the handicraft suppliers of the

platform (Tabuchi, 2015). Community-based platforms bring together a market logic of

scaling to global markets and a non-market logic of contributing to the local community,

which creates a paradoxical situation that might prove unstable over the long term when one

logic prevails over the other (Laurell & Sandström, this issue).

A third set of dual-core initiatives – Community-based access – combines the

promises of the access economy and the community-based economy. They afford greater

access to underutilized resources and services at the community level and thus aim to fulfil

the economic, social, and environmental promises. Initiatives that promote sharing practices

in a well specified physical space such as makerspaces, hackerspaces, fablabs, and repair

cafés fit this category (Fabbri, 2016; Kostakis et al., 2015). The association of these two cores

is fruitful since community bonds solve some tensions associated with the access economy.

Community bonds prevent the risk of moral hazard because proximity between members

limits self-interested behaviour that could be harmful for the well-being of the community.

Nevertheless, community-based access initiatives also have limitations because they

rely on a non-monetary and non-hierarchical coordination mechanism to grant all users

access in an equitable manner. As the cases of Schor et al. (2016) show, users either struggle

with the idea of letting go of monetary value altogether or they devise alternative currencies

that fulfil the same function as money. Their case of a time bank showed that even though it

is based on an ideology that all types of work are equally valuable, it became clear from the

way that people used the time bank that some skills were still considered more valuable than

others. Likewise, actual user behaviour of a non-profit makerspace showed that the ideal of

21

egalitarian access to shared resources was not fully met, as users created new forms of

distinction based on status in relation to creativity. Moreover, high-status users of the

makerspace created an alternative currency by trading beer (Schor et al., 2016). Hence,

community-based access struggles to fully rely on community bonds to govern the

transactions that grant users access to the shared resources. As a result, not only does access

remain limited to the boundaries of the community, which is limited by definition, but also

unexpected social interactions within the community can prevent it from meeting the promise

of overcoming moral hazard.

Finally, in navigating the tensions generated by the principles of the sharing economy,

some initiatives position themselves at the intersection of all three cores: access, platform and

community-based economy. They seem to build on the promise of each type of economy to

balance the tensions created by each of them. Although a triple-core configuration appears

ideal, it faces strong tensions in practice. Since none of the cores are free of tensions, this

triple-core sharing-economy ideal is inherently contradictory. While a win-win of leveraging

the promises of each core and cancelling out each other’s tensions would be the ideal, as the

discussion of the dual-core initiatives already suggests, it is more likely that attempts to

address all three cores simultaneously leads to an escalation of tensions and unfulfilled

promises (cf. Hahn, Figge, Pinkse, & Preuss, 2017). Pursuing simultaneous promises of

equitable access for everyone, environmental sustainability, post-bureaucracy, emancipation

and high scalability is very challenging, and any attempt to achieve them all at once lays bare

the paradoxical nature of the sharing economy.

4 Outline of the special issue and conclusions

The scholarly debate on the sharing economy is evolving at a fast pace. With this

special issue we hope to make a fruitful contribution to this ongoing debate. The nine articles

22

included in the special issue as well as this introductory piece all share a certain enthusiasm

about the sharing economy in the sense that it could hold real promise to transform the

current economy. However, the articles also share a clear sense of reservation. While the

focus might initially have been on the social, environmental and economic promise, the

special issue’s main message is that tensions are inherent in the sharing economy, both

conceptually and in practice. This special issue provides different perspectives on the current

state of the sharing economy with some contributions being more optimistic and others more

sceptical. In the following paragraphs, we provide an outline of the nine contributions to this

special issue and connect them to the organizing framework developed in this introductory

article.

The first two articles – Mair and Reischauer (this issue) and Muñoz and Cohen (this

issue) – stress the diversity and pluralism of the sharing economy. They both focus on

organizations, arguing that an analysis of how organizations manage and coordinate

platforms, one core of the sharing economy, leads to a deeper understanding of the dynamics

and impact of the sharing economy. Mair and Reischauer (this issue) explore conceptually

how the sharing economy will manifest and evolve across different economic systems. While

they develop a definition of the sharing economy, their main argument rests on there not

being one type of sharing economy organization. Rather, the specific organizational form of

sharing economy organizations exhibits a culturally rooted pluralism. They explain this

pluralism through an institutional theory, emphasizing the pluralism of organizations as well

as practices. Muñoz and Cohen (this issue) empirically investigate the diversity of the sharing

economy. They use a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA) to derive five ideal

types of sharing economy business models. Their analysis shows that not all ideal types

contain all elements typically attributed to the sharing economy. It corresponds to our own

23

framework in the sense that a triple-core initiative would be what they label a ‘utopian

business model’ for which they could find very few examples to date.

The next four articles – Wilhelms, Henkel and Falk (this issue), Parguel, Lunardo and

Benoit-Moreau (this issue), Laurell and Sandström (this issue), and Murillo, Buckland and

Val (this issue) – all shed light on one or more tensions of the sharing economy that we have

highlighted in our framework. Wilhelms et al. (this issue) as well as Parguel et al. (this issue)

examine tensions related to the environmental promise and offer a rather gloomy picture.

Based on a quantitative research design, Wilhelms et al. (this issue) study peer-to-peer

carsharing, i.e. an access platform (see Figure 2). They analyse what motivates users to

participate in peer-to-peer carsharing, comparing factors related to economic interest (‘earn’),

quality of life (‘enjoy’), helping others (‘enrich’), and sustainability (‘enhance’). While they

find a surprising balance between self-interested and altruistic motives, environmental

concerns do not seem to play a role. Parguel et al. (this issue) also use a quantitative design to

study consumer behaviour in a second-hand peer-to-peer platform. They measure how likely

consumers are to give in to temptation on these platforms. Among a set of factors, they find

that especially materialistic and environmentally conscious consumers seem to use second-

hand platforms as a way to self-license and justify indulgent consumption which undermines

the environmental promise.

In their study of the framing of the sharing economy in a Swedish context, Laurell and

Sandström (this issue) focus on a different tension: the one between market and non-market

logics. Using social media analytics, they corroborate Mair and Reischauer (this issue) in the

sense that the sharing economy consists of a very diverse set of market and non-market

practices. However, they also come to the conclusion that the sharing economy remains

rather unstable. There are many issues related to regulation and taxation that are still

unresolved. While the previous three contributions examine specific tensions in more detail,

24

Murillo et al. (this issue) provide a comprehensive overview of all the controversies

surrounding the sharing economy. In a critical analysis, they question the sharing economy

for its heavy focus on the platform economy core, which undermines the social impact that

the sharing economy could have.

The last three contributions – Heimstädt (this issue), Dreyer, Lüdeke-Freund, Hamann

and Faccer (this issue), and Pazaitis, De Filippi, and Kostakis (this issue) – go beyond

identifying promises, tensions, and paradoxes of the sharing economy, and instead provide

different perspectives on how such paradoxes can be navigated. Heimstädt (this issue)

investigates how organizations resolve the tension between a growing trend to share internal

information with the public and an inherent preference for informational control. Based on an

inductive analysis, he shows that organizations manage this tension through three forms of

decoupling: selection to exclude parts of the data or the audience, bending information to

retain control, and orchestrating information for a specific audience. Based on an inductive

study in an emerging economy context, Dreyer et al. (this issue) explore how sharing

economy business models have a positive impact on all stakeholders involved. They find that

in order to avoid unintended negative consequences it is crucial to design the business model

so that it is firmly embedded in the local context. Finally, Pazaitis et al. (this issue) show

conceptually how blockchain technology facilitates the creation of a new system of value that

is more conducive to the social promise. They develop a value system that consists of three

layers: (a) production of value; (b) record of value; and (c) actualisation of value. They argue

that blockchain technology constitutes a new medium of value to coordinate decentralized

transactions for commons-based peer production. Their system thus seeks to tackle issues

related to non-monetary coordination that community-based access initiatives rely on (see

section 3.4).

25

To conclude, then, by developing an organizing framework of the sharing economy

that not only shows its core principles – access, platform and community-based economy –

but also reveals its promises, tensions and paradoxes, we provide a more inclusive view of

what the sharing economy means for research and practice. With our framework we move

beyond the definitional discord that is currently holding the debate hostage. Since the sharing

economy is an umbrella construct and an essentially contested concept, scholars will

probably never agree on a definition. Nonetheless, our framework allows scholars and

practitioners to position their research and practice, and gain a deeper understanding of the

promises and paradoxes of their specific approach.

Furthermore, by adopting a paradoxical perspective on the promises of the sharing

economy we move away from the dichotomy of having either a purely ideological

perspective of what the sharing economy should deliver or a defeatist perspective that the

sharing economy is not living up to its potential. Rather, we argue that it is more likely for the

sharing economy to deliver on its promises when it is conceptualised as a dynamic balancing

act between the three different cores of our framework. A key question will be whether an

ideal type that combines all three cores to leverage the different promises and mitigate most

tensions will be feasible in the near future. To address this question, research will need to

shift to studying the impact that the sharing economy has on the wide range of stakeholders

involved. So far, most studies have focused on identifying motivations for users to participate

in the sharing economy. Due to the nascent state of the sharing economy, this focus is not

surprising due to a lack of reliable data. However, with the vast proliferation of sharing

economy initiatives across the globe, it will become easier to collect and analyse data that

will provide a more dynamic picture of the sharing economy and its impact. The

contributions of this special issue raise many relevant topics for future research and present a

26

rich variety of conceptual and empirical approaches that will help in conducting such

research.

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Figures and tables

FIGURE 1: THREE ORGANIZING CORES OF THE SHARING ECONOMY

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Coordinating through non-contractual, non-hierarchical or non-monetized forms of interaction

Intermediating decentralized

exchanges among peers through digital

platforms

Sharing underutilized assets to optimize their use

2. Platform economy

3. Community-based economy

1. Access economy

FIGURE 2: COMBINING THE CORES OF THE SHARING ECONOMY

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Access platform

Community-based platform

Community-based access PLATFORM ECONOMY

COMMUNITY-BASED ECONOMY

ACCESS ECONOMY

Sharing economy

ideal

TABLE 1: EXAMPLES OF NARROW VS. BROAD DEFINITIONS OF THE SHARING ECONOMY

EXAMPLES OF NARROW

DEFINITIONSDEFINITION KEY HYPOTHESES

Benkler (2004)

Refers to ‘sharing goods’ as ‘a class of resources or goods that are amenable to being shared within social sharing systems rather than allocated through markets’ (p.356).Social sharing also constitutes an ‘alternative modality of production’ (p.330) based on gifting and free participation among ‘weakly connected participants’ (pp.332-334).

- Social sharing constitutes a distinct mode of transaction (distinct from market price mechanism) and a distinct mode of production (different from market, hierarchies and state mechanisms)- Excludes secondary markets from social sharing- As a mode of production, social sharing involves a logic of gifting by contributors.

Belk (2014a)

Distinguishes ‘true sharing’ from ‘pseudo-sharing’.‘Sharing is an alternative to the private ownership that is emphasized in both marketplace exchange and gift-giving’ (p.10).Pseudo-sharing is a ‘phenomenon whereby commodity exchange and potential exploitation of consumer co-creators present themselves in the guise of sharing.’ (p. 7), or ‘business relationship masquerading as communal sharing’ (p.11).

- ‘True sharing’ excludes commercial exchange, reciprocation and self-interest or transfer of individual property- Gifting is not sharing- Sharing implies a sense of collective property/belonging.

Cockayne (2016)‘The on-demand or ‘sharing’ economy is a term that describes digital platforms that connect consumers to a service or commodity through the use of a mobile application or website’ (p.73).

- Restricts the sharing economy field to peer-to-peer, digital, profit-driven platforms.

Eckhardt and Bardhi (2016)

‘The access economy, [...] also known as the sharing, or peer-to-peer, economy, [...] provides temporary access to consumption resources for a fee or for free without a transfer of ownership’ (p.210).

- Access (vs. ownership)- Excludes gift giving or bartering- Sharing and access take on different meanings in market vs. non-market economies.

Frenken and Schor (2017)

Define the sharing economy as ‘consumers granting each other temporary access to under-utilized physical assets (‘idle capacity’), possibly for money’ (pp.4-5).

- Excludes centralized systems- Excludes reselling platforms- Excludes the provision of on-demand services- Excludes production (focuses on consumption).

Stephany (2015)‘The sharing economy is the value in taking underutilized assets and making them accessible online to a community, leading to a reduced need for ownership of those assets’ (p. 9).

- Focuses on for-profit initiatives that promote access instead of ownership- Beyond peer-to-peer platforms, the sharing economy includes business-to-consumer companies like Zipcar and Rent the Runway that rent directly to consumers.

EXAMPLES OF BROAD DEFINITIONS

DEFINITION KEY HYPOTHESES

Habibi, Davidson and ‘[We] suggest a sharing-exchange continuum that helps distinguish the degree The sharing economy is a diverse field with hybrid forms that

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Laroche (2017) to which actual sharing is being offered’ (p.115). fall along a continuum between ‘true sharing’ and ‘pseudo-sharing’.

Lessig (2008)Defines the hybrid economy as ‘either a commercial entity that aims to leverage value from a sharing economy, or it is a sharing economy that builds upon a commercial entity to better support its sharing aims’ (p.177).

Most initiatives exhibit for-profit and non-profit dimensions simultaneously.

Muñoz and Cohen (this issue)

‘A socio-economic system enabling an intermediated set of exchanges of goods and services between individuals and organizations which aim to increase efficiency and optimization of sub-utilized resources in society’ (n.p., this issue).

Includes both business-to-business, business-to-customer, for-profit and non-profit initiatives, reselling, gifting.

Schor (2014)‘Sharing economy activities fall into four broad categories: recirculation of goods, increased utilization of durable assets, exchange of services, and sharing of productive assets’ (p.2).

Includes both business-to-business, business-to-customer, for-profit and non-profit initiatives, reselling, gifting.

Botsman (2013)‘An economic model based on sharing underutilized assets from spaces to skills to stuff for monetary or non-monetary benefits’ (n.p., online article).

Includes both business-to-business, business-to-customer, for-profit and non-profit initiatives, reselling, and gifting.

Source: Adapted from Acquier, Carbone & Masse (2016)

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TABLE 2: THE THREE ORGANIZING CORES OF THE SHARING ECONOMY: DEFINITIONS, TENSIONS AND PARADOXES

ACCESS ECONOMY PLATFORM ECONOMY COMMUNITY-BASED ECONOMYDefinition Initiatives sharing underutilized assets

(material resources or skills) to optimize their use

Intermediation of decentralized exchanges among peers through digital platforms

Coordinating through non-contractual, non-hierarchical or non-monetized forms of interactions (work, exchange, etc.)

Illustrative references Rifkin (2000) Sundararajan (2016), Srineck (2016) Bauwens (2006), Benkler (2004)

Promises Towards a post-ownership society:

Economic and social promises: More inclusive and broader access

Environmental promise: Resource optimization

Towards a post-bureaucratic society:

Economic and social promises: Broader access, large and secure exchange system, individual economic opportunities

Environmental promise: Resource optimization

Post-bureaucratic promise:Dis-intermediated and decentralized P2P markets

Towards a post-market society:

Economic and social promises: Inclusiveness and social bonding within the community

Post-bureaucratic promise: Community and solidarity to counter market and bureaucratic power

Tensions and paradoxes Moral hazard and misbehaviour

Jevons paradox and rebound effect

Political and market power of platforms as new intermediaries

Limited scaling potential (community bonds and trust prevent growth)

Paradox of openness and distinction

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