How do platforms improve social capital within sharing economy-based service triads: an information processing perspective

Abstract

This study examines how platforms within sharing economy-based service triads (SESTs) can improve their social capital through information processing and knowledge management mechanisms, with the objective to provide better platform services to both service suppliers and end customers. Data were collected through multiple case studies, primarily relying on insight gathered from 32 semi-structured interviews with managers from four sharing economy platform companies in the Chinese ride-sharing (DiDi and Uber China) and logistics-sharing (Huo-che-bang and Yun-man-man) industries. Through our analysis we uncover uncertainties faced by sharing economy platforms in SETSs (including task complexity, over-competition, and task coordination), delineating their information processing requirements. Based on our findings we suggest that these requirements can be addressed by enhanced intra-organizational structures that would contribute to the SESTs’ information processing capacity. Accomplishing this fit between a platform’s information processing requirements and associated information processing capacity carries great promise to not only affect the platform’s knowledge management capability (PKMC) but also the social capital created within SESTs.