Striving for Fair Governance: A Multi-Case Study Comparison of Platform Cooperatives and Market-Leading Platforms

Abstract

Over the past decade, multiple governance failures in market-leading platforms have caused severe criticism from partners, customers, and regulators. This has led to the formation of an alternative concept called platform cooperatives, which are jointly owned and democratically controlled by partners and aim to create a more just and social alternative to dominating market leaders. Using a comparative multi-case study of six matching pairs of platforms across different industries, this study explores how governance differs between platform types and how this impacts platform strategies. The results show that platform governance varies strongly between platform cooperatives and traditional platforms across the four governance dimensions investigated: values, economics, authority, and cooperation. These differences directly limit the strategic option space available for platform cooperatives and decrease the feasibility of success when competing with well-established players. Our findings contribute to the understanding of platform governance and platform cooperatives and can pave the way for future research in this field.