Varieties of Uberization: How technology and institutions change the organization(s) of late capitalism

Abstract

Organization theory faces challenges on all sides, yet it is uniquely suited to help understand and guide our current economic transition. In order to make good on this promise, however, organization theory needs to adopt a rigorously comparative approach and to jettison “America first.” Those who organize firms require ingredients that often include capital, labor, supplies, and a rule-bound market for selling. These ingredients in turn bear the imprint of national economies and the institutions that govern and support them. We argue that innovations in information and communication technologies (ICTs) combine with national institutions to guide what firms will look like by shaping what ingredients are available; ultimately, ICTs can fundamentally reorganize institutions such as capital and labor markets. We illustrate this argument with a comparison of how the ridehailing industry (such as Uber and Lyft in the United States) is organized in the US, Sweden, Germany, India, Indonesia, China, and Nigeria. The same basic innovation—a platform that allows riders and drivers to match via smartphone—produces substantially different organizational forms depending on domestic institutions. Moreover, in the US “Uberization” is challenging fundamental aspects of labor markets and the employment relation in industries well beyond ridehailing. The “varieties of Uberization” across national contexts exemplify the kinds of phenomena that organization theorists should be examining right now, if we aim to inform a more humane future.

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