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Purpose\ud The purpose of this paper is to examine peer production (P2P) conceived as an ecosystem for value co-creation. First, this paper provides information on the specific P2P method for value co-creation, which is based on distributed technologies, cognitive slack and search for quality, to provide outputs that are open to continuous improvement. Second, aiming to fill the extant literature gap, this paper discusses the efficient dimension of P2P, providing a framework for the net benefit analysis of the economies and diseconomies that affect the value co-creation processes.\ud \ud Design/methodology/approach\ud The paper identifies three main literature clusters that are focused on P2P, namely, economical, sociological and organizational clusters, and integrates them with the economics of organizational perspective to elicit information on the efficient dimension of P2P. This efficient dimension is expressed by a net benefit analysis of the economies and diseconomies that affect the P2P value co-creation processes.\ud \ud Findings\ud The P2P ecosystem is characterized by the intensive interaction among cognitive slack and distributed technologies. This complex interaction presents interesting implications in terms of efficiency that, until now, have not been analyzed in the literature. Aiming to fill the extant literature gap, this paper provides a consistent analytical framework that simultaneously takes into account the economies of knowledge integration and potential diseconomies, that is, the costs of coordination and loss of control that arise from the adoption and diffusion of distributed technologies.\ud \ud Originality/value\ud This paper provides an original explanation of P2P as an emergent ecosystem that serves as a service logics amplifier of value co-creation. In this regard, analysis of the key features of P2P not only sheds new light on P2P, but also allows for the reflection on the ecosystem’s framework, which promotes a virtuous interaction between the conceptual speculation and understanding of reality. Moreover, the proposed framework for the net benefit analysis of the P2P value co-creation model draws the attention of managers and decision makers as they consider the following issue: value co-creation jointly considers not only its benefits, but also its associated costs

This work aims to develop a conceptual model to support countries, institutions, and firms toward the accomplishment of present Agenda 2030 sustainability goals. The last two decades have seen a growing interest in sustainability. Climate change, resource scarcity, multipolarity of interests, mistrust and delegitimization of institutions are just some of the critical issues that need to be addressed. There is broad consensus on the urgency of generating further social, environmental, and economic innovation to address these challenges, reshaping global markets, and offering new spaces of action to firms and institutions. Accordingly, there also is a wide search for new models of organizing firms. Digital platforms are among those. Moreover, since digital platforms require coordination among multiple actors and interests in order to succeed, they may also be conceptualized as meta-organizations, less hierarchical than firms yet more tightly coupled than markets. However, despite the wide literature on platforms, this organizational lens seems not to have been taken into the right consideration. This conceptual work aims to fill this gap, providing a framework that clarifies why and how a digital platform ecosystem could configure a sustainable meta-organizational model, and also providing the main steps to build it.

The paper investigates the complex interaction between technological innovation and norms: a crucial dynamic to facing the severe challenges of the Anthropocene.On the one hand, the sedimentation of norms acts as the genetic memory of a society. Allowing a reduction in the uncertainty of human condition and ensuring greater predictability of human interaction, the set of norms tend to activate a system of constraints that normalize and legitimate technological innovations.On the other hand, technological innovation is one of the most unpredictable and non-linear sources of change. It demands legitimization for what in the past were excluded or prohibited a priori (e.g. behaviors, ethics): this may trigger a “decoupling” process from the extant set of norms. Nevertheless, what decoupling should be legitimized? A wicked problem arises, and forking paths emerge in the socio-economic landscape.Leading the tension between new technology (source of unpredictability) and the taken-for-granted norms (source of predictability) is crucial if the aim is to linking effectiveness and efficiency to viable sustainability. While the (still dominant) cartesian approach considers norms and new technology as separate elements of the social system, system thinking enlightens the interaction between them. This helps to unveil hidden options/feedbacks in the decoupling-recoupling process between technological innovation and the evolution of norms enriching the information variety of the decision-makers (policy makers, citizens, urban planners, etc.).The dynamics that govern this dyad, however, are not linear: norms, in fact, do not have the same reactivity to absorb (recouple) the change triggered by new technologies (decoupling from the extant set of norms).Although the relevance of the issue, it has been often neglected, or at least not taken in the right consideration. Therefore, aiming to investigate this dyadic relationship, the paper focuses on the ambiguous role technology plays in enabling resilience: sometimes it acts as a resilience amplifier; sometimes it is a resilience inhibitor (and even a steel cage); sometimes it provokes an undesirable deviation from the taken-for-granted codified rules.In particular, aiming to contribute in filling this gap, and rooting in the Viable System Approach (VSA), the paper investigates why and how in some cases the interaction between technological innovation and norms leads to resistance towards change or acts as a resilience amplifier in other cases.The paper is structured as follows: after an Introduction underlying the need to understanding the increasing tension between new technology and norms, Section 2 deals with the contribution of the VSA in understanding the social systems; then, rooting in the VSA and moving from the concept of information variety, Section 3 frames the complex interplay between new technology and taken-for-granted norms as one of the most dramatic “resistance-resilience” issue of the Anthropocene era; Section 4 proposes a more comprehensive framework discussing the range “resilience-resistance-vulnerability” and presents final reflections.

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