Services that are especially suited to being offered via online labor platforms, such as cleaning, driving and tutoring, are frequently performed in an informal way, especially in emerging-market countries. The informal economy is thus important for recruiting workers for labor platforms. Platform use, however, requires formal service provision, which workers in the informal economy often resist. Thus, labor platforms have to promote workers’ transition from informal to formal service provision. While recent studies have hinted at labor platforms’ fostering of formal economic activity, we know little about how such intermediation unfolds. We use a process lens and comprehensive qualitative data on labor platforms in Panama and Mexico to study how labor platforms steer workers to formal service provision. Detailing the interactive process of workers transitioning to formal service provision as triggered by labor platforms, we add to platform research and literature on intermediation between informal and formal economic activity.

Boundary-work research has extensively explored how professionals engage in boundary work to protect or expand their professional boundaries in interprofessional collaboration (IPC). Yet professionals’ contextual constraints in everyday work, such as time pressure or legal restrictions, often result in competing interests of the professionals involved in IPC, prompting them to engage in boundary work to limit—instead of protect or expand—their boundaries. Our empirical analysis uses comprehensive qualitative data on IPC in Germany between self-employed general practitioners (GPs) and registered nurses employed in nursing homes in which GPs’ efficiency interests compete with nurses’ safeguarding interests, leading both professionals to engage in boundary-work efforts to limit their boundaries. Our findings provide a comprehensive understanding and framework of professionals’ boundary work, showing that individual GPs and nurses typically hold a portfolio of various defending and accommodating micro-strategies. Based on our first-order findings, we identify how different sources of power enable particular micro-strategies and explore how the choice of micro-strategies depends on different forms of trust in the collaborating partner. Lastly, we outline interactions of micro-strategies, illustrating how the outcomes of professionals’ bilateral boundary work depend on the sequence of these strategies.

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Overfunding of crowdfunded product-development projects would seem to be a welcome outcome for entrepreneurs, yet initial theory and evidence suggest that overfunding can have both positive and negative consequences. To overcome these contradictory predictions, we develop theory linking research on slack resources, audience expectations, and product category spanning to hypothesize boundary conditions for whether and when overfunding has a positive or negative effect on the product-development outcomes of product release and audience-perceived product quality. Post-crowdfunding data on video-game development projects show that entrepreneurs with high-category-spanning products benefit substantially less from overfunding than entrepreneurs with low-category-spanning products. Our study provides novel insights into the relation between overfunding and product release as well as audience-perceived product quality. It also contributes to our emerging understanding of the role of categories in the context of crowdfunding. We discuss implications for theory and practice.

Background To improve interprofessional collaboration between registered nurses (RNs) and general practitioners (GPs) for nursing home residents (NHRs), the interprof ACT intervention package was developed. This complex intervention includes six components (e.g., shared goal setting, standardized procedures for GPs’ nursing home visits) that can be locally adapted. The cluster-randomized interprof ACT trial evaluates the effects of this intervention on the cumulative incidence of hospital admissions (primary outcome) and secondary outcomes (e.g., length of hospital stays, utilization of emergency care services, and quality of life) within 12 months. It also includes a process evaluation which is subject of this protocol. The objectives of this evaluation are to assess the implementation of the interprof ACT intervention package and downstream effects on nurse–physician collaboration as well as preconditions and prospects for successive implementation into routine care. Methods This study uses a mixed methods triangulation design involving all 34 participating nursing homes (clusters). The quantitative part comprises paper-based surveys among RNs, GPs, NHRs, and nursing home directors at baseline and 12 months. In the intervention group (17 clusters), data on the implementation of preplanned implementation strategies (training and supervision of nominated IPAVs, interprofessional kick-off meetings) and local implementation activities will be recorded. Major outcome domains are the dose, reach and fidelity of the implementation of the intervention package, changes in interprofessional collaboration, and contextual factors. The qualitative part will be conducted in a subsample of 8 nursing homes (4 per study group) and includes repeated non-participating observations and semistructured interviews on the interaction between involved health professionals and their work processes. Quantitative and qualitative data will be descriptively analyzed and then triangulated by means of joint displays and mixed methods informed regression models. Discussion By integrating a variety of qualitative and quantitative data sources, this process evaluation will allow comprehensive assessment of the implementation of the interprof ACT intervention package, the changes induced in interprofessional collaboration, and the influence of contextual factors. These data will reveal expected and unexpected changes in the procedures of interprofessional care delivery and thus facilitate accurate conclusions for the further design of routine care services for NHRs. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03426475. Registered on 07/02/2018.