The sharing economy is an emerging niche for innovation capable of disrupting established socio-technical and economic regimes. Because of this potential to cause radical changes in a wide array of domains, research in multiple disciplines addressing various aspects entailing this phenomenon is proliferating. In this emerging body of literature, the understanding and framing of the sharing economy are often different. Without knowledge about the current state of the research related to the sharing economy, delineating research trends, gaps, and needs for directing effectively primary research are not possible. This study aimed to synthesize the state and distribution of existing publications related to the sharing economy in multiple disciplines. We used the systematic mapping technique to scope, identify, and classify the publications at a fine level of granularity. We reviewed 589 journal articles (published from 1978 to 2017), and 454 met the selection criteria. The journal articles reviewed were published in 284 different journals. Intriguingly, 15 journals published five to 13 publications each and 221 journals had a single article about the topic. Journals belonging to the subject areas "business, management and accounting" (42.1%) and "social sciences" (35.2%) published more than 70% of the reviewed publications. Accommodation (19.8%) and car and ridesharing (17.2%) were the two most prominent sectors; 50.2% of the publications addressed C2C transactions (10.6% B2C, 24.4% more than one type); 62.3% were about accessing resources, and 5.1% concerned transfer of ownership (i.e., second-hand or donation); and 19.2% covered access and transfer of ownership simultaneously. While empirical studies were the majority (53.1%, when comparing with conceptual ones), qualitative approaches were most common (51.5% against 24.9% quantitative and 17.4% mixed methods). Literature review (22.9%), survey (13.2%), case study (7.3%) and interview (7%) were the most frequently used methods. User behavior (26.4%), business models and organizational aspects (22.7%), institution and governance system (18.7%), conceptualization matters (17%), and sustainability evaluation (15.3%) are research clusters identified from a grounded approach. The link between user behavior and net environmental impacts of sharing options was the largest gap found in the research needing attention from a sustainability perspective. Accordingly, multidisciplinary investigations quantifying behavioral root causes, magnitude, and likelihood of environmental rebound effects using real-world data are strongly encouraged.
The sharing economy (SE) has drawn significant attention from several society stakeholders in the last five years. While business actors are interested in financial opportunities to meet consumer needs, new business models, academia and governmental organisations are concerned with potential unintended effects on society and the environment. Despite its notable global growth, there is still a lack of more solid ground in understanding its origins and respective mechanisms through which it has been evolving as a category. This research addresses the problematics of the origins and ascendency of the SE by examining the process by which it is arising as a new category, searching for conceptual clarification, and pinpointing the legitimacy granted by stakeholders. Our guiding research questions are: how the SE was formed and evolved as a category, and as a category, is the SE legitimate? Additionally, we attempt to identify the nature of the SE as a category. Making a historical analysis of the expression SE and its equivalents, this paper deepens the discussion about the SE’s nature by providing evidence that it has predominantly been formed by emergence processes, comprising social movement, similarity clustering, and truce components, which render the SE a particular case of category formation and allow communication, entrepreneurship, regulation, and research about what it is. Moreover, the findings reveal a generalised legitimacy granted to the SE by a vast number of stakeholders, although still lacking the consolidation of socio-political legitimation. The SE’s nature seems to fall into a metaphorical approach, notably, the notion of radial categories.
The Sharing Economy (SE) has been growing at an impressive rate across the globe (Cohen & Kietzmann, 2014) and emerging as an innovative and rapidly growing sector of the economy (Hira & Reilly, 2017), which attracted the attention of the scientific community. An increasing number of studies have been brought to light helping to document and analyze how SE manifests and evolves across economic systems, thus, contributing to refine and recast existing management theory (Mair & Reischauer, 2017). Nevertheless, there still is a lack of a common understanding of SE and its underlying mechanisms (Knote & Blohm, 2016). As an emergent category, SE has been contoured by being a mutant process, as it has been crafted by multiple and distinct temporal identity and legitimacy events, mechanisms and claims. Showing signs of being an on-going process of evolution, there is a constant need for further research to identify developments in the evolution of SE considering both identify claims (self-referential) and legitimacy (granted by stakeholders), which would offer additional comprehension about the SE phenomenon. The research addresses it by studying what is the role of SE in establishing the identity of organizations belonging to the field, considering both identify claims (selfreferential) and legitimacy (granted by stakeholders)? To answer the research question, the research was designed involving two components inspired on category creation studies (Durand & Paolella, 2013;Glynn & Navis, 2013;Navis & Glynn, 2010;Kennedy & Fiss, 2013;Kennedy et al., 2010;Lounsbury & Rao, 2004;and Wry et al., 2014): 1) four prototypical SE organizations were selected, each of them belonging to Schor's (2014) four SE archetypes of activities: (i) Airbnb -peer-to-peer, for-profit activity -, (ii) Zipcar -business-to-peer, forprofit activity -, (iii) TimeBanks -peer-to-peer, non-profit -and (iv) Make: makerspaces -business-to-peer, non-profit. The content of the evolution of their identity claims was analyzed, using data from their public available reports, as well as, other secondary data available on-line; and 2) considering the same set of SE organizations, legitimacy evolution was analyzed considering how scientific community, investors, customers, media, other analysts and other interested audiences have been constructing category meaning to them, conferring the formation of SE categorical and organizational identities, and perceptions about the viability of their business models (Tripsas, 2009, as cited in Navis & Glynn, 2010. In short, it was analyzed how stakeholders assess the viability of SE categories and organizations and can grant or withhold legitimacy to SE organizations (Zuckerman, 1999, as cited in Navis & Glynn, 2010. This research presents a new layer on framing a detailed understanding of the SE field in its maturing dimension, thus, meeting Mair's and Reischauer's (2017) call for studying the SE, unpack and make sense of an inspiring and complex phenomenon and thereby advancing and sophisticate the existing theo...
The Sharing Economy (SE) has dawn great attention from several stakeholders in society in the last five years. While business actors are interested in financial opportunities to meet consumer needs, new business models, the academia and governmental organizations are concerned with potential unintended effects on the society and environment. In the process of making a clearer comprehension of the SE phenomenon, researchers have identified that, despite its notable global growth, there still persists a lack of a more solid ground in understanding its origins and respective mechanisms under which it has been evolving over time as a category. In this research, we address the problematics of the origins and ascendency of the SE by examining the process by which the SE is arising as a new category, searching for conceptual clarification and pinpointing the legitimacy granted by key stakeholders. Our guiding research questions are: (1) how the SE was formed and evolved as a market category; and (2), as a market category, is the SE legitimate? Additionally, we attempt to identify the nature of the SE as a category. To answer these questions, we conducted an historical analysis of the expression SE and its equivalents. This paper deepens the discussion about the nature of the SE by providing evidence that (i) the SE has predominantly been formed by emergence processes, comprising social movement, similarity clustering and truce components. It is the combination of all these aforementioned processes that renders the SE a special case of market category formation, which, in turn, has been allowing communication, entrepreneurship, regulation and research about what really is the SE, and despite the evident lack of agreements regarding both the label and its content; (ii) there is a generalized legitimacy granted to the SE by a vast number of stakeholders, even though still lacking on the consolidation of socio-political legitimation, and (iii) the nature of the SE seems to fall in a metaphorical approach, particularly, the notion of radial categories.
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