Coworking spaces: Empowerment for entrepreneurship and innovation in the digital and sharing economy

Abstract

Freelancers, entrepreneurs, new ventures, but also incumbent firms increasingly use coworking spaces (CWS). The alignment of work-space and social space can facilitate organizational empowerment supporting individual work satisfaction. Our mixed-methods study of 363 respondents from CWS in 26 cities in the USA, Germany, and China identifies configurations of institutional patterns on work satisfaction associated with a sense of community, autonomy, participation, linkage multiplicity and mutual knowledge creation. High work satisfaction can occur in three different configurations related to a) agility housing, b) knowledge housing, and c) social housing. Our findings contribute to how incumbent firms and CWS can influence work satisfaction and empower towards innovation and entrepreneurial performance.

Entrepreneurship of an institutional field: the emergence of coworking spaces for digital business models

“…While they have been concentrating on urban areas first, they start to proliferate into rural areas too. Possibly, coworking spaces are a far fetching concept for business model development and entrepreneurship in the sharing economy ranging from solo-entrepreneurs to incumbent firms (Kraus et al 2019;Bouncken and Barwinski 2020;Bouncken et al 2020b;Filser et al 2020). One driver is the institutional isomorphism around digital work and allow their users to cope with the deficits of digitalization, its deficits of personal contact, and the needs of experimentation, knowledge exchange, and mutual knowledge creation in the information and innovation focused world.…”

“…The speed of coworking spaces developing in the Silicon Valley and then in urban centers around the world increases their visibility and canalizes the attention of followers driving the fast diffusion and the development of similar concepts worldwide. Thus, entrepreneurship, mostly on digital business models, proliferates in diverse locations in the world (Bouncken and Aslam 2019;Bouncken et al 2020b;Görmar et al 2020). The diffusion also is triggered because the large and famous IT firms as googles used the ideas of the mall independent coworking spaces.…”

“…Digital experts and entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley initiated the concept of coworking spaces (Bouncken and Reuschl 2018), which rapidly proliferated around the world, mainly because the sharing economy (Richter et al 2017;Huarng and Yu 2019) requires digital experts while needing the creative and social power through sharing office and work spaces (Kraus et al 2019;Bouncken et al 2020b). Researchers increasingly pay attention to the significant institutional changes through virtually mediated co-production and consumption of the sharing economy yet only start to recognize coworking spaces (Cheng 2016;Hamari et al 2015;Albinsson and Yasanthi Perera 2012;Lamberton and Rose 2012).…”

Theoretical dilemmas, conceptual review and perspectives disclosure of the sharing economy: a qualitative analysis

“…Moreover, the work of Frenken and Schor (2017), despite being relatively recent, receives a not insignificant number of citations. On the other side, from definitions contained in books, the most cited according to Google Scholar are Botsman and Rogers (2010), and Lessig (2008). The dilemma arises because the various definitions are different in nature, so opting for one or other of them implies unbalancing the 'umbrella' nature of the SE concept.…”

“…But what has been happening with the SE? After the first and occasional contribution on the SE at the end of the 1970s (Felson and Spaeth 1978), there followed a period of lack of interest in this concept, which then rose to the very cutting edge of management in the late 2000s, 2010s and has continued rising until today, linked not only to the proliferation of companies and SE activities but also as a social phenomenon (Botsman and Rogers 2010). Thus, on the positive side, from 2010 onwards, there has been an explosion of research work, continuing to this day, which has increased the understanding of various consumer, business and government behaviors around the practices, production, and consumption derived from SE-businesses (Eckhardt et al 2019;Hossain 2020).…”