Logic Pluralism in Mobile Platform Ecosystems: A Study of Indie App Developers on the iOS App Store

Abstract

The locus of value creation and innovation in the software industry is shifting more and more to platform ecosystems on which numerous developers create extensions with additional functionalities based on the platforms core architecture. While such complementors may strongly profit from platforms, there are considerable costs. Recent studies therefore examined the costs of fitting apps to the specifications of certain platforms; however, these works largely neglect costs arising from the transactional relationship between platform and complementor. In order to shed light on this, our work examines how design choices of platform governance and app architecture impact the emergence of four types of cost-inducing hazards within the transactional context of the ecosystem. By using a configurational approach based on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (FsQCA), we display complex interactional effects of the causal conditions on complementors' perception of hazardous environments and thus provide valuable insights for both practice and theory on platform ecosystems.

Institutional Logics and Digital Collective Action at Amnesty International – the Decoder Initiative

“…This was very different from the pre-existing SMO logic found at Amnesty. While we found little evidence of logic synthesis [13], we found how the logics co-existed, and fertilized each other through partial blending.…”

“…While the decoder initiative is still in an early stage, there are some evidence that the decoder initiative linked the traditional SMO logic and the platform logic at the organization. What we do not see include compromising and logic synthesis as reported within the iOS app developers [13].…”

“…They found that organizational actors combined and borrowed a minimal set of behaviors from both logics in order to please their social and commercial constituencies. In another study Qiu et al [13] examined two logics of independent app developers on the iOS platform: the logic of profession and the logic of market. The researchers found that although the app developers may have initially leaned toward one of the logics, they compromised and revised their processes to accommodate elements of the opposing logic to create what the authors referred to as "logic synthesis" moderated by the platform provider's guidelines and user interactions.…”

Introduction—Platforms and Infrastructures in the Digital Age

“…Platforms can choose to screen products and decide whether they are qualified for release, a practice carried out on the iOS App Store by Apple, Sony Playstation, and SAP. Not surprisingly, the inconsistency and lack of transparency of this process has attracted criticism from the developer community (Qiu et al 2017).…”

Digital and Conventional Matchmaking – Similarities, Differences and Tensions

“…Thereby, perspectives on digital technology can differ. For example, software developers tend to adopt an engineering perspective on digital platforms, while managers adopt a market logic [48]. To manage potential tensions between co-existing logics, organizations can introduce mechanisms for collaboration between actors with different backgrounds [49] and foster legitimacy by selectively coupling shared elements of different logics [42].…”