Orchestrating a digital platform ecosystem to address societal challenges: A robust action perspective

Abstract

Orchestration of digital platform ecosystems has been well examined in the context of markets and the private sector where an orchestrator is a resourceful firm exploiting commercial opportunities in an industry. However, little is known about how it occurs when a government organization orchestrates to address societal challenges. We build upon the construct of “robust action”—identified with chess masters who play to advance a broad strategy while simultaneously maintaining flexibility—to explain how orchestration by a government organization might overcome initiation, stabilization, expansion, and meta-governance challenges through digital platform-enabled participative architecture, multivocal inscriptions, and distributed experimentation. Evidence for our theoretical framework is drawn from empirical studies of the Aadhaar, a platform ecosystem orchestrated to address multiple societal challenges stemming from identity and its management.

Ecosystem orchestration practices for industrial firms: A qualitative meta-analysis, framework development and research agenda

“…Additionally, orchestrators need to transition from an inward ("ego-centric") to an outward ("eco-centric") mindset (Mann et al, 2022;Shi et al, 2023) and strive to prolong their orchestration role (Leten et al, 2013). As market explorers, orchestrators function as environmental scanners to identify, evaluate, and capitalize on new business opportunities (Addo, 2022;Giudici et al, 2018). They actively seek new value creation opportunities (Kindermann et al, 2022), respond to business challenges (Reypens et al, 2021), alleviate ecosystem bottlenecks (Masucci et al, 2020), and continuously adapt to internal and external dynamic changes (Mann et al, 2022).…”

Building digital resilience against crises: The case of Taiwan's COVID‐19 pandemic management

“…Specifically, a pioneering resource structuring process involves seeking, identifying, selecting, and collecting resources that are best suited for certain tasks (Du et al, 2018; Zhang et al, 2021; Zhang et al, 2022). Once these resources are obtained, orchestrators can further bundle additional or complementary capabilities (Carnes et al, 2022; Cui et al, 2019; Sirmon et al, 2011; Zhang et al, 2021) as well as effectively leverage other actors' adaptive capability (Cao et al, 2022; Pan et al, 2020; Tan et al, 2014) to (re)combine and (re)configure the best resource portfolio (Addo, 2022; Cui et al, 2021; Lopez et al, 2022) in response to various scenarios.…”

“…With regard to the depth strategy, several scholars have transcended organisational boundaries to probe the complexities inherent in coordinating resource orchestration among various actors in diverse contexts, such as venture capital firms (Baert et al, 2016) and digital platforms (Addo, 2022). Echoing these sentiments, we argue that the depth perspective is profoundly relevant in pandemic crisis management, as many researchers have highlighted the integral roles of governments, communities, and individuals in action synchronisation and coordination for resilience (Boh et al, 2020; Rai, 2020; Sakurai & Chungtai, 2020).…”

“…Echoing these sentiments, we argue that the depth perspective is profoundly relevant in pandemic crisis management, as many researchers have highlighted the integral roles of governments, communities, and individuals in action synchronisation and coordination for resilience (Boh et al, 2020; Rai, 2020; Sakurai & Chungtai, 2020). As such, our study sought to understand how a government, acting as a leading actor, some call the orchestrator (Addo, 2022; Kumar et al, 2022), engages diverse societal entities in the resource orchestration actions to attain digital resilience.…”

The Effects of Reviewers' Security and Privacy Perceptions on Fin Apps' Performance: A Textual Analysis

“…Users frequently review apps and provide feedback about their experience on different digital platforms (Krebs & Duncan, 2015). Examples of these studies include mobile knowledge work (Jarrahi et al, 2022), health care (Davidson et al, 2023), and societal challenges (Addo, 2022). Online reviews create value for app development and are an essential source of information for other users to gain insights into the apps they are interested in (Ahmed et al, 2018).…”