Platform cooperatives and the dilemmas of platform worker‐member participation

Abstract

Despite the surge of interest in platform cooperatives, we have a limited understanding of the dynamics of platform worker‐member participation in these cooperatives. Drawing on interviews with 21 senior leaders and founders of platform worker cooperatives, we investigate the dynamics of platform worker‐member participation, finding that these cooperatives experience some successes and many challenges. We then build theory about how four distinct features of platform worker cooperatives—the facilitation of multihoming, the physically untethered nature of work, the relatively high importance of scale as a strategic imperative, and the relatively low importance of initial platform worker‐member investment—influence these participation dynamics. We find that the platform and worker cooperative organisational models are in tension with one another when brought together within a platform worker cooperative, leading to positive and negative effects on participation.

Platform Cooperatives and Poverty Eradication: Building on the Legacy of Johnston Birchall

“…Turning to our second point regarding this takeaway, like traditional cooperatives, platform cooperatives create many opportunities for members to participate in governance processes. This is often through the use of a variety of third-party digital tools to stimulate participation in building bespoke automated resolution systems so as to allow for issues to be raised and voted upon asynchronously (Stocksy, 2021;Mannan and Pek, 2023). This ensures that platform cooperatives try to remain aligned with their members' needs.…”

Empowering communities with platform cooperatives

“…When scaling, they need to maintain their focus on the pursuit of members' needs, local value and societal benefits, and keep their distinctive features, especially shared ownership and democratic governance (Rijpens, Jonet and Mertens, 2015 [69]). Secondlevel cooperatives, which are organisations whose members are first-level cooperatives, could bring together local cooperatives to collaborate and to pool resources to develop and maintain the platform (Cossey, Dedeurwaerdere and Périlleux, 2023 [70]; Mannan, 2020 [71]). Collaboration among cooperatives through such second-level organisations could maximise the capabilities of the cooperative movement by promoting knowledge sharing, enabling exchange of resources and services, facilitating common projects, and fostering the creation of national and international networks (Como et al, 2016[72]).…”