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

Abstract

The sharing economy (SE) has become a prominent theme in a broad variety of research domains in the last decade. With conceptions from an increasing range of theoretical perspectives, SE literature is disperse and disconnected, with a great proliferation of definitions and related terms which hinder organized and harmonious research. This study carries out a systematic literature review from 1978 to September 2020, uncovering 50 definitions as units of analysis. The authors, through a qualitative-interpretative analysis, review definitions, identify perspectives, and critically assess their conceptual nature on an evolutionary basis. Findings show that despite the SE has been extending its routes and approaches, it is far from a stock of conceptual grounds. The paper makes three contributions. First, we portray SE within a common evolutionary framework by developing it as a life cycle model. Second, we clarify the definitional and terminological jungle. And third, we suggest a new definition that can enrich the discussion.

Ambidextrous structures paving the way for disruptive business models: a conceptual framework

“…After that, we screened all 125 remaining articles in their entirety, which further excluded 89 articles satisfying the above-mentioned exclusion criteria. Finally, we conducted forward and backward reference searches and identified 22 articles not discovered through the formal database search (Cacciotti and Hayton 2015;Sánchez-Pérez et al 2021). These are analogously screened to approve their fit with the review scope.…”

“…Therefore, a qualitative data analysis technique is used to identify thematic consensus in the literature (Crossan and Apaydin 2010;Bouncken et al 2015). We thematically analysed the review findings by examining the proposed organizational structures for gross similarities and discrepancies according to the principle of pattern matching (Yin 1994;Crossan and Apaydin 2010;Klang et al 2014;Sánchez-Pérez et al 2021). Specifically, we evaluated the findings to determine whether their patterns align with the following characteristics of an organization's structure: (1) people and culture; (2) processes; (3) control and rewards; (4) structural context; (5) vision and values; (6) leadership; and (7) resources.…”

A Systematic Literature Review on Pricing Strategies in the Sharing Economy

“…or "crowd-based capitalism" or "on-demand economy" or "peer-to-peer economy" or "p2p economy" or "mesh economy" or "rental economy" or "community-based economy" or "commons-based peer production" [21], "bike sharing" or "bicycle sharing" [22], "ride sharing", "ride hailing", or "ride sourcing" [12], "car sharing" [21], "vehicle sharing", "crowdsourcing" [23], "crowdfunding" [24], "collaborative fashion consumption" [25], "sharing platform", "peer-to-peer platform", or "p2p platform" [21] In Scopus, the search scope includes the title, abstract, and keyword, and in WOS, the search scope includes the title, abstract, keyword, and keyword plus. To ensure reliability and quality, conference papers, book chapters, reviews, and so on, are excluded [26].…”

40 years of sharing economy research: An intellectual and cognitive structures analysis

“…While there is no single appropriate or agreed definition for the SE (Hossain, 2020;Sánchez-Pérez et al, 2020), it is described in the literature as a phenomenon for the promotion of more sustainable consumption practices that allow access to ownership of underutilized assets to enhance efficiency (Eckhardt et al, 2019). This lack of consensus on a definition probably stems from the fact that this field has been undergoing a rapid proliferation of studies coming from a variety of disciplines and about a diversity of industries (Laurenti et al, 2019), which has also caused the SE to be labeled with different names, such as collaborative consumption (Barnes and Mattsson, 2016), collaborative economy (Felson and Spaeth, 1978), peer to peer exchange (Aloni, 2016), peer economy (Tussyadiah and Pesonen, 2016), access economy (Acquier et al, 2017), peer to peer sharing (Cheng, 2016), or legal access (Morewedge et al, 2020).…”

“…We have decided not to limit our search to one or several specific discipline/s (WoS category/ies) due to three reasons; these are (1) the nature of the field, (2) the maturity of the field, and (3) the objective of the study. The SE is considered a multidisciplinary field since it is born from the connection and coexistence of diverse scientific areas to try to explain a single but complex phenomenon (Acquier et al, 2017;Laurenti et al, 2019;Sánchez-Pérez et al, 2020). Restricting its analysis to only one or even several disciplines will only bring partial and biased results.…”