Community-Based Collaborative Consumption: Exploring an Organization-Sponsored Sharing Platform

Abstract

The dearth of sharing platforms that are embedded in an established community is puzzling given that shared interests facilitate the sharing of goods and services and this collaborative consumption, in turn, increases communal sociality. Additionally, the chicken-and-egg challenge of recruiting sellers and buyers to a sharing platform is alleviated when this two-sided market is implemented in an established community. By studying the Zimride by Enterprise® platform that supports private ridesharing communities within universities and corporations, we unpack the challenges of managing an organization-sponsored sharing platform and empirically answer the following research question: Despite the benefits that community bestows on sharing, why are sharing platforms embedded in organizations so elusive? In answer to this question, we abductively develop three plausible explanations from our empirical case study: competing organizing mechanisms, non-generative dialectic management and insufficient community building. These explanations are grounded in our empirical insights about tensions nested within the complex service delivery model of organization-sponsored sharing platforms, which result from the competing organizing mechanisms of this hybrid organizational form. Our conceptual infrastructure and qualitative findings can guide future research on community-based sharing platforms and help managers to innovate new service delivery models for promoting sustainable consumption and corporate social responsibility.