The Platform Review Alliance Board: designing an organizational model to bring together producers and consumers in the review and commissioning of platform software

Justin Larner,Åke Walldius

doi:10.1186/s41469-019-0055-8

Justin Larner, Åke Walldius

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-019-0055-8

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Abstract

Digital networking technology has helped to bring about the platform economy, in which online networking sites mediate between individual freelance workers and their temporary employers. However, the digital platform economy undermines traditional forms of collective action, particularly trade unions. Following reflections on 15 years of trade union software quality assurance initiatives, particularly the Swedish UserAward program, we realize that there are potential benefits in combining aspects of cooperative, guild, and trade union models in the context of the platform economy. We examine the role that these models could play in enabling new forms of collective action and we bring them together in the form of a conceptual model which we have called the Platform Review Alliance Board. We articulate the Platform Review Alliance model as a set of design patterns, which we invite stakeholders to comment on, refine, and ultimately subscribe to. We then apply these design patterns in the domain of transport. In this domain, we show how software producers, users of the software, and other stakeholders, including individual transport providers, can participate in a Review Alliance Board for the commissioning, production, and review of software platforms for transport systems. The contribution we make is to propose how membership in a Review Alliance Board can be an alternative strategy for both software producers and trade union representatives in taking collective action to assure the quality of workplace software in the context of the growing platform economy.

Highlights

The platform firm in the platform economy In this paper, we propose a Platform Review Alliance Board that can bring together guild-like and trade union-like models to promote collective action in the digital platform economy
In this paper, we have presented a conceptual model of how trade union-like and guildlike models can be brought together to promote collective action in the context of workplace software, which we have called the Platform Review Alliance Board
Drawing on the historical experience of guilds and cooperatives, the UserAward program and the development of UrbanSim, we propose that the Review Alliance Board model includes guild-like cooperative software producers and trade unions, and universities and the workplaces where the software platforms will be deployed

Summary

Introduction

The platform firm in the platform economy In this paper, we propose a Platform Review Alliance Board that can bring together guild-like and trade union-like models to promote collective action in the digital platform economy. The Platform Review Alliance Board model To make the diverse set of stakeholder interests explicit and negotiable, in particular the needs and requirements of different user groups who could otherwise be in conflict, we propose the forming of review alliances that can act as facilitators for user organizations, employer and employee organizations, universities, and relevant public authorities to initiate this kind of transparent and multi-stakeholder reviewing and policy deliberation activities. These alliances can be branch-specific, national, and international. Draws on the research aspect of the UserAward program to involve universities in relevant research

Involves the management of workplaces where the software will be used

Findings

Conclusions