Capturing the dynamics of the sharing economy: Institutional research on the plural forms and practices of sharing economy organizations

To date, management research has paid little attention to dynamics of the sharing economy: how markets for sharing resources emerge and change, and the intended and unintended consequences of resource sharing. We propose a definition of the sharing economy that brings the role of organizations as infrastructure providers to the fore and helps us to assess the culturally rooted pluralism of forms and practices in these organizations. We introduce two perspectives in research on organizational institutionalism that focus on culture and pluralism – institutional complexity and institutional work – and argue that unpacking the pluralism of organizational forms and practices is critical to examine the dynamics of the sharing economy. We propose an agenda for research to capture the dynamics of the sharing economy at the organizational, field, and inter-field level. Such an agenda helps to document and analyze how the sharing economy manifests and evolves across various economic systems and has the potential to refine and recast existing management theory.