Variety and Trajectories of New Forms of Organizing in the Sharing Economy: A Research Agenda

The idea of “sharing instead of owning” – though it is not new – is currently experiencing a revival and becoming a major trend in modern (business) life (Belk, 2010; Botsman & Rogers, 2010; Frenken & Schor, 2017; Schor, 2014). It constitutes the defining principle of the so-called sharing economy, characterized by peer-to-peer-based sharing of access to goods and services, coordinated through information- and communication-technology platforms (Cohen & Kietzmann, 2014; Heinrichs, 2013). Starting as grassroots movements, initiatives associated with the sharing economy have gained increasing importance and diffused in different sectors and markets. A variety of new (and old) forms of organizing based on the basic idea of sharing, bartering, or lending have emerged and spread, changing or even disrupting existing ways of organizing in a number of markets, such as mobility, service delivery, and hospitality (Owyang, 2016; Stokes, Clarence, Anderson, & Rinne, 2014).