The sharing economy (SE) continues to mobilise dispersed and underutilised private assets for collective usage on a scale previously unimaginable. From home sharing (e.g. Airbnb, Couchsurfing) to car sharing (e.g. Uber, Didi), sharing professional expertise (e.g. Upwork, Taskrabbit), parking and storage space sharing (e.g. Justpark, Neighbor) and childcare sharing (e.g. SitterCity), the different activity categories of the SE demonstrate sizeable variation in structure and scalability.
In all contexts, however, the SE is a complex structure composed of multiple actors (asset owners, asset users and sharing economy platforms) and multiple sets of relationships. As such, the SE represents a unique governance structure, one that can be characterised as a set of coordinative mechanisms that engage participants in a collaborative process, resolve conflicts, and yield certain collective performance.