Start Date
10-12-2017 12:00 AM
Description
Platform services — services that are provided to organizations through online platforms — are generating significant uncertainties for both the platform-provider and customer organizations, but how these uncertainties are managed and with what governance consequences are not well understood. I conducted an 18-month field study of a platform service in the enterprise cloud computing industry to examine these questions. I describe the dimensions of uncertainties associated with the platform and the platform-provider. I then identify four mechanisms that the platform-provider enacts — controlling through code, performing algorithmic governance, producing trust rhetoric, and establishing trust indicators — to manage the uncertainties. The first two mechanisms constitute platform work, while the latter two, trust work. Together, platform and trust work reconfigure the “arena of uncertainty” through a process of normalization. This study shows how platform-provider firms normalize the dimensions of uncertainties to their advantage, producing significant consequences for platform governance.
Recommended Citation
karunakaran, arvind, "In Cloud we Trust? Normalization of Uncertainties in Platform Services" (2017). ICIS 2017 Proceedings. 21.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2017/DigitalPlatforms/Presentations/21
In Cloud we Trust? Normalization of Uncertainties in Platform Services
Platform services — services that are provided to organizations through online platforms — are generating significant uncertainties for both the platform-provider and customer organizations, but how these uncertainties are managed and with what governance consequences are not well understood. I conducted an 18-month field study of a platform service in the enterprise cloud computing industry to examine these questions. I describe the dimensions of uncertainties associated with the platform and the platform-provider. I then identify four mechanisms that the platform-provider enacts — controlling through code, performing algorithmic governance, producing trust rhetoric, and establishing trust indicators — to manage the uncertainties. The first two mechanisms constitute platform work, while the latter two, trust work. Together, platform and trust work reconfigure the “arena of uncertainty” through a process of normalization. This study shows how platform-provider firms normalize the dimensions of uncertainties to their advantage, producing significant consequences for platform governance.