Paper Number
ECIS2026-2392
Paper Type
CRP
Abstract
Digital platforms dominate everyday activities, yet their commercial model has contributed to inequality and market concentration. Hybrid digital platforms, which combine commercial and social welfare logics, offer an alternative but remain marginal. To understand why, this study examines how hybridity may constrain scaling. Drawing on an exploratory nested case study with 15 interviewees, we identify 14 barriers across seven themes, including resource scarcity, usability challenges, limited user understanding, restrictive ecosystems, hybrid decision-making, limited growth orientation, and limits of voluntarism. To move beyond the descriptive toward explaining how barriers are perceived to constrain scaling, legitimation analysis is conducted to assess the barriers' justifications, revealing that scaling hybrid digital platforms depends as much on moral evaluation as on technical or pragmatic considerations. This duality, along with an impact-oriented logic, distinguishes the identified barriers from those documented in the established platform literature.
Recommended Citation
Kuhlmann, Lea; Bauer, Jana; and Staudt, Philipp, "Caught In Between: Scaling Barriers Of Hybrid Digital Platforms" (2026). ECIS 2026 Proceedings. 15.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2026/is_resil/isresilience/15
Caught In Between: Scaling Barriers Of Hybrid Digital Platforms
Digital platforms dominate everyday activities, yet their commercial model has contributed to inequality and market concentration. Hybrid digital platforms, which combine commercial and social welfare logics, offer an alternative but remain marginal. To understand why, this study examines how hybridity may constrain scaling. Drawing on an exploratory nested case study with 15 interviewees, we identify 14 barriers across seven themes, including resource scarcity, usability challenges, limited user understanding, restrictive ecosystems, hybrid decision-making, limited growth orientation, and limits of voluntarism. To move beyond the descriptive toward explaining how barriers are perceived to constrain scaling, legitimation analysis is conducted to assess the barriers' justifications, revealing that scaling hybrid digital platforms depends as much on moral evaluation as on technical or pragmatic considerations. This duality, along with an impact-oriented logic, distinguishes the identified barriers from those documented in the established platform literature.