Platform companies on the internet as a new organizational form. A sociological perspective

Abstract

Today ’ s internet is shaped by privately operated platforms that not only organize economic processes but also coordinate and regulate broader societal contexts. Against this background, this conceptual paper develops a sociological notion of platform companies and the platforms they operate as a new type of enterprise that consists not only of economic features (business and revenue models, exploitation patterns, market relations) but also of action-orienting rules, institutional infrastructures and social relations between a great variety of individual, corporate and collective actors that clearly reach beyond economic contexts and far into society. To this end, we specify the often fuzzy talk of ‘ the platforms ’ by drawing an analytical distinction between (1) the platform-operating companies as organizing cores whose goal is to operate a pro fi table business; (2) the platforms belonging to them as technically mediated market and social action spaces that provide the basis for not only economic but also genuine social activities on today ’ s internet; and (3) the institutionalized coordination, control and exploitation mechanisms implemented by the platform operators, linking these two constitutive levels of the platform architecture.