The politics of sharing: Sociotechnical imaginaries of digital platforms

Abstract

This paper looks at the role of sociotechnical imaginaries surrounding the governance of the sharing economy in two different locations: Canada and United States. Policy makers are trying to tackle the sharing economy without potentially creating negative impact on innovation. While much of the recent discourse around the sharing economy portrays it negatively, early peer-to-peer digital platforms were envisioned as new pathways toward grassroots, inclusive, fair and low-impact economies (Schor, 2016). However Jasanoff & Kim argue that the evaluation of the positive and negative aspects of technological change have always been influenced by specific tacit or explicit political imaginations of nations in terms of how to power modern social life (Jasanoff & Kim, 2013, p. 190). Using a comparative approach, this paper analyzes these imaginations as they are expressed through policy reports and recommendations. The study shows that the sharing economy appears to be seeking a set of diverse imaginaries including new economic freedom, sustainable consumption, decentralized society, demise of social hierarchies and regulatory freedom.

Keywords

Sharing economy sociotechnical imaginaries digital platforms platform economy government policy and regulations technology policy

1. Introduction

The sharing economy was initially seen as a progressive and socially transformative idea. Early peer-to-peer digital platforms were envisioned as new pathways toward grassroots, inclusive, fair and low-impact economies (Schor, 2016). However, within a few years for-profit platforms attracted large sums of outside investment from venture capitalists and made it to the top of the global “unicorn club”, a group of privately-owned companies that are valued at more than a billion dollar (Langley & Leyshon, 2017). This fact problematizes the early expectations and has made the situation more contested (Schor, 2016), since these for-profit platforms entail different power dynamic between consumers, companies and governments (Johal & Zon, 2015). With the proliferation of digital platforms in many sectors of the economy, some scholars suggest that we are in the midst of economic reorganization in which platform owners are gaining power more formidable than that of the factory owners in the early industrial revolution (Kenney & Zysman, 2016). Ganapati and Reddick (2018) identified several categories where digital platforms have emerged including food, goods, health, learning, logistics, mobility services, money, municipal, accommodation, utilities, vehicles sharing, wellness and beauty, and worker support.

The sharing economy can be described as an umbrella term for an emerging platform economy that can be defined as a new form of digital economic circulation where ideas, knowledge, labour and otherwise idle assets move between distributed but connected online communities (Frenken & Schor, 2017; Hamari et al., 2016; Kenney & Zysman, 2016; Langley & Leyshon, 2017; Sundararajan, 2016). In other words, the platform economy can be defined as a new economy with an increasing number of digitally enabled business, political and social activities and interactions that are organized around digital platforms (Kenney & Zysman, 2016).

The platform economy has generated controversial debate about its risks and benefits in terms of labour conditions, wages and the distribution of income and wealth. It also raised concerns regarding innovation, regulatory, business competition and potential market dominance of the sharing economy platforms (Codagnone & Martens, 2016; Ranchordas, 2015). Governments and policy makers around the world are scrambling to tackle this new platform economy without potentially creating negative impact on innovation. For example, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Canadian Government Deputy Ministers’ Committee on Policy Innovation have launched probes into the sharing economy and produced a number of reports in order to adopt policy and regulatory frameworks.

This study apprehends policy discourses of the sharing economy as they are perpetuating imaginations of desired futures and aims at answering the following questions: how each one of these governing bodies (Canada, US) deals with issues of governance of the sharing economy? What are the values and assumptions in technological innovation across these two nations that are influencing policy proposals? To what political imaginaries these values and assumptions are articulated? What are the differences between Canada and US in imaginaries and assumptions about risks and benefits of technological innovation in the context of the sharing economy?

The study uses the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries as an analytical framework. Jasanoff and Kim define sociotechnical imaginaries as “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology” (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015, p. 6).

Methodologically, the study uses discourse analysis to investigate policy reports produced by various government agencies as well as commercial and not-for-profit organizations. Fischer and Forester (1993) argue that the way a phenomenon is linguistically represented in policy has political implications. Therefore, understanding how relations of dominance are structured and reproduced in the course of policy-making process is essential part of policy analysis. The analysis of these reports allows us to understand how different actors evaluate the risks and benefits of the sharing economy and the values underpinning their policy choices. For example, Jasanoff and Kim (2013) argue that a well-known feature of the American sociotechnical imagination is that technology’s benefits are seen as unbounded while risks are framed as limited and manageable.

The paper argues that the sharing economy is a sociotechnical imaginary influencing policy-making of the new digital platforms. The sharing economy imaginary describes visions of futures such as “workforce fluidity” and “economic flexibility” enabled by the new digital platforms. The paper defines the notion of workforce fluidity as future visions of work and employment conditions that imagine non-obligatory relations in the labour market and flexible work arrangements in terms of working hours and social security. The notion of economic flexibility is defined as future vision of market development and economic growth based on ideas of regulatory flexibility, unbounded technological innovation, and unrestrained market competition. The study observes that Canadian policy approaches seem to favour government regulations while the US favours self-regulation. In fact, in the US, “regulatory humility” is seen as part of “good government” (FTC, 2016, p. 57). Regulatory humility refers to the notion that public managers should question their own regulatory ideas (Dunlop & Radaelli, 2016, p. 83). The paper argues that the difference between policy approaches in the two countries is because the sharing economy as a sociotechnical imaginary needs to negotiate with local visions of social welfare and inclusive economic development in Canada.

2. Sociotechnical imaginaries and digital platforms

Pasquale (2017) argues that there are two competing narratives dominating the current discourse of the platform economy. A utopian vision that depicts more inclusive, freer and fairer society as a result of the democratization of the means of production by digital platforms against a dystopian view of bleak futures, precarious labour conditions, and social injustices as a result of capitalist practices of platform owners and lack of government oversight (Frenken & Schor, 2017; Pasquale, 2017; Schor, 2016). For example, Botsman and Rogers (2010) have popularized the sharing economy and linked it to collaborative consumption as an appealing alternative that describes a positive future vision of consumption. Martin (2016) points out that the early critique of hyper-consumption was central to the emergence of the sharing economy. Hamari et al. (2016) also argue that participants engage in the sharing economy because they believe in sharing, co-creation and environmental sustainability. On the other hand, Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010) argue that participation in the sharing economy introduces new form of control and exploitation on digital platforms with different characteristics other than those of the early forms of capitalism. They highlighted many trends such as unpaid labor, product offerings at no cost, and new abundance where scarcity once predominated. Other studies have found that participants appear to be motivated by the economics and financial returns of being simply providers of goods for sharing (Böcker & Meelen, 2017).

The dichotomies of positive and negative impact have always been present in societal debates about technological change, however one of the main characteristics of this discourse is its tendency to offer uniform visions of the future (Flichy, 2007). Srnicek (2016) sees that digital platforms and the sharing economy are part of the evolution of contemporary capitalism where emerging technology and digital platforms are reshaping the underlying structure of the future economy. Srnicek (2016) and Frase (2016) offer future visions of an alternative economic system in a world after capitalism based on digital platforms. Srnicek (2016) argues that innovations in automation, cybernetics and manufacturing are challenging the very economic system that produced them. Others such as popular writer, Rifkin (2014) echoed similar sentiment that capitalism is running its course and, in many cases, accelerating its demise through the rapid development of more productive technologies. Rifkin argues that technological changes such as ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive computing will give birth to the “Collaborative Commons” (Rifkin, 2014). The “Collaborative Commons” represents a new economic system that will be enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT), an information network of physical objects such as sensors, machines, cars, buildings, and other items, that allows interaction and cooperation of these objects to reach common goals (Rifkin, 2014). Rifkin argues that, in this imagined future, the “sharing economy” will be at the heart of the “Collaborative Commons”. He envisions the collaborative commons as a new market place made up of millions of self-managed, mostly democratically run organizations, including charities, religious bodies, arts and cultural groups, educational foundations, amateur sports clubs, producer and consumer cooperatives, credit unions, health-care organizations, advocacy groups, condominium associations, and a near endless list of other formal and informal institutions that generate the social capital of society.

Jasanoff and Kim (2009) developed the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to investigate the impact of the future visions associated with technological change on the development of social and political systems including government policy and regulations. Jasanoff and Kim argue that while imaginaries don’t determine policy outcomes, they can offer a powerful cultural reservoir that can help shape the policy responses to technological innovations (Jasanoff & Kim, 2013). The collective imagination of different nations in terms of how to power modern social life “have always been bound up with political imaginations, tacit or explicit, about the costs and benefits of technological change” (Jasanoff & Kim, 2013, p. 190). Sociotechnical imaginaries describe collectively imagined forms of social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfillment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects” (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009, p. 120).

The concept of sociotechnical imaginaries was developed in Science and Technology Studies (STS). The work of STS scholars has always existed across disciplines investigating the political and cultural impacts of technoscience (Bijker et al., 2012; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999; Winner, 1980). STS can be defined as the social study of science and technology. With the increasing entanglement of technoscience with the fabric of powerful institutions in the 21st century (Pinch, 2007), STS has responded by attempting to unpack the complexities of such relationships. For example, STS has focused on the role of expertise in public policy and demonstrated an increased engagement with innovation studies, political economy, science and technology policy, and social movements (Collins & Evans, 2002; Sismondo, 2007). In addition, Sarewitz and Pielke (2007) argue that STS has illustrated an increased engagement in the public domain and has addressed issues ranging from global governance to entrepreneurship and innovation policy as well as experts’ knowledge and citizens’ participation in technoscience.

The sociotechnical imaginaries framework is considered another analytical tool in STS to analyze the relationship between technology and political powers (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009). The sociotechnical imaginaries framework was used to analyse technological innovations and technoscience policies such as the development and diffusion of nuclear power technology (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009, 2013), converging technology policy (Kim, 2017), and nanotechnology (Pandey, 2014). Furthermore, sociotechnical imaginaries were used to investigate why publics reject certain technological futures related to technologies such as nanotechnology and similarly how nuclear energy and agro-biotechnology were rejected in Austria (Felt, 2015). Moreover, sociotechnical imaginaries framework was used in innovation studies to examine the gap between policy frameworks and effectiveness of innovation instruments and outcomes. For example, Pfotenhauer and Jasanoff argue that the successes and failures of new innovations could be linked to how effectively sociotechnical imaginaries of a particular innovation are articulated in the national context (Pfotenhauer & Jasanoff, 2017).

The sociotechnical imaginaries framework investigates how stakeholders and the publics participate in the co-production of technological and societal developments (Jasanoff, 2004). It highlights societal norms and normative claims about science and technology (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009). In other words, “sociotechnical imaginaries” as an analytical framework can be used to investigate the underlying values and assumptions about digital platforms and understand how the future visions of the sharing economy are co-produced (Jasanoff, 2004) with innovation and technology. Jasanoff and Kim (2009) consider sociotechnical imaginaries as one of the ways of which the idiom of co-production (Jasanoff, 2004) manifests itself through policy and regulations. Jasanoff (2004) developed the idea of co-production as a shorthand for the proposition that the ways in which we know and represent the world in terms of both nature and society are inseparable from the ways in which we choose to live in it. Co-production is an attempt to avoid the traps of both natural and social determinism by understanding “social order” as being produced by both material and imaginative resources. Jasanoff and Kim developed the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to “show how different imaginations of social life and order are co-produced along with the goals, priorities, benefits and risks of science and technology” (2009, p. 141). Therefore, the sociotechnical imaginaries framework shows clear commitment to investigating world making ideas and how they are linked to science and technology.

Jasanoff and Kim (2009) argue that sociotechnical imaginaries prescribe futures that state, and non-state actors believe that they ought to be attained through science and technology. They point out that sociotechnical imaginaries are almost always inspire a collective understanding of what is good or desirable in a particular society and how technoscience can fulfil publics desires. Such technological futures will require the reconfiguration of physical infrastructures, transformation of social infrastructures, establishments of new patterns of life and work, and the reallocation of benefits and burden in society (Jasanoff & Kim, 2013). Sociotechnical imaginaries can reveal how technologies relate to political cultures and imagined futures through the exercise of power by the state using policies and regulations but also in terms of the selection of development priorities, allocation of funding, and investments of infrastructures that will power these futures and how certain technologies can also be viewed as “institutions of power” (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009).

3. Methodological and interpretive approach

This study uses documents and reports commissioned by the governments of Canada and US to study the issues related to the sharing economy. The study looks at how sociotechnical imaginaries are co-produced in the process of public consultations and expert advice. In my source selection, I placed primary importance on the origin and scope of the documents. Therefore, the documents had to satisfy the following criteria:

1.
They had to originate from government entity or closely connected one and be aimed at adopting policy approaches and regulatory frameworks.
2.
They had to be tasked with developing an understanding of the sharing economy and include state actors and others such as commercial and not-for-profit actors as well as experts and publics.
3.
They had to capture the dynamism of the state and publics interaction in terms of co-production and focus on the future impact of the sharing economy.

My source selection reflects major initiatives organized by the Canadian and US governments to study the sharing economy. These include reports from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), US Department of Commerce, The National League of Cities in the US, Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, the Canadian Government Deputy Ministers’ Committee on Policy Innovation, Ontario Ministry of Finance, and Ontario Chamber of Commerce.

While other sources of legislative, policy, and media documents are also important sites for discourse analysis of future visions of the sharing economy, however, I selected these documents because their purpose is to guide and help the governing bodies in developing an understanding of the sharing economy and ultimately influencing policy-making. Therefore, these documents represent a key moment in the construction of these imaginaries. However, the selected documents don’t limit our analytical and interpretative opportunities because they include public consultation and participation from over 300 participants representing wide range of actors including citizens, platform owners, public employees, experts and so forth.

It’s also important to note that it’s not the intention of this article to produce a comprehensive study of imaginaries at play in the sharing economy, but rather to demonstrate examples of how sociotechnical imaginaries as an analytical framework can help in understanding how policy proposals could be influenced by social practices. It’s also important to note that the selected documents do not represent official policy positions by any of these governments. The following table map out the different actors participated, and the discourses discussed in the documents used in the study.

Table 1
An overview of the actors and topics included in the discourse analysis of the reports

Canada US

Actors
•
Federal Government – Deputy Ministers’ Committee on Policy Innovation (DMCPI)
•
Publics Participation – Expressed and documented in DMCPI reports
•
Ontario Ministry of Finance
•
Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC)
•
Industry Participation – Expressed and documented in OCC – CGI, PwC Canada, SAS Security Intelligence, Intact Insurance, Counsel Public Affairs, World Economic Forum, Airbnb, Uber

•
Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
•
Publics Participation – Expressed and documented in FTC reports
•
Department of Commerce
•
National League of Cities (NLC)
•
Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania

Discourse
•
Trends and Implications of the Sharing Economy
•
Governments Responses
•
Opportunities and Gaps in the Sharing Economy Market
•
Competition, Consumer Protection, and Regulation in the

Sharing Economy
•
Trust Mechanisms in the Sharing Economy
•
Innovation, Economic Development, Equity and Access
•
Benefits and Challenges Introduced by the Sharing Economy

3.1 Coding framework for discourse analysis

	Canada	US
Actors	• Federal Government – Deputy Ministers’ Committee on Policy Innovation (DMCPI) • Publics Participation – Expressed and documented in DMCPI reports • Ontario Ministry of Finance • Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) • Industry Participation – Expressed and documented in OCC – CGI, PwC Canada, SAS Security Intelligence, Intact Insurance, Counsel Public Affairs, World Economic Forum, Airbnb, Uber	• Federal Trade Commission (FTC) • Publics Participation – Expressed and documented in FTC reports • Department of Commerce • National League of Cities (NLC) • Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania
Discourse	• Trends and Implications of the Sharing Economy • Governments Responses • Opportunities and Gaps in the Sharing Economy Market • Competition, Consumer Protection, and Regulation in the Sharing Economy • Trust Mechanisms in the Sharing Economy • Innovation, Economic Development, Equity and Access • Benefits and Challenges Introduced by the Sharing Economy

I conducted extensive literature review to develop a foundational understating of the development of the sharing economy and the related policy and regulatory issues surrounding its development. I then closely read the selected documents as part of my discourse analysis. Phillips and Hardy (2002) define discourse analysis as the structured and systematic study of an interrelated set of texts, and the practices of their production, dissemination, and reception, that explores the relationship between discourse and social reality (pp. 3–4). Hajer (2006) uses discourse analysis to understand policy-making process and defines discourse as an “ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categories through which meaning is given to social and physical phenomena, and which is produced and reproduced through an identifiable set of practices” (p. 67).

I used Dredge (2017) continuum of policy and regulatory choices of the collaborative economy to organize my categories. Dredge (2017) presents a conceptual model of a continuum of policy and regulatory choices of the sharing economy that moves between two anchors of platform capitalism and adherence to neoliberal values (e.g. marketization, commoditization, growth, etc.) to platform cooperative and embracement of more socially-oriented communitarian approaches. Dredge argues that ideas and values that underpin the choice of policy approaches and regulatory frameworks may shift over time along a wide range of choices from one side of the continuum to the other based on local contextualised discourses. The continuum outlines 7 different categories: 1) collaborative economy model, 2) what happens to the value produced, 3) labour, 4) stakeholders, 5) focus of policy, 6) focus of regulation, and 7) global-local nexus. This constituted the first level of categorization that was applied to the selected documents enabling me to organize and structure the text into areas of contestation. I then used the program Voyant1

¹
https://voyant-tools.org/.

for coding the material based on the above topic organization and then analytically based on interpretive themes for analysis. The table below lists the themes that have emerged.

Table 2

An overview of the themes used in coding the text in the selected documents

Code	Theme description
T1	Classification and Definition of Sharing Economy
T2	Classification and Definition of Workers and Employment Relations
T3	Issues of Technological Change
T4	Issues of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
T5	Issues of Competition and Market Development Issues
T6	Issues of Economic Growth
T7	Issues of Labour and Social Security

I identified, coded, and tagged areas of the text that reflect salient facts, common themes and recurring expressions, phrases and words in the texts under study. My analysis also examined the structure of the text and identified discursive statements that were embedded in the articulation of visions of the future within the documents. A structured and systematic examination of the language and narrative used by actors was conducted to identify future making discursive and normative statements taking into consideration social and political institutions, organizations, groups, relations, and processes and their manifestations in discourse (Dijk, 1997, p. 32).

I was guided in this process by a number of methodological choices and interpretive approaches on both policy process and discourse analysis (Barbehön et al., 2015; Fischer & Forester, 1993; Hajer, 2006, 2011). I used Fischer and Forester (1993) to take an argumentation approach. Fischer and Forester (1993) argue that in policy-making process, actors such as policy analysts and planners not only solve but formulate problems, and their arguments express or resist broader relations of power and belief, so that their practical arguments are both normative and descriptive. I also used Hajer (2006) to look at discourse in policy-making as a political process of continuously giving meaning to a vague and ambiguous reality by means of metaphors and story lines and the subsequent structuration of experience through various social practices. Furthermore, I used Barbehön et al. (2015) to look at policy-making process as an agenda-setting and problem definition. Barbehön et al. (2015) define agenda setting as a problem definition practice that attributes responsibility to a political actor or institute. From this perspective, they argue that policy-making is not conceptualized as problem-solving but instead agenda-building practice that turns issues into political problems (Barbehön et al., 2015).

4. Digital platforms and discourses of the sharing economy

The original discourse of the sharing economy was one of social utopia (Flichy, 2007; Pasquale, 2017; Schor, 2016). The concept of “collaborative consumption” was introduced to frame the discussion (Dredge & Gyimóthy, 2015, p. 289) and link the sharing economy with values of sustainability and notions of environmental stewardship as a new vision for economic growth and market development opportunity. However, Dredge and Gyimóthy (2015) argue that visions of the sharing economy have been reinterpreted, reframed and transformed several times by certain actors to impose a particular definition of the sharing economy on others, and make it embedded and mobilized in society. Dredge and Gyimóthy highlighted four moments in the sharing economy. The first one is when the sharing economy was problematized by introducing the idea of ‘collaborative consumption’, a new future vision of sharing in the Internet age. In the second moment, different actors and stakeholders (publics, companies, governments, and so forth) were locked-in through powerful discourses of how digital platform technologies can create a new social order by enabling matching and trust between strangers believing in the commons and unlocking idle assets to create value for all sides of the platforms. A third moment of enrolment followed that elevated these visions to become part of a societal imagined future. This was sedimented by the influence of massive public relations campaigns that were undertaken by growing number of players including companies and investors about the benefits of the sharing economy. Fourth, a moment of mobilization that took place through the proliferation of discourses from advocacy groups and increased number of grey literatures on the subject. This provided a repertoire of ideas and visions from which different actors can draw to articulate policy ideas.

The following analysis attempts to compare the responses of Canada and US to the sharing economy as expressed in the selected documents. The two countries have many similarities in terms of political systems and infrastructure, democratic institutions, and economic and regulatory policies. Yet, the two countries differ in many ways in terms of history, culture, and nation formation.

4.1 The US discourse

The narrative offered by many US actors appears to be focused on the classification and definition of who is the worker in the sharing economy. For example, the US Department of Commerce issued a report in 2016 titled ‘Digital Matching Firms: A New Definition in the “Sharing Economy” Space’ (Telles, 2016) – referred to here as Digital Matching Firms. This report looks at the sharing economy from the buyer, worker, and regulator perspectives while evaluating its economic viability and impact on consumers and service providers. The department uses the term “Digital Matching Firms” to refer to the sharing economy companies (Digital Matching Firms, p. 1). The report classifies the workers as service providers on these platforms while looking at the companies that own the platforms as matching firms that connect consumers with the service providers on their platforms. The report offers a vision for a marketplace propelled by a process of matching demand with supply using a mechanism that relies on online trust powered by digital platforms. Moreover, the report defines the characteristics of this new marketplace to include the use of information technology via web-based platforms, such as mobile “apps” on Internet-enabled devices to fulfill peer-to-peer transactions, reliance on user-based rating systems for quality control to facilitate online trust between consumers and service providers, and flexibility in deciding typical working hours (Digital Matching Firms, p. 1).

This vision in the report represents an entrepreneurial shift in the classification of workers and workplace. The Digital Matching Firms report imagines a third worker classification that covers “workers who fall somewhere between independent contractors treated as self-employed business people and traditional employees that are generally entitled to certain benefits and worker protections from digital matching firms.” (Digital Matching Firms, p. 16).

This framing of future labour in the US can be linked to imaginations of the “Internet industrial revolution” aka the “fourth industrial revolution”, a vision of how work would be carried out in the new industrial age where the sharing economy is seen as the new business model (Avis, 2018). These visions are also connected to digitalisation and other technological changes such as the introduction of artificial intelligence and digital platforms which are thought to significantly influence the labour market and its processes and regulations (Avis, 2018).

This entrepreneurial vision can be linked to visions of economic freedom in terms of flexible employment and additional income streams for workers in the report. The report frames this as low barrier opportunity to participate in the economy, which will in turn allow many more people to benefit and increase productivity and economic output.

“Low barriers of entry and the utilization of ubiquitous, common capital assets, such as cars, bicycles, and extra bedrooms allow individuals to work during their “off” hours or while they’re otherwise unemployed” (Digital Matching Firms, pp. 12–13).

In addition, the sharing economy is articulated in the US discourse as a disruptive market development that can flourish better in an environment of self-regulations to grow the market. Therefore, the US discussion seems to be concerned with issues related to market development, consumer satisfaction and competitiveness of the market itself.

For example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) organized a workshop titled “The ‘Sharing’ Economy: Issues Facing Platforms, Participants, and Regulators” on June 2015 that involved different participants including FTC staff, outside legal, economic, and business experts. The FTC also organized public consultation that took place in the form of request for comments and generated 2,000 public comments. This resulted in a report developed by the FTC discussing the critical issues of regulating the sharing economy titled “The ‘Sharing’ Economy Issues Facing Platforms, Participants & Regulators” (FTC, 2016) – referred to here as Sharing Economy Issues. The report discusses “the costs and benefits resulting from the entry of these disruptive competitors” (Sharing Economy Issues, p. 2) into the different sharing economy sectors and how that impacts consumers and incumbents.

In the US, economic growth and innovation are often equated with consumer satisfaction.

“in our competitive economy, innovation is a major driver of long-term consumer welfare gains” (The Sharing Economy Issues, p. 1).

The US discussion around innovation processes and the development of new products is framed and articulated around the end goal of consumer satisfaction. Disruptive market innovations or as the report describes them “creative destructions” – borrowing this phrase from economist Joseph Schumpeter – are supposed to “propel market economies to meet consumer demands” (The Sharing Economy Issues, p. 1). The discourse around innovation emphasises the fact that innovation is seen as an endeavour riddled with uncertainties and the role of the FTC, in this case, is to ensure that innovators are rewarded for their efforts which is an important consideration for ensuring new innovations can make it into the market from the FTC perspective.

“The opportunity to compete in the marketplace affords potential innovators the incentives to undertake the expensive, difficult, and risky process of creating and introducing innovative products and services. Preserving such opportunities has long been a core part of the Federal Trade Commission’s competition mission.” (The Sharing Economy Issues, p. 1)

The report seems to adopt an approach of less regulations imposed on the sharing economy companies. For instance, in the report, the notion of “regulatory humility” is seen as part of “good government”. The concept of regulatory humility is central to the FTC approach. The FTC suggests guidelines and principle of less regulation for its regulators. This is an approach that was also articulated by the FTC in other panel discussions, beside the report of The Sharing Economy Issues (p. 57).

Dunlop and Radaelli define the concept of regulatory humility as “the need for public managers to question how, when and whether they should intervene – and consequently be aware of the bias involved in this delicate decision” (Dunlop & Radaelli, 2016, p. 83). The idea behind regulatory humility is the notion that the regulators have an enormous power to affect the outcome of a particular situation but has little concrete evidence to aid their decision because the information about the problem at hand becomes very quickly out of date while the regulated industry continues to evolve. This notion has enabled the idea of regulatory humility to become synonymous with no or very little regulation due to the perceived knowledge problem.

This sentiment is also echoed at the cities level where governments responses to the sharing economy also appear to be rooted in the US visions of regulatory freedom and the trust in the market to regulate itself. For example, the Center for City Solutions and Applied Research of the National League of Cities (NLC) and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania developed a report titled “Cities, The Sharing Economy and What’s Next” (Hirshon et al., 2015) – referred to here as Cities, What’s Next. The NLC is an advocacy organization focused on promoting cities as centers of opportunity and advocates for 19,000 cities and towns across the US with total population of 218 million individuals. The Cities, What’s Next report “seeks to provide an analysis of what is currently happening in American cities so that city leaders may better understand, encourage and regulate the growing sharing economy” (Cities, What’s Next, p. 1). The What’s Next report was created based on combination of conversations, structured interviews with city officials totaling 12 hours, and review of dozens of articles and various pieces of legislations and bills. The interviews were designed to cover a wide geographical area across the US to solicit different points of views across the country. The report discusses many topics including innovation, economic development, safety, and equity and access.

In the report, many cities in the US see their role in the sharing economy as limited to safety while other regulatory concerns should be left to the sharing economy market.

“The officials from Dallas and Indianapolis emphasized the importance of letting the market decide whether sharing economy services should be accommodated; they both went on to note that natural competition will dictate which platforms will operate successfully in each city.” (Cities, What’s Next, p. 8) “A city official explained that beyond “a good faith discussion and engagement around safety,” the city does not want to impede a thriving platform built around a good idea and sophisticated data from doing what it does best.” (Cities, What’s Next, p. 6) “An official from Seattle echoed that sentiment, adding that cities reputed for technology and innovation run counter to those ideals when they attempt to stifle the sharing economy.” (Cities, What’s Next, p. 7)

In the case of the US, there is an inclination to let the market or private companies figure out the most suitable arrangements and regulations for the sharing economy. Hence, the notion of regulatory humility is seen as necessary to facilitate future visions of economic development.

4.2 The Canadian discourse

In many similar ways to the US, the sharing economy is envisioned in Canada as an innovative market development and opportunity for future economic growth. For example, the Deputy Ministers’ Committee on Policy Innovation (DMCPI) in Canada has identified the “sharing economy” as one of the key areas of interest for future policy as the federal government tackles challenges such as “anticipating the declining demand for oil” and “preparing for the rise of digital trade”. The DMCPI created an initiative called “Virtual Policy Challenge”, an attempt to solicit public servant’s input into policy issues along with input from the publics and experts. A team of public servants was asked to examine the issue and as a result the report “Back to the future: The sharing Economy” (DMCPI, 2015) – referred to here as Back to the Future, has emerged to explore and exemplify policy innovation. The report had a singular focus on the question of: “what the sharing economy will mean for Canadian society and governments?”. The Back to the Future report had over 300 participants that were consulted including public servants, entrepreneurs, publics, enthusiasts and practitioners of the sharing economy. The report consistently attempts to make the case for Canadian policy makers to ensure inclusive development of the sharing economy and update the labour regulations in terms of social security to include the new labour realities of the sharing economy. The report calls for the government to

“review the labour market assumptions used in designing Canada’s large-scale welfare state programs (e.g. Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security, Employment Insurance) to make sure they reflect the changing nature of work and the unbundling of jobs”. (Back to the Future) “continue to help the digitally excluded get online to access opportunities offered by the sharing economy”. (Back to the Future) “use the sharing economy to support integration of immigrants and ensure new Canadians have access to commodities and communities they need”. (Back to the Future)

Furthermore, the Back to the Future report makes a recommendation for the government to reconsider how it defines some of the terms of the standard employment relationship.

“the Government could explore updating its definitions of traditional labour market concepts (e.g. full-time employment, unemployment, part time employment), as well as the way it calculates its labour market statistics.” (Back to the Future)

On the other hand, Ontario Chamber of Commerce, PwC Canada (management consulting firm) and CGI (technology services company) organized a forum on May 28, 2015 in Toronto included government decision-makers, sharing economy companies, and leading experts and discussed the regulatory challenges of the sharing economy. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce commissioned the Sharing Economy Working Group to produce a report on policy recommendations based on the forum discussions and input from the working group members titled “Harnessing the Power of the Sharing Economy: Next Steps for Ontario” (OCC, 2015) – referred to here as Harnessing the Power. The Harnessing the Power Report describes standard employment as “traditional stable employment” while describing the sharing economy model as “elastic employment” to indicate flexibility (Harnessing the Power Report, p. 8). In the report, the sharing economy is considered as non-standard, non-traditional from of labour relation. Cranford et al. (2003) question non-standard employment arrangements in terms of job security and go even further to critique the lack of security in this model by describing non-standard employment relationship as precarious employment. They argue that the term “precarious employment” is a better description for “non-standard employment”. However, the report also talks about the sharing economy as a new reality that needs to be addressed by governments to ensure similar social safety net to standard employment can be created to cover employment arrangement in the sharing economy.

“The labour force witnesses the rise of the micro-entrepreneur as more people sell their skills and time on collaborative platforms. As a result, precarious and piece work becomes commonplace with implications for income tax policy (requires updating), tax evasion (increases), and social benefits (decreased access)”. (Back to the Future) “the rising popularity of entrepreneurship will result in a revolution in the way companies operate. In the end, everyone is going be a subcontractor. (Harnessing the Power, p. 8)

These kinds of framings attempt to normalize work arrangements in the sharing economy as a new form of labour relation. The Back to the Future report describes this trend as a result of the social, digital, mobile and location-based technology that allows participants to build trust and reputation by exchanging online peer reviews and instantaneous online payments. The report lists more than 15 major industries that are affected by this change such as utilities, financing, and skills and education to name a few. This vision has its roots in the idea of the “digitalisation of the world” (Drahokoupil & Jepsen, 2017) where technological advancements in Information and Communication Technology is perceived to have transformed the way we access goods and services and how we produce them. In this context, the sharing economy in Canada is perceived as a technological innovation that will introduce changes to how the labour market is regulated, and the welfare state is organized. The idea of reorganizing the welfare state is described in the reports as an attempt to shift the burden of this vision of work to the state and enact the state as a main stakeholder.

In Canada, labour laws, legislation and policies, as well as union practices are based on the model of the standard employment relationship as a normative model. The standard employment relationship is based on the model of the welfare state (Botero et al., 2004; Cranford et al., 2003). The welfare state consists of two actions by the state including state provision of social services and state regulation of private activities (Gough, 1979, pp. 3–4). The standard employment formed in the Western labour markets has emerged after the second world war where the worker has one employer, works full-time on the employer’s premises, and enjoys numerous benefits and entitlements including holidays and job security (Cranford et al., 2003). In this model, the government is also a stakeholder that intervenes by enacting certain labour laws, legislation, and policies. Therefore, one of the main concerns in Canada, from a regulatory point of view, is surrounding the labour situation in the sharing economy and the issue of social security. Canadian imaginaries are consistent with the view that, free-markets are generally understood as imperfect and require government’s intervention to prevent unfair and inefficient employment practices such as employer’s abuse of workers, discrimination against disadvantaged groups, underpayment of workers, and so forth (Botero et al., 2004).

The Back to the Future report describes the sharing economy as “disruptive innovation” from a business and technological perspective, and as “policy disruption” from legal and regulatory perspective. Biber et al. (2017) describe “policy disruption” as a legal situation that can occur when entrepreneurs exploit legal loopholes or challenge regulations that are designed to protect the incumbent, or when they introduce new business models that no legal regime has been designed to deal with. In this situation, policy makers or regulators can respond by either blocking the innovator from market entry, providing the innovator with a free pass from existing legal rules, applying the existing legal regime or create a new regime (Light, 2017, p. 2).

Furthermore, the discourse of policy and regulation is juxtaposed with economic growth in the Canadian reports. Participants in the reports caution against overregulation as it could become an impediment for the sharing economy to reach its potential.

“Over-regulation of the sharing economy could impede the growth of these informal markets which create value for disadvantaged groups (e.g. low income, new immigrants).” (Back to the Future Report)

Over-regulation is often presented as an argument to avoid limiting opportunities and economic growth, however the Canadian discourse implies a need for a new regulatory framework as opposed to less or no regulations. From the reports, regulatory frameworks appear to be a critical step in the Canadian discourse to ensure that new technologies can be wielded to create opportunities and economic growth.

“The jurisdictions that are building regulatory and taxation frameworks that protect the public interest while supporting innovation will be more likely to incubate the new technologies that will drive economic growth in the future.” (Harnessing the Power report, p. 13)

The Back to the Future report suggests that the publics in Canada see policy intervention by the federal government is critical to the success of the sharing economy. The Harnessing the Power report also suggests that government regulation is central to the innovation conversation in Canada.

5. Findings and discussion

The Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said, during a previous economic update, that Canadians should get used to the so-called “job churn” (The Canadian Press, 2016). He emphasized this situation as the new norm where Canadians should get used to the new job market reality of temp work, freelance and gig work (Carrick, 2016). Not all Canadians agree with this view of change as a reality of technological change, as it’s portrayed in some popular discourse by proponents of the sharing economy. For instance, after those remarks were made by the Canadian finance minister, Justin Trudeau, the prime minster of Canada, was greeted by heckling from the youth at the labour forum back in October 2016 (Carrick, 2016).

It’s clear that the sharing economy broadly presents new labour arrangements and economic model. On the labour side, existing knowledge infrastructures around work relations appear to be inadequate to deal with the new on-demand and non-standard nature of work in the sharing economy. On the economy side, digital platforms disrupt existing modes of production and standard economic practices. Ganapati and Reddick (2018) pointed out some of the governance challenges directed at the core tenets of the sharing economy. They highlighted four sets of challenges including rentiership in contemporary capitalism, workers’ place within these platforms and their employment rights and benefits, environmental and long-term sustainability, and trust and security mechanisms of the sharing economy platforms in terms of peer reviews and ratings.

In addition, Jordan (2020) outlines four challenges that digital economy policy should take into consideration including issues of jurisdiction, taxation, labour, and the commons. The issue of jurisdiction is critical as sharing economy platforms exist on the Internet and the information on these platforms cannot be located or traced to a single location. The issue of jurisdiction also influences taxation, labour policies and digital practices of these platforms. In addition, the issue of information commons is an important consideration for policy as most of the information used by these platforms from user profiles to location services and so forth are collected for free. The question becomes how we ensure the benefit of the wider society by turning the flow of digital economic practices from only profit-making but also towards the collective good.

Many other scholars (Acevedo, 2016; Drahokoupil & Jepsen, 2017; Dredge, 2017; Frenken & Schor, 2017; Martin, 2016; Schor, 2016; Sundararajan, 2016) have highlighted similar issues. It appears that the most common recurring themes that emerge out of the literature and the cases presented in this study center around labour and the economy. However, dealing with theses sets of challenges is a messy process. For example, renting is increasingly entangled with innovation and entrepreneurship. One of the main features of the new digital economy is the process of disintermediation and reintermediation through digital platforms (Jordan, 2020). The process of (re)intermediating by digital platforms introduces a specific type of rentiership in the sharing economy that can be understood as a form of technoscientific practice that seeks to extract value through the reconfiguration of infrastructure, data, knowledge and bodies as assets or capitalized property (Birch, 2019). This process of assetization is critical to understanding the practice of technoscientific rent in digital platforms as it presents different accumulation strategies. Birch (2019) argues that assetization is a social practice and that rent is not inherent to an asset but rather constructed as part of the assetization process. Taking such an STS approach allows for a broader understanding of rentiership in the sharing economy that takes into consideration how the processes of rentiership unfolds and the cultural and pollical dimensions of this process. The future imaginations of economic practices and activities are embedded in the ways of which these processes manifest itself and the accompanying policy approaches and regulatory frameworks.

From a labour perspective, the issue of precarity seems to be one of the main underlying currents in the debate about the classifications of workers and work in the sharing economy. Drahokoupil and Jepsen (2017) argue that digital platforms changed the way labour is exchanged and shifted the nature of the workers from only consumers or producers to prosumers. They offer future imaginaries of the sharing economy that include more flexibility and reconciliation of work and private life. However, this is perceived as a significant development that contributes to the destruction of the standard employment relations (Drahokoupil & Jepsen, 2017). While, it’s still not clear whether the sharing economy contributes to the precarious workforce or has no impact (Schor, 2017), much of the discourse in the cases presented in the study attempt to address social security and safety net of workers. The underlying objective of the legal dispute of workers misclassifications that dominated court cases in the US is aimed at shifting the regulatory landscape from one with less social protection by classifying workers as contractors to more social protection provisions by considering them as employees (Codagnone et al., 2016).

However, the broader questions for policy makers are how the digital economy impacts the nature of labour and its effect on wages and how do different actors value these new forms of labour instigated by digital platforms. Furthermore, nested in these questions, other ones about the trade-offs between the perceived emancipatory features of these platforms and new forms of digital economy and the risks that certain actors in society are willing to assume in order realize these future visions.

The sharing economy challenges existing knowledge infrastructures around market competition, consumer protection, labour and employment relations. However, when it comes to regulations, there seems to be three main approaches: regulate it, don’t regulate it, and wait and see (Acevedo, 2016). Each one of these responses to regulations are influenced by a number of assumptions and values about innovation, economic development, and generally what is considered to be societal good. The US seems to adopt the approach of no or less regulation which would be closer to the general attitude of the American public towards innovation and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, Canadians envision more government intervention through policy and regulations to ensure more inclusive economic development of the sharing economy. For instance, the Canadian discourse tries to normalize the new model of the sharing economy of non-standard employment arrangement by expanding the protections that exist in the standard employment model to the sharing economy. This is seen in the selected documents as a consequence of a desired technological change and a necessary step to enable the sharing economy to reach its perceived potential of social and economic transformation of society.

However, in both Canada and the US, much of the debate can be grouped under two major imaginary themes: visions of the future of work and visions of economic growth. In my analysis, I group the future visions of work and economy into the notions of “workforce fluidity” and “economic flexibility”, respectively. I define workforce fluidity as future visions of flexible work conditions and non-obligatory relationships in the labour market while economic flexibility as future visions of technological innovation and unrestrained market competition encapsulated in a regime of regulatory flexibility that is perceived necessary for economic growth. Both notions facilitate the imaginary of sharing economy by offering future vision for different economic models of the labour market, economic development, and market growth.

Following Jasanoff and Kim (2009) outline of the most significant and durable features of the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, the table below provides an outline for how these imaginaries are performing their work based on the cases presented in the study. Jasanoff and Kim describe these features as “framing the most pressing risks, defining the main policy focus, crystallizing the stakes behind the policies, articulating social and technical controversies, providing avenues and means of closure, and justifying policy through successful appeals to national civic epistemologies” (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009, p. 139).

Table 3
Comparison map of the sociotechnical imaginaries of the sharing economy

	Canada	US
Framing risks	• Imperfect free markets • Precarious work relations	• Limiting economic growth and innovation • Limiting consumer choice and freedom
Policy focus	• Workers protection and social security	• Flexible work arrangements • Non-obligatory work relations
Controversies	• Rise in temp work, freelance and gig work	• Monopolies and unfair market practices
Stakes	• Social welfare	• Regulatory flexibility • Innovation and entrepreneurship • Free market competition
Closures	• Pursue legal intervention • Mitigating risk through reforming the social security program	• No or little regulations • Encourage self-regulation by digital platforms
Civic epistemologies	• Inclusive economic development	• Development of new industries and products • Consumer satisfaction

Canada

Framing risks

•

Imperfect free markets

•

Precarious work relations

•

Limiting economic growth and innovation

•

Limiting consumer choice and freedom

Policy focus

•

Workers protection and social security

•

Flexible work arrangements

•

Non-obligatory work relations

Controversies

•

Rise in temp work, freelance and gig work

•

Monopolies and unfair market practices

Stakes

•

Social welfare

•

Regulatory flexibility

•

Innovation and entrepreneurship

•

Free market competition

Closures

•

Pursue legal intervention

•

Mitigating risk through reforming the social security program

•

No or little regulations

•

Encourage self-regulation by digital platforms

Civic epistemologies

•

Inclusive economic development

•

Development of new industries and products

•

Consumer satisfaction

6. Conclusion

As Jasanoff and Kim and other authors wrote, modernity is built on deep entanglement of the present with imaginations of the future that are centred around technological and social changes designed to direct society towards a particular desired future (Franklin, 1999; Jasanoff & Kim, 2015; Verschraegen & Vandermoere, 2017). From this perspective, the findings and results of this study suggest that the “sharing economy” can be understood as a “sociotechnical imaginary” of future visions of employment conditions and economic growth that describe a future state of a society organized and managed by different labour relations and the construction of an alternative economic model for the market.

This study also shows that the sharing economy imaginary attempts to influence policy proposals governing the new digital platforms in many similar ways in both the US and Canada. However, in Canada, policy ideas bring issues of social security more to the forefront of Canadian policy concerns. For example, labour scholars categorize employment relationships into standard and non-standard employment (Botero et al., 2004; Cranford et al., 2003; Gough, 1979). In Canada, the definition of non-standard work is based on job insecurity (Cranford et al., 2003, p. 7) while in the US, non-standard worker is defined as someone who serves many clients and works for limited periods of time, and have great control over how the work is done (Redfearn III, 2016, p. 1028).

Furthermore, this study makes the following theoretical observations. The first one is that while both Canadian and US sociotechnical imaginaries of the sharing economy tend to follow similar future visions of employment conditions and economic growth, however they take different path in attempting to realize these visions in their national context. The second observation is that dominant visions of “workforce fluidity” and “economic flexibility” go through process of negotiation with other local imaginaries. For example, US sociotechnical imaginaries are influenced by US visions of non-obligatory labour relations, and unrestrained economic growth while Canadian imaginaries are shaped by local visions of social welfare and inclusive economic development. For example, the US developed a concept of the sharing economy due to its imaginary of unrestrained competitive market spaces and its focus on consumerism as a driver for technological innovation that enables economic growth. On the other hand, Canadian imaginaries attempt to develop a concept of the sharing economy focused more on inclusive market development and workers’ social security and welfare while still maintaining innovation as a vehicle for economic growth. From this perspective, the sharing economy is a local project as much as it appears to be a global technoscience project.

Furthermore, governments and policy makers are urged to formulate well-informed responses to the sharing economy that consider issues of access and economic inequality. Policy approaches need to consider questions such as who has access to innovation, how assets are constructed and rented in sharing economy platforms, how these assets accumulate value, and who benefits from all of that. This is in addition, to important questions of gender and racial inequalities. Policy approaches to the sharing economy should encourage the types of innovations that do not reproduce the same inequal structures of power in society and prevent the creation of a new class of precarious workers.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at York University to conduct this study. The study has benefited from comments from Prof. Kean Birch and Prof. Stéphane Couture on earlier drafts.

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The politics of sharing: Sociotechnical imaginaries of digital platforms

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. Sociotechnical imaginaries and digital platforms

3. Methodological and interpretive approach

1 https://voyant-tools.org/.

4.1 The US discourse

4.2 The Canadian discourse

5. Findings and discussion

Table 3 Comparison map of the sociotechnical imaginaries of the sharing economy

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

References

¹
https://voyant-tools.org/.

Table 3
Comparison map of the sociotechnical imaginaries of the sharing economy