Striving for the Common Good: Sustainability Impacts on Digital Platform Ecosystems

ABSTRACT

By integrating stakeholders, digital platforms create ecosystems in which data and information are exchanged throughout the value chain. Although digital platform ecosystems based on transaction or innovation platforms have been the subject of research for a considerable time, ecosystems based on sustainability platforms are still in their infancy in theory and in practice. Sustainability platforms represent a new type of digital platform that focuses on the sustainability efforts of industrial companies. The implementation of sustainability platforms is driven by transparency regulations, changing customer demands, and internal motivation to make sustainability approaches visible. Such platforms extend the classic digital ecosystem approach beyond mere data exchange by including sustainability to achieve a common good. Because of the novelty of this topic and the lack of research on the sustainable impact of sustainability platforms in digital platform ecosystems, this study provides a qualitative analysis of 42 expert interviews to investigate the alterations to the digital platform ecosystem. An inductive coding approach was used to establish a theoretical framework based on our observations. The findings indicated that sustainability platforms enhance digital platform ecosystems within and without the platform infrastructure through External Requirements , Sustainability Data , Sustainable Value Creation , and Sustainable Value Chain Optimization . Such platforms innovate digital platform ecosystems through cyclical adaptation of these four impact factors. This study contributes to the recent research streams regarding digital platform ecosystems based on digital platforms and enhances such ecosystems in terms of sustainability.