[Commlist] Cfp: The Sharing Economy as a Path to Government Innovation

CfP: Special issue: The sharing economy as a path to government 
innovation (https://timreview.ca/calls-papers)

Guest editors:

Dr. Shenja van der Graaf
Carina Veeckman
imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

The concept of “sharing economy” is often used interchangeably with the 
notions of “collaborative consumption” (Hamari, Sjöklint, & Ukkonen, 
2016), “collaborative economy” (Bauwens, Mendoza, & Iacomella, 2012; 
Botsman & Rogers, 2010), “crowd-based capitalism” (Sundararajan, 2016), 
“peer economy” (Bradley, 2014), “gig economy” (Friedman, 2014; Mulcahy, 
2016), “peer-to-peer economy” (Koopman, Mitchell, & Thierer, 2014) and 
“platform economy” (Parker, Van Alstyne, & Choudary, 2016), to name a 
few. It has become an umbrella term becoming increasingly relevant to 
both the daily lives of private individuals and to the direction and 
operation of social and political systems, thereby covering a large 
number of peer sharing behaviours across several sectors, such as 
accommodation (Airbnb, Couchsurfing), delivery and home services 
(Instacart), and transportation (Lyft, Uber).

One of the key elements in the multiple definitions of the sharing 
economy concept is the sense of belonging to community which is implied 
in the sharing behaviours of involved actors. This community spirit is 
reflected in the definition of Hamari et al. (2016: n.p.), defining the 
sharing economy as a “peer to peer activity of obtaining, giving, or 
sharing the access to goods and services, coordinated through 
community-based online services”. The operation of sharing transactions 
via collaborative platforms, such as online connecting platforms which 
are owned and controlled by the consumers themselves, is the main driver 
behind the sense of community surrounding the concept of the sharing 
economy. Consequently, sharing with no true sense of community and 
collaboration among the actors, even when sharing is not at all 
accompanied by economic transactions, or sharing via for-profit 
intermediaries, as in the case of Uber, do not count as examples of 
genuine sharing economy (Belk, 2014).

The opportunities within the sharing economy are enormous and are not 
just for big businesses. For many, and in particular young people and 
women, the sharing economy allows them to save money by accessing goods 
and services rather than buying them, or only paying for them when they 
need them. The democratization of access to resources, accompanied by 
the development and implementation of more sustainable economic and 
environmental models is the main outcome expected by the engagement of 
people in peer sharing behaviours. A study of Wosskow (2014) showed that 
people are not just saving money, they have also reported having a 
positive or very positive experience with shared models of consumption. 
For women within the UK, the sharing economy seems to have a real impact 
on how British women work. It allows them to work more flexibly when 
they have a family, and to have a lifeline back to work. It also seems 
that around a third of women in the UK founded or co-founded a sharing 
economy business. In these given examples, the new economy can have its 
implications on the organisation of work and life, and in particularly 
in exploring flexible working patterns, long working hours and 
homeworking and in sharing caring responsibilities among partners or 
others (Perrons, 2003).

The sharing economy, however, is not only creating opportunities, it is 
also presenting different governance challenges. One of them is the 
creation of inequality in the ‘renting’ economy. Although the sharing 
economy claims to de-emphasize ownership, it is mostly those who have 
the assets that will accumulate money from it. If government agencies 
would partner here with sharing economy platforms, it could only further 
deepen economic issues and class divisions (Ganapati & Reddick, 2018). 
Another challenge is the governance of the new working force that are 
operating as independent contractors, and typically do not get the work 
security of full-time workers. This might lead to unfair competition in 
the market, such as the recent protests of taxi drivers against 
ride-sharing platforms such as Uber.

Against this backdrop and cited examples of mostly commercial business, 
this call for papers is particularly interested in empirical research 
such as case studies focusing on exploring the outcomes and challenges 
of government innovation related to the sharing economy. Nowadays, we 
witness that governments are not fully embracing the opportunities 
offered by the sharing economy, although it could make their operations 
more efficient and lead towards a better usage of their public 
resources. Local authorities could explore the sharing of IT systems, 
the sharing of heavy equipment or local spaces, or support ride-sharing 
as part of public transport. Apart from renting models, government 
departments could also embrace the time banking system as a way to give 
their staff the opportunity to volunteer with local charities and 
services, or as a way to broaden access to certain services, such as 
childcare. Empirical studies could particularly focus on the usage of or 
collaboration with online platforms to facilitate collaborative 
consumption and delivery of public goods or services, and how the 
creation of these tool creates a tension between the public and private 
sector.

Given the multitude of sharing activities that could fall under the 
concept of sharing economy, this call for papers welcomes any 
contribution in the following classification: rental economy, 
peer-to-peer economy, on-demand economy, time banking, open source 
software and social lending/crowdfunding (Pais & Provasi, 2015); with a 
particular interest in case studies that demonstrate the value of 
innovation management frameworks, models and plans of government bodies 
or alternatives to public services.

We encourage interdisciplinary contributions that would cross the 
boundaries between the fields of cultural and media studies, urban 
studies, science and technology studies, platform studies, management 
and innovation studies, policy studies, economics.

We look forward to papers that broadly deal with following topics, but 
are certainly not limited to the following:

-The methodological and empirical challenges associated with the 
critical study of the Sharing Economy in the context of government 
innovation
-Public service delivery in the sharing age (e.g., informal childcare 
service)
-Opportunities, challenges, impacts of the sharing economy on governance 
and public sector
-The role of the public sector in the sharing economy (vis-à-vis the 
private sector)
-The willingness of government bodies to adopt sharing economy solutions
-Microentrepreneurs or peer-to-peer communities providing an alternative 
to public services, or access to public resources
-Citizen perception studies or impact assessment studies of (better) 
sharing public services as a new economy
-Case studies illustrating either successful or unsuccessful government 
innovation in sharing economy (lessons learned)

Planning
750-words abstracts should be emailed to (Shenja.vanderGraaf /at/ imec.be) 
<mailto:(Shenja.vanderGraaf /at/ imec.be)> by January 24, 2020.

Abstracts will be reviewed by the Tim Review Editorial Board and the 
special issue editors. Any queries can be addressed to the (guest) editors.

Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by February 7, 2020 and 
invited to submit full manuscripts by March 31, 2020.

These manuscripts are subject to full blind peer review according to TIM 
Review’s policies. The issue will be published in May 2020. Please check 
the author guidelines for full submission.

The TIM Review in an is an online open-access peer-reviewed journal and 
brings together diverse viewpoints - from academics, entrepreneurs, 
companies of all sizes, the public sector, the community sector, and 
others - to bridge the gap between theory and practice, with a 
particular focus on the topics of technology and global entrepreneurship 
in small and large companies. No Article Processing Charges (APC) 
https://timreview.ca/

Important dates:

-  January 24th: Submission of abstracts

-  February 7th: Invitation for full submission

-  March 31st: Full submission deadline

-  May 2020: Special issue publication

References
Bauwens, M., Mendoza, N., & Iacomella, F. (2012). Synthetic overview of 
the collaborative economy. P2P Foundation, 7.
Belk, R. (2014). Sharing Versus Pseudo-Sharing in Web 2.0. The 
Anthropologist, 18(1), 7–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09720073.2014.11891518
Bradley, K. (2014). Towards a peer economy: How open source and 
peer-to-peer architecture, hardware, and consumption are transforming 
the economy. Green Utopianism: Perspectives, Politics and 
Micro-Practices / [Ed] Johan Hedrén and Karin Bradley, Taylor & 
Francis, 183–204.
Friedman, G. (2014). Workers without employers: shadow corporations and 
the rise of the gig economy. Review of Keynesian Economics, 2(2), 
171–188. https://doi.org/10.4337/roke.2014.02.03
Ganapati, S., & Reddick, C. G. (2018). Prospects and challenges of 
sharing economy for the public sector. Government Information Quarterly, 
35(1), 77–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2018.01.001
Hamari, J., Sjöklint, M., & Ukkonen, A. (2016). The sharing economy: 
Why people participate in collaborative consumption. Journal of the 
Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(9), 2047–2059. 
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23552
Koopman, C., Mitchell, M., & Thierer, A. (2014). The Sharing Economy and 
Consumer Protection Regulation: The Case for Policy Change. Journal of 
Business, Entrepreneurship and the Law, 8, 529–546.
Mulcahy, D. (2016). The gig economy: The complete guide to getting 
better work, taking more time off, and financing the life you want. New 
York: AMACOM.
Pais, I., & Provasi, G. (2015). Sharing Economy: A Step towards the 
Re-Embeddedness of the Economy? Stato e Mercato, (3), 347–378.
Parker, G., Van Alstyne, M., & Choudary, S. P. (2016). Platform 
revolution: How networked markets are transforming the economy and how 
to make them work for you. New York: WW Norton company, Inc.
Perrons, D. (2003). The New Economy and the Work-Life Balance: 
Conceptual Explorations and a Case Study of New Media. Gender, Work & 
Organization, 10, 65–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468- 0432.00004
Sundararajan, A. (2016). The sharing economy: The end of employment and 
the rise of crowdbased capitalism. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Wosskow, D. (2014). Unlocking the sharing economy: An independent 
review. 43.

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