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- Chabosseau, Tom
(författare)
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Sailing or Sinking Together : Container Shipping in Digital Platform Capitalism
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis addresses the classical research problem of collaboration among competing actors in the context of digital platform capitalism. This study investigates how ocean carriers attempted, and sometimes managed, to set standards, exchange data, and jointly develop supply chain management platforms despite the alleged risks of doing so. Using a mixed methods research design articulating quantitative and qualitative analysis, the investigation sheds light on how the incumbent company that launched those two initiatives engaged in meaning-making processes with the challengers it hoped to get on board. Following those meaning-making processes illustrates the hurdles for field-dominating actors to stimulate collaboration as their position is perceived by other actors as resulting from predatory practices and thereby casts doubts on the nature of their actual motives. The thesis first provides an analysis of the structure of the field of container shipping by characterising the variety of positions it contains and their relationships. The aim is to set the stage for the second part of the research design that delves into the emergence of two digital initiatives: the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA) and Tradelens. The first initiative consisted of the establishment of an industry-wide organisation to provide container shipping with a set of standards, while the second had the ambition to serve as a for-profit digital infrastructure for the exchange of information on container journeys. The emergence of digital collaboration traces back to the activities of a group of IT executives in search of solutions to their common issues outside the boundaries of their organisations. While that professional group succeeded in making standardisation a key concern for the industry, as shown by the establishment of DCSA, the exchange of standardised data turned out to be much more problematic. The case of Tradelens underlines the boundaries of digital collaboration in a competitive field. While the incumbent that launched the platform managed to alleviate doubts about its willingness to derive a competitive advantage from the platform, it never managed to do it to the extent where the platform would gain operational traction. This study adds new knowledge to the field of digital platform capitalism by turning the attention to a case where platforms affect interfirm relationships by increasing the need for collaboration and by showing the utility, against technological-centred approaches, to rely on the tools of neo-institutional theories to grasp how technological change is embedded in the long-term trajectory of an industry.
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| 2. |
- Olofsson, Tobias, 1987-
(författare)
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Mining Futures : Predictions and Uncertainty in Swedish Mineral Exploration
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Any forward-oriented enterprise must somehow manage the challenges posed by uncertainty and with its distant temporal horizons, high stakes, and low probability of success, mineral exploration is a good illustration of this general rule. Based on a combination of interviews, observations, and archival research, this thesis investigates how explorationists use predictions to manage the material complexities and the uncertainties that contribute to determining the future minability of mineral deposits. Using data from industrial mineral exploration in Sweden, the thesis traces the production and use of predictions across the exploration process, from its early explorative phases to its development into a techno-economic hybrid in advanced stage exploration. With the aid of a detailed study of the valuation processes involved in measuring and predicting the future minability in exploration projects, the thesis demonstrates how risk management in mineral exploration relies both on a continuous addition of measurements and data on different dimensions of “risk” and the bracketing of any uncertainties unaccounted for in exploration practice and standards. Moreover, the thesis shows how industry standards provide explorationists with repertoires of values that are called upon in order to justify predictions as accurate and precise depictions of the future. However, the thesis also demonstrates how justifications of predictions in mineral exploration are not only about prediction correctness, but also about the merits of realizing the predicted future as explorationists are shown to actualize values expressed in contemporary debates to justify the benefits of a mining future. Lastly, the thesis also shows how predictions are used in explorationists’ interactions with their publics. To accomplish this, the thesis outlines how investors, governmental agencies, and other actors upon whom explorationists depend on for resources such as capital and legal permits use second-order metapredictions to determine whether to invest in or grant permits to a project. Moreover, the thesis also highlights how these metapredictors are invited by explorationists to co-create the predicted mining future while other affected parties are left out. Together, the findings reported here demonstrates not only the way predictions are used in uncertainty management and the epistemic challenges involved in making predictions, but also the social and political implementations of how predictions are used not only to make claims about the future, but also how explorationists and their associates use predictions to claim the future for themselves.
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