Publication of a study on platform governance for established companies

Maximilian Schreieck, Jan Ondrus, Manuel Wiesche, Helmut Krcmar - “Platform Governance for Established Companies”, Link to publication

The study examines platform governance in established companies transitioning to digital platform strategies, addressing the gap in existing literature that primarily focuses on platform-native startups. Through a multiple case study of four established companies (IS-Corp, APIbank, CarGroup, and ToolGroup), the research reveals that these companies require a multi-layered governance approach rather than the traditional core-periphery model. The findings demonstrate that established companies must simultaneously govern internal business units through hierarchical governance, core partners through close governance, third-party developers through open governance, and the relationships between these ecosystem actors through conciliatory governance. This multi-layer model enables established companies to leverage their existing assets—including customer bases, partner networks, and internal capabilities—while managing the complexity of diverse organizational structures, legacy systems, and longstanding partnerships inherent in their digital transformation journey.

This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – project no. 521353095 and by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) – project no. 10.55776/I6567.

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