The Global Platform Economy: A New Off-Shoring Institution Enabling Emerging Economy Providers

Global online platforms match firms with service providers around the world, in services ranging from software development to copywriting and graphic design. This means that multinational enterprises can now outsource across borders to an individual: Unlike in traditional offshore outsourcing, service providers are predominantly one-person microproviders, located in emerging economy countries not necessarily associated with offshoring and often disadvantaged by negative country images. How do these micro-providers survive and thrive?

The research in this video is from the paper ‘The global platform economy: A new off-shoring institution enabling emerging economy micro-providers’, Lehdonvirta, Kässi, Hjorth, Barnard, and Graham. Journal of Management, 2018.