New Puppets in the Old School: The Applicability of Traditional Internationalisation Theories in the Sharing Economy

Cristina Pérez-Pérez, Diana Benito-Osorio and Susana María García-Moreno
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Cristina Pérez-Pérez: Business Administration (ADO), Applied Economics II and Foundations of Economic Analysis, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Paseo de los Artilleros s/n, 28032 Madrid, Spain
Diana Benito-Osorio: Business Administration (ADO), Applied Economics II and Foundations of Economic Analysis, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Paseo de los Artilleros s/n, 28032 Madrid, Spain
Susana María García-Moreno: Business Administration (ADO), Applied Economics II and Foundations of Economic Analysis, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Paseo de los Artilleros s/n, 28032 Madrid, Spain

Administrative Sciences, 2021, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-24

Abstract: Sharing Economy platforms have expanded their operations all around the globe at an unexpected rate. Due to its “asset-lite” nature, traditional internationalisation theories may not be able to fully explain or predict their expansion patterns. This lack of theoretical background puts at risk the phenomenon’s future and stops traditional companies from coming up with a solid plan to compete against platforms. To ease the creation of a Sharing Economy internationalisation paradigm, this paper intends to review the existing research regarding the internationalisation of sharing platforms as well as the applicability of existing theories. Through a systematic literature review, the existing research was reviewed, and afterwards, internationalisation theories and their distinct factors extracted were noted to address the applicability of these within the singularities of the sharing phenomenon. This classification of factors was done according to the exiting literature in the field. After this research, we can confirm the lack of explanatory power of traditional theories regarding sharing platforms and confirm the insufficient research regarding these operations. We propose a list of factors that should be considered for future research as a guideline for the further development of the Sharing Economy internationalisation theory. Additionally, the factors classification is tested upon the case of the internationalisation of Blablacar, the most extensive carpooling network operating, to check if the theoretical and the practical approaches converge.

Keywords: sharing economy; platforms; internationalisation; internationalisation theories; new theory; growth methods; expansion; conceptualization; Blablacar (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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