Sharing Economy Revisited: Towards a New Framework for Understanding Sharing Models

In recent years, several scholarly attempts have been made to conceptually outline the contours of the sharing economy. However, there is still limited consensus on fundamental characteristics of sharing models, the markets they create, and the controversies surrounding them. Based on an assessment of existing typologies of the sharing economy, this paper outlines a new theory-driven framework for describing and analyzing business-to-consumer and peer-to-peer sharing models that draws on the nascent literature of partial organization. Emphasizing the core organizational characteristics of sharing models (membership, rules, monitoring, sanctioning, and hierarchy), this new framework moves beyond existing definitions and scales used to map and analyze the fast-growing sharing economy field.