{"id":560,"date":"2019-02-21T09:41:57","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T09:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/?p=560"},"modified":"2019-02-21T09:41:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T09:41:57","slug":"digital-futures-sharing-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/2019\/02\/21\/digital-futures-sharing-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Futures \u2013 the Sustainability of Sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is the sharing economy, and can it deliver on its promise to contribute to sustainable development? What are the challenges of \u201csharing\u201d in the age of digital capitalism, and what is the future of using technology responsibly? We brought together two eminent scholars \u2013 Adam Arvidsson<\/a> and Giana Eckhardt<\/a> \u2013 and two inspiring entrepreneurs \u2013 Cat Ainsworth<\/a> and Usman Mohammed<\/a> \u2013 \u00a0to discuss these questions and their implications for management theory and practice.<\/em><\/p>\n

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What is the sharing economy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sharing economy is an economic system based on people sharing possessions or services, usually via the internet. It is a system that is increasingly touching our lives, from the peer-to-peer online marketplace\u00a0for accommodation that is Airbnb<\/a>, through to micro-level platforms such as Neighbourly<\/a> that work at the grassroots to connect charities and community groups with funding, volunteers and donations of surplus food and products.<\/p>\n

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What are the paradoxes within the sharing economy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Giana M. Eckhardt, Professor of Marketing and Director of the Centre for Research in Sustainability<\/a> at Royal Holloway University of London, bases her reflections on this question around her soon-to-be-published book, Handbook of the Sharing Economy<\/em>\u00a0(co-edited with Professors Russell Belk and Fleura Bardhi). She sees some inherent tensions within the sharing economy. While sharing refers to the prosocial behaviour in small communities such as the family, economy relates to \u201caccess-based consumption within a potentially large community of distant others<\/em>\u201d. These paradoxes, Giana argues, have deeply influenced the \u201ccoming of age\u201d of the sharing economy in the last ten years, and will likely do so in the future. For example, many hopes of early commentators that the sharing economy would pave the way to a radically new economic system between socialism and capitalism have not materialised. Many community-based sharing initiatives have not survived while the gig part of the sharing economy, including Airbnb and Uber, has attracted massive consumer interests around the world.<\/p>\n

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\u2066@RHUL_CRIS<\/a>\u2069 director Giana Eckhardt giving a terrific overview of challenges of bridging the moral and the market economies in the new wave of the #sharingeconomy<\/a> from her forthcoming co-edited book. #digitalfutures<\/a> \u2066@BathCBOS<\/a>\u2069 pic.twitter.com\/fBZTmMJG7R<\/a><\/p>\n

— Andrew Crane (@ethicscrane) February 11, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n