The Impacts Of Online Platforms On Firm Stakeholders: A Multi-perspective Study

With the rapid development of information technologies,various online platforms have emerged.These platforms,such as electronic commerce,social media,and social commerce platforms,mediate multiple sides to co-create value.In the competitive global markets,firms can leverage online platforms to benefit stakeholders thus achieve innovation and maintain the advantages for sustainable survival.Existing research has investigated the impacts of online platforms.However,the boundary conditions of the impacts of online platforms on different firm stakeholders remain unclear.Therefore,this dissertation aims to answer the following questions: Under what conditions do different online platforms exert what types of impacts on these firm stakeholders? The work focuses on three firm stakeholders,i.e.,employees,customer entrepreneurs,and clients.By considering personal,social,environmental,and technological factors,we explore how three types of online platforms,i.e.,social media,social commerce,and cross-border e-commerce platforms,influence the three stakeholders in terms of creativity,benefits,and satisfaction.The first study identifies the boundary conditions of social media's effects on employee creativity by considering openness to experience.We differentiate social media usage into informational versus socializing,as well as creativity into incremental and radical.With the survey data collected from software developers,this study explores how these two types of social media usage affect the two types of employee creativity.Our results show that,first,openness positively moderates the relationship between informational social media usage and incremental and radical creativity.Informational social media usage positively affects employees' creativity when they score high on openness.For less open employees,informational social media usage dampens their creativity.The moderating effect is more pronounced between informational social media usage and radical creativity.Second,openness negatively moderates the relationship between socializing social media usage and both types of creativity.The more open employees use social media to socialize,the harder they generate creative ideas.Conversely,for employees with low openness,socializing with others on social media is positively associated with creativity.Existing studies on social media and creativity present incongruent results.The study identifies the boundary conditions for the impact of social media on creativity.Our findings provide explanations and empirical support for the paradoxical effect of social media on creativity.We also provide implications for firms regarding recruiting and staffing project teams,regulating social media usage at work,as well as facilitating employee creativity.Motivated by the phenomenon of customer entrepreneurship in China,the second study pays attention to customer entrepreneurs' knowledge sharing and benefits.By taking the perspective of mass entrepreneurship and innovation as well as light entrepreneurship,we seek the theoretical explanations behind the phenomenon.We conducted a case study of Chuang Ke Yun Shang company.Drawing upon the theory of guanxi circles,we show that knowledge sharing with familiar and acquaintance ties on social media has positive impacts on customer entrepreneurs' benefits,while familial ties exert a negative effect.We also demonstrate the moderating roles of the mass entrepreneurship and innovation climate and the light entrepreneurship technology affordances of the social commerce platform.Specifically,both mitigate the negative impacts of knowledge sharing with familial ties and enhance the positive impacts of knowledge sharing with familiar and acquaintance ties on customer entrepreneurs' benefits.Current research on social commerce ignores the interplay of social,environmental,and technological factors.The study identifies the types of guanxi circles embedded in social media and emphasizes the important roles of the mass entrepreneurship and innovation climate and light entrepreneurship technology affordances in driving customer entrepreneurs' benefits in social commerce.Theoretically,we provide possible explanations regarding the phenomenon of customer entrepreneurship and advance the scholarly understanding of the mechanisms behind it.We also contribute to e-commerce literature in information systems by extending the theory of guanxi circles to the context of social commerce platforms.Practically,this study informs firms expanding their markets by leveraging customers' guanxi circles to promote products fast.The third study reveals how to better match domestic suppliers and overseas demanders and improve their satisfaction through cross-border e-commerce platforms.Employing twosided matching and extracting assessment indicators from prior literature,we propose a twosided matching model of suppliers and demanders in B2 B export cross-border e-commerce.By incorporating both the linguistic and interval assessment information,we build the theoretical optimization model based on the comprehensive satisfaction of the two sides.We also demonstrate the feasibility of the model through numerical simulations.Different from prior literature taking the perspectives of either buyers or sellers,this study considers both suppliers and demanders in B2 B export cross-border e-commerce and emphasizes the importance of assessment information in establishing the satisfaction degrees of the two sides.Theoretically,we enrich the cross-border e-commerce literature.Practically,we provide implications for firms on leveraging cross-border e-commerce platforms to expand international markets.We also suggest that professional cross-border e-commerce platforms and the government can mediate to better match suppliers and demanders by harnessing the value of assessment information.