Platforms organize increasing amounts of work, from ride-hailing to consulting, by matching supply and demand through digital infrastructures. Most of what we know about how platforms are designed, however, comes from settings where regulation is light, barriers to entry are low, and the platform owner has considerable discretion over design. What happens when these conditions do not hold?
Drawing on healthcare as an empirical context, this thesis addresses this question through three studies. The first develops a framework explaining how platform design shapes whether workers’ skills develop or erode over time. The second uses conjoint analysis to elicit clinicians’ preferences for specific design features, finding that their willingness to join a digital health platform depends on whether the design creates conditions for good care. The third follows a health software firm during a regulatory change that affected the functionality the firm could offer. The findings suggest that design is constrained both by regulation itself and by how actors across the ecosystem make sense of it.
Together, the studies advance a central argument: in regulated, high-stakes contexts, platform design is subject to multilevel constraints that shape what design features are viable, how they are configured, and what consequences they produce. Understanding these constraints matters in practice, as platforms become increasingly prevalent in healthcare and other highly regulated sectors.
- Platform Design Under Constraint: The Case of Digital Healthcare
- Anna Baturevich - Stockholm School of Economics, Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology (House of Innovation)
- Anna Essén - Stockholm School of Economics, Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology (House of Innovation)
- Stockholm School of Economics; Doctor of Philosophy (PHD)
- Doctor of Philosophy (PHD), Stockholm School of Economics
- Stockholm School of Economics
- 220
- 9789177314134; 9789177314141
- Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology (House of Innovation)
- English
- Dissertation