The rise of collaborative engagement platforms

Purpose The purpose of this study is to define and analyse the emergence of collaborative engagement platforms (CEPs) as part of a rising platformisation phenomenon. Contrary to previous literature on engagement platforms (EPs), this study distinguishes between formalised and self-organised EPs and sheds light on collaborative EPs on which heterogeneous actors operate without central control by legislated firm actors. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on institutional work theory, this paper explores the institutional rules, norms and practices involved in the emergence of a new platform. This paper implements a longitudinal case study of a local food network called REKO and explores how engagement practices and institutional work patterns catalysed its emergence during 2013–2020. Findings The findings of this study show that actors engaged within the REKO platform participated in institutional work patterns of disruption, creation and maintenance, which drove the development of the platform and ensured its viability. Research limitations/implications This paper encourages future research to further explore how different types of EPs emerge and function. Practical implications The rise of CEPs pushes the dominant managerial orientation to progress from the management “of” a platform to managing “within” a platform. For managers, this means developing novel practices for engaging and committing a versatile set of actors to nurture open-ended, multi-sided collaboration. Originality/value This study contributes by conceptualising different types of platforms with a particular focus on CEPs and explicating the engagement practices and institutional work patterns that catalyse their emergence.© Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen, Elina Närvänen and Hannu Makkonen. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode. The authors would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments for earlier versions of the manuscript. This work was supported by the Finnish Foundation for Economic Education [grant number 8-3794].fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Activity focus groups – a discursive, practical and social method for studying consumption practices

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a novel qualitative activity focus group (AFG) method for studying consumption practices. This participatory method, which is inspired by practice-theoretical thinking, combines focus group discussions with activities that represent the practices at the centre of the research. Design/methodology/approach: The application of the AFG method is demonstrated with an empirical study of the transition to plant-based food consumption practices in Finland, involving four group sessions of 13 participants. Findings: The findings from the empirical application of the AFG method illustrate that its key strength is the ability to foster fruitful and natural discussions on routine consumption practices that connect with discursive and practical dimensions and thus generate multidimensional data in resource-efficient ways. Originality/value: The AFG method extends the methodological approaches in practice theory–oriented research, responding to the call for creative, real-life-reflecting methods that are able to grasp the discursive and embodied dimensions of practices. The method is proposed to be particularly suitable for research on mundane consumption practices.Peer reviewe

The assembling of circular consumption : A sociomaterial practice approach

The role of consumers in a circular economy (CE) is crucial but not well understood in the literature. For consumers to become catalysts in a CE, people need to understand how and under what conditions circular consumption is made possible. This chapter conceptualises the sociomaterial assembling of circular consumption, which refers to the process in which heterogeneous elements – meanings, materialities, and competencies – constantly form relations with and shape one another. This chapter also illustrates how this assembling requires a considerable amount of work from consumers. It focuses on the context of fashion, in which more circular production and consumption patterns are urgently needed. Our approach is inspired by narrative knowing, and it builds on qualitative data from a research project in Finland. Each of the narratives follows the biography of the same garment but represents an alternative circular consumption scenario: reducing, reusing, or recycling. The chapter contributes to the literature on circular consumption and has practical implications for involving consumers as catalysts in a CE.Peer reviewe

Companies’ future visions for circularity : A frame analysis based on Finnish front-runner CE companies

Despite increasing calls for circularity in business, the trending Circular Economy (CE) is not converting into action and the global usage of secondary material is declining. Addressing this gap is vital for our future well-being. Hence, more research is needed on whether and how companies translate broader CE discourses into their future visions. This study employed frame analysis to investigate how the CE's meaning and goals are being envisioned and shaped in companies' external communication to advance their future goals. Drawing empirical insights from documents focused on 41 Finnish self-declared front-runner CE companies from various industries, the paper contributes to current CE literature in two ways. First, five distinct future vision frames were identified – technological utopia, outsourcing circularity, business-as-usual, market leader, and systemic change – that demonstrate how self-described front-runner companies communicated circularity to their stakeholders. Second, the study demonstrates how company-level future visions align with or differ from macro-level CE visions. The study found that even self-described frontrunner CE companies were reluctant to align with strong sustainability in their framing, limiting the transformative potential of CE in business context. The findings have implications for managers regarding how they can assess their future visions from the perspective of weak or strong sustainability.Peer reviewe

“I Do What I Do to Drive Change” : The Social-Symbolic Work of Sustainable Fashion Influencers

This paper aims to study how sustainable fashion influencers (SFIs) conduct social-symbolic work in their efforts to purposefully transform their followers’ fashion consumption patterns. We conducted a netnographic study of the Finnish SFI scene, including observations of the SFIs’ social media content and complementary in-depth interviews with a subset of SFIs. We identified three types of social-symbolic work conducted by the SFIs: identity work (narrating, reflecting and balancing), community work (tightening, expanding and magnetizing) and practice work (shaping meanings, competences, and materials). Most of the SFIs studied were micro-influencers in Finland. The paper contributes to research on sustainable fashion by highlighting the role of SFIs as drivers of institutional and cultural change, the role of social media in this pursuit, and the way sustainable fashion consumption is interlinked with digital life.Peer reviewe

Doing Family over Time : The Multilayered and Multitemporal Nature of Intergenerational Caring through Consumption

Care is a central dimension of family consumption. Previous studies have explored it as interpersonal, emotional work performed through everyday consumption practices. Most of these studies have investigated care as articulated in the present time and within nuclear families. This study sets out to explore the relations between grandparents and grandchildren, arguing that it provides an intriguing case for enriching the current understanding of care in family consumption and its multitemporal nature. To this aim, the study conducts qualitative interviews and employs a narrative version of the theory of generativity to conceptualize the multifaceted ways in which caring manifests through consumption in grandparent–grandchild relations. As a result, the study offers a processual framework of intergenerational caring through consumption (ICTC). The analysis identifies, first, the multi-layered nature of ICTC, consisting of three layers of caring enacted through generative acts. Second, it identifies three temporal perspectives to ICTC, revealing its multitemporal nature. The framework provides novel insights into how familial caring is done from generation to generation, and a desire to care is kept alive in today’s consumer society.publishedVersionPeer reviewe