Sharecom internationalisation : Exploring business models, business ecosystems, and pathways to international expansion

Abstract: An ever-changing business landscape, rapid developments in digital technologies, and shifts in societal attitudes have paved the way for the sharing economy phenomenon. Over the past decade, sharing economy companies (sharecoms) have emerged in droves, shaking up industry structures globally with their innovative business models and novel valuecreating processes, which rely on the externalised resources. This unique set of factors has enabled sharecoms to scale and internationalise at an exponential rate, but in nuanced ways that appear to challenge many of the assumptions underpinning extant theories on firm internationalisation.To help provide a deeper understanding of how the sharecom expands internationally, this thesis explores its internationalisation through an investigation of three concepts pertinent to this process: the business model, the business ecosystem, and internationalisation pathways. Conducted with a research strategy of building theory from cases, this investigation entails a multi-case study comprising a diverse group of sharecoms.The findings show that sharecoms starts to develop their business models, build their business ecosystems, and pursue international expansion from an early stage. These activities also appear to be highly intertwined, with each influencing the others.Enriching and augmenting extant international business theories to accommodate the sharing economy phenomenon, the thesis makes several research contributions. It enhances the understanding of the three aforementioned concepts, providing insights into the intricacies of their triadic relationship. Through an exploration of sharecoms’ business models, patterns of change emerge, and virtuous cycles between such changes and the sharecoms’ internationalisation come to light. In addition, a close look at sharecoms’ business ecosystems yields further insights into their role during internationalisation, also revealing a sub-category of semi-dependent entities – local communities – which are found to play an important role in the sharecom’s new foreign market entry. As such, the thesis contributes to literature linking business models and business ecosystems. The thesis also introduces new internationalisation pathways, thus contributing to extant internationalisation process theory. Empirically, the thesis enhances the diversity of sharecoms studied, a shortcoming within sharing economy research to date. Lastly, a number of practical contributions offer insightful managerial knowledge on sharecom internationalisation, more specifically, on the possibility of implementing business model changes to advance international expansion, creating business ecosystems to support new foreign market entry, and adopting flexible, new internationalisation pathways.