Abstract
Growth of digital platforms in developing countries has yet to see equivalent growth in research. This paper presents one of the first conceptualised analyses of platform implementation and impact. Using the “multi-level perspective”, it analyses a successful ride-hailing platform: EasyTaxi in Bogotá, Colombia. This was originally a niche innovation but has effected a socio-technical transition to a dominant position within Bogotá’s taxi regime. Speed of transition is explained in terms of tensions within that regime and from wider demographic change, combined with specific utility of the platform to drivers and passengers who faced a prior context of exploitation, mistrust and insecurity. Though the new regime is a hybrid of platform and non-platform features, its impacts can already be seen: datafication, formalisation, and shift in power away from old taxi operating companies and towards passengers and, in particular, towards the platform itself. Alongside case-specific insights, the paper demonstrates the utility of the multi-level perspective as a means to analyse the enactment of digital platforms.
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Notes
- 1.
Information Technology for Development, Information Technologies & International Development, Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries [15].
- 2.
This searched three sources for “platform” in the title: the three ICT4D journals; the same search in the three leading development studies journals (World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Development and Change) which identified no relevant papers; and a Google Scholar search - intitle: “platform” (digital AND “developing countries” AND “information systems”). In total, this identified 76 relevant papers.
- 3.
As might be expected there was some sense of research chronology, with earlier papers focusing on design and feasibility issues, and with implementation- and impact-oriented studies only emerging later.
- 4.
Though a number of local customisations were still required e.g. around ways to specify passenger location; something notoriously difficult in Bogotá and other Colombian cities.
- 5.
By 2018, this was 110,000 with more than two million passenger-journeys per month [13].
- 6.
Though this includes EasyTaxi’s merger with Tappsi.
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Gomez-Morantes, J.E., Heeks, R., Duncombe, R. (2019). A Multi-level Perspective on Digital Platform Implementation and Impact: The Case of EasyTaxi in Colombia. In: Nielsen, P., Kimaro, H.C. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies for Development. Strengthening Southern-Driven Cooperation as a Catalyst for ICT4D. ICT4D 2019. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 551. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18400-1_16
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