Abstract
"In recent years the growing dominance of multi-sided platform business models has transformed the global economic landscape. Yet while the disruptive societal impact of this paradigm shift has begun to be explored at an organisational level, scant attention has been paid to its effect seen from the participant perspective. This PhD research addresses that gap by exploring and theorising the link between approaches to strategic platform leadership and the resulting value creation process as experienced by individual participants. In contrast to most previous platform studies, this empirical work is not situated in a high technology setting but rather in the context of the world-renowned, open access Edinburgh Festival Fringe, thus making an important cross-sector, interdisciplinary contribution to both the fields of event management and platform strategy.
The research employed a mixed qualitative method, using document analysis, participant observations at the festival, and semi-structured in-depth interviews with senior managers from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society and Fringe performers, all contextualised with artefacts and photographic evidence from the fieldwork in Edinburgh. The findings reveal the strategic leadership challenges faced by the Society in managing an open access festival platform, as well as the process of platform value creation at an individual level. In the first instance, the findings reveal the critical challenges to be a lack of external clarity as to the nature of the Society’s custodial role, difficulties in maintaining its neutral stance while ensuring the equitable treatment of all participants, tensions in balancing open access with positive network effects, and obstacles to building a more collaborative and transformational Fringe community in the face of resistance from powerful stakeholders. With respect to participants, the empirical evidence indicates that their experiences are shaped by the largely negative burdens of self-production of performances and the perception of the Fringe landscape as “not a level playing field”, tempered by the more affirmative interactions with Fringe audiences as well as opportunities for professional growth and development. Taken together these findings form the basis of a new theoretical framework for understanding platform encounters, evaluation and engagement as they intersect simultaneously and iteratively to create value that is transactional, experiential, and – ultimately – transformational for platform participants particularly within an events context. "