Platform cooperatives and the dilemmas of platform worker-member participation

Despite the surge of interest in platform cooperatives, we have a limited understanding of the dynamics of platform worker-member participation in these cooperatives. Drawing on interviews with 21 senior leaders and founders of platform worker cooperatives, we investigate the dynamics of platform worker-member participation, finding that these cooperatives experience some successes and many challenges. We then build theory about how four distinct features of platform worker cooperatives-the facilitation of multihoming, the physically untethered nature of work, the relatively high importance of scale as a strategic imperative, and the relatively low importance of initial platform worker-member investment-influence these participation dynamics. We find that the platform and worker cooperative organisational models are in tension with one another when brought together within a platform worker cooperative, leading to positive and negative effects on participation.