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The doctoral thesis of Sampsa Suvivuo, MSc. ”Sustainable Platform Activities: How online labour platforms engage in sociotechnical ecosystem orchestration to align divergent interests” will be publicly examined at the Aalto University School of Business on Friday, November 14, 2025.

Online Labour Platforms that intermediate transactions between providers and requesters are becoming increasingly common. However, these platforms, which enable rapid growth with minimal investment, are associated with issues that affect more and more people as their usage increases. Platforms depend on positive indirect network effects, but face challenges related to user retention, user dissatisfaction and increasing friction with society. However, working through platforms is preferable to some, and banning platforms or excessively changing their nature would not serve them well.

Platforms face the challenging task of aligning different stakeholder groups’ divergent interests, including their own, despite having only limited control over providers and requesters. A platform merely orchestrates the transaction; it does not produce or own the exchanged product or service. Even limited control can be excessive or insufficient – the former risking a low transaction volume and the latter a poor user experience. The difficulty in aligning interests can be seen to contribute to platforms’ challenges.

The dissertation identified ways in which platforms attempt to transform their user base into a community to better attract and retain users. The findings also contribute to the understanding of the relationship between community support and platform continuance; while communities do support more effective platform use and continued participation, appropriate support can also work against continuance. Information systems science and platforms have focused on instrumental goals, such as efficiency, with humanistic goals, like user satisfaction, receiving less attention. Additionally, these goals are sometimes perceived as opposing one another. A case study of a domestic platform demonstrates that goals can not only balance each other but can also reinforce one another. The study further challenges the notion that employment is incompatible with Online Labour Platforms.

For platform owners, the results underscore the significance of communities as a strategic resource, offer methods for fostering a sense of community, and illustrate common sources of dissatisfaction among providers. The findings also suggest that seeking synergies between instrumental and humanistic goals and outcomes can improve platform performance and provide a more holistic approach to platform development, offering some protection against unintentionally perpetuating platforms’ known issues.

Keywords: online labour platform, gig economy, joint optimisation, platform dissatisfaction,
platform ecosystem orchestration, platform sustainability, digital sustainability

Opponent: Professor Ben Eaton, Copenhagen Business School 
Custos (Chairperson): Professor Virpi Tuunainen, Aalto University School of Business

Contact information: sampsa.suvivuo@aalto.fi
Mobile +358408291089

Link to the doctoral thesis: