Article paru dans la revue Réseaux, vol. 6, n° 212, p. 149-178 « Les activités menées sur les plateformes numériques » Décembre 2018 Version officielle disponible en ligne à l'adresse suivante : https://www.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2018-6-page-149.htm Résumé : Prenant pour point de départ l'activité d'animation d'espaces de marque sur le web 2.0 (community management), cet article décrit, dans une perspective de sociologie des usages, la manière dont l'évolution des plateformes numériques-Facebook en têtefavorise de la part des organisations qui les utilisent une communication promotionnelle guidée par des impératifs de performance marchande. En restituant la pluralité de contraintes interactionnelles, organisationnelles et techniques qui pèsent sur le travail des community managers, l'analyse met en lumière quelques-unes des principales difficultés auxquelles se heurtent les nouvelles formes d'intermédiation ouvertes par les plateformes du web dit social, et interroge la dépendance d'un nombre croissant d'organisations à l'égard de Facebook.

How do organizations in a sector where powerful platforms have emerged cope with the new constraints and opportunities that platforms induce? A growing number of studies highlight the power of digital platforms to re-organize markets and thereby create new forms of dependence. But there are also indications that organizations are capable of countering platform power especially by demanding their regulation. This paper expands this view to investigate also strategies at the organizational level. It draws on the algorithmic game studies of strategic responses to environmental changes to study how organizations strategically respond to the rise of digital platforms. To show organizations’ capacities to cope with the new digital market environment, we use a qualitative case study of the Swiss hotel sector and its reactions to so-called online travel agencies, based on interviews with hotel managers and professional representatives. We distinguish between three types of hotels—small family-run, luxury, and chain hotels, and identify three types of strategic responses: bypassing, optimizing, and mitigating. Contrary to a platform power perspective, we find some evidence for organizations’ capacity to keep platforms at bay, by limiting dependence through mitigation, and platforms’ reach through bypassing. Hotels also learn to “play the algorithmic game” and take advantage of platforms’ technological affordances, but such strategies seem to accommodate platform power rather than countering it. Finally, we find that hotels with fewer resources (small family-run hotels) are less equipped to counter platform power, suggesting that platforms risk fostering existing hierarchies and segmentation in markets.

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How do organizations in a sector where powerful platforms have emerged cope with the new constraints and opportunities that platforms induce? A growing number of studies highlights the power of digital platforms to re-organize markets and thereby create new forms of dependence. But there are also indications that organizations are capable of countering platform power especially by demanding their regulation. This paper expands this view to investigate also strategies at the organizational level. It draws on resource dependence theory and studies of strategic responses to environmental changes to study how organizations strategically respond to the rise of digital platforms. To show organizations’ capacities to cope with the new digital market organization, we use a qualitative case study of the Swiss hotel sector and its reactions to so-called online travel agencies, based on interviews with hotel managers and professional representatives. We distinguish between three types of hotels – small family-run, luxury, and chain hotels, and identify three types of strategic responses: bypassing, optimizing, and mitigating. Contrary to a platform power perspective, we find some evidence for organizations’ capacity to keep platforms at bay, by limiting dependence through mitigation, and platforms’ reach through bypassing. Hotels also learn to “play that algorithmic game” and take advantage of platforms’ technological affordances, but such strategies seem to accommodate platform power rather than countering it. Finally, we find that hotels with fewer resources (small family-run hotels) are less equipped to counter platform power, suggesting that platforms risk fostering existing hierarchies and segmentation in markets.