Markets as Governance Environments for Organizations at the Edge of Illegality: Insights From Social Network Analysis

Odabaş, Meltem; Holt, Thomas J.; Breiger, Ronald L.

doi:10.1177/0002764217734266

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…There are different types of escrow. In a centralized escrow system, the funds are withheld from the seller, until the buyer verifies receipt of the products (Bradach & Eccles, 1989; Odabaş et al, 2017). This system resembles a contract or court, and reduces the uncertainty of potentially fraudulent vendors that do not send the product (Tzanetakis et al, 2016).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hybrid Governance in Online Drug Distribution

Møller

2022

Contemporary Drug Problems

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A growing share of illicit drug dealing occurs on online platforms. Technological innovations, such as encryption and anonymous payments, have enabled new and more complex ways of organizing transactions. This conceptual essay advances the study of online drug dealing by describing how governance mechanisms from markets, networks, and hierarchies are combined to reduce transactional uncertainty. Based on published research, I argue that cryptomarkets and social media drug distribution prioritize prices, trust, and rules differently, and that this can be understood as hybrid governance. In cryptomarkets, networked reputation scores are important, but their reliability is interdependent of administrators’ sanctioning capacity. Similarly, the open advertisement of prices and products relies on the ability to expose fraudulent vendors. On social media, buyers prioritize easy access and fast delivery and characteristics of market governance, while hierarchical rules are absent, and networked reputations play only a small role. Existing typologies of drug dealing organization do not capture these combinations of governance mechanisms. Hybrid governance and the interdependence of several governance mechanisms better capture the empirical reality of new and emerging modes in online drug distribution.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hybrid Governance in Online Drug Distribution

Møller

2022

Contemporary Drug Problems

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“…Next, governance, the most-discussed category in this domain, broadly refers to governing processes by certain actors (e.g., data marketplace operators) via several mechanisms, such as norms or power [105]. Examples of governance topics include discussion about policies and strategies in data marketplaces [106], a reference model for data protection for policymakers [107], and trust-creating mechanisms to enhance perceived market trustworthiness [108]. Other topics analyze social structures [109] and facilitating factors of data trading in stolen data markets [110].…”

Section: The Organization Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Business Data Sharing through Data Marketplaces: A Systematic Literature Review

Abbas

Agahari

Ven

et al. 2021

JTAER

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Data marketplaces are expected to play a crucial role in tomorrow’s data economy, but such marketplaces are seldom commercially viable. Currently, there is no clear understanding of the knowledge gaps in data marketplace research, especially not of neglected research topics that may advance such marketplaces toward commercialization. This study provides an overview of the state-of-the-art of data marketplace research. We employ a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach to examine 133 academic articles and structure our analysis using the Service-Technology-Organization-Finance (STOF) model. We find that the extant data marketplace literature is primarily dominated by technical research, such as discussions about computational pricing and architecture. To move past the first stage of the platform’s lifecycle (i.e., platform design) to the second stage (i.e., platform adoption), we call for empirical research in non-technological areas, such as customer expected value and market segmentation.

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“…Trust and reputation are key aspects of any market, but particularly so in cybercrime markets, where user anonymity means that 'ripping' or defrauding customers is common. Underground markets have adapted to this problem of 'lemonisation' by providing reputation and vouching systems, escrow systems, and verified status to minimise information asymmetry [10,11,16,17,21,27]. While previous research has focused on vendor ratings and public feedback, there are few datasets as comprehensive as the one we analyse in this paper.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turning Up the Dial

Hughes

Pete

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference

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Trust and reputation play a core role in underground cybercrime markets, where participants are anonymous and there is little legal recourse for dispute arbitration. These underground markets exist in tension between two opposing forces: the drive to hide incriminating information, and the trust and stability benefits that greater openness yields. Revealing information about transactions to mitigate scams also provides valuable data about the market. We analyse the first dataset, of which we are aware, about the transactions created and completed on a well-known and high-traffic underground marketplace, Hack Forums, along with the associated threads and posts made by its users over two recent years, from June 2018 to June 2020. We use statistical modelling approaches to analyse the economic and social characteristics of the market over three eras, especially its performance as an infrastructure for trust. In the Setup era, we observe the growth of users making only one transaction, as well as 'power-users' who make many transactions. In the Stable era, we observe a wide range of activities (including large-scale transfers of intermediate currencies such as Amazon Giftcards) which declines slowly from an initial peak. Finally, we analyse the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, concluding that while we see a significant increase in transactions across all categories, this reflects a stimulus of the market, rather than a transformation. New users overcome the 'cold start' problem by engaging in low-level currency exchanges to prove their trustworthiness. We observe currency exchange accounts for most contracts, and Bitcoin and PayPal are the preferred payment methods by trading values and number of contracts involved. The market is becoming more centralised over time around influential users and threads, with significant changes observed during the Setup and Covid-19 eras. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Computer crime; • Mathematics of computing → Time series analysis; • Security and privacy → Social aspects of security and privacy.

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Markets as Governance Environments for Organizations at the Edge of Illegality: Insights From Social Network Analysis

Cited by 12 publications

References 34 publications

Hybrid Governance in Online Drug Distribution

Hybrid Governance in Online Drug Distribution

Business Data Sharing through Data Marketplaces: A Systematic Literature Review

Turning Up the Dial

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