Mobile Applications as Carriers of Institutional Pressures: A Case of the Finnish Taxi Industry

Abstract

While the worldwide market expansion of Uber has raised controversy, Uber has also received praise for its mobile phone app. Its many features-taxi ordering, pricing, real-time location information, paying, and service evaluation-have provided significant customer value. When Uber entered Finland in November 2014, few other taxi apps were available. Between 2014 and 2018, this shortage of taxi apps turned into an abundance, with many companies introducing their own taxi apps. By leaning on institutional theory, and more specifically by applying coercive, mimetic and normative pressures as a lens, we provide an explanation for why three Finnish taxi apps now resemble Uber in some features, whereas they differ in others. Based on our interviews, we can explain the present-day differences between these apps by coercive and normative pressures in the institutional environment of the Finnish taxi industry. We contribute to the IT and institutionalization research stream by illustrating how mobile applications as IT artefacts can be seen as carriers of institutional pressures materializing in the features they provide.

The user experience of personalized content

“…Extant research on ride-hailing apps has mainly focused on apps provided by large, internationally operating organizations such as Uber, Lyft and Didi (e.g., Zhang et al 2020, Leng et al 2018, Harding et al 2016. Research on ride-hailing apps provided by smaller, local taxi dispatch organizations (DO) has been very rare (exceptions include Väyrynen et al 2018;Niemimaa et al 2019 touch upon the topic).…”

Determinants of Total Quality Management and Institutional Pressure towards Project Performance: A Review of Literature

“…The actors, such as the state, normally demand absolute compliance in practices and threatens with both formal & informal sanctions. The concept of coercive isomorphism entails that companies within an industry show some levels of similarities to each other due to certain legal or regulative pressures (Väyrynen et al, 2018). Coercive pressure is most prominent in institutionalized environments where specific rules and standards are set by professional bodies, governments, and credential associations; such rules and standards are set for organizations to follow to receive benefits.…”