A contingency-based approach to data governance design for platform ecosystems

Data today is regarded as a new type of fuel of platform ecosystems. It enables sustainable growth of platform ecosystems through users' data contribution. Data governance is necessary to safely manage platform data and succeed in business. Platform ecosystems, however, encounter a complicated business context and environment since there are multiple participating groups, different strategies, goals, and different levels of market regulations. How to adopt appropriate data governance dealing with the concerns has been neglected, and therefore there is little research on this topic. To respond to the challenge, we introduce a novel design approach which can address the various contingencies, characteristics and governance goals of platform ecosystems. We present a case study and use case to illustrate the implications and support the implementation of the approach in practice.