The Covid-19 pandemic is still amid its virulence. It had and is still having profound implications on the lives of millions of people, at the most disparate latitudes and on numerous social, economic, and cultural processes: the worsening of social and gender inequalities, the increase in unemployment, and the crisis of entire economic industries; the reconfiguration of mobility and transport models; the reconceptualization of urban space; the implementation of crash programs for the transition to smart working and distance learning models, but also the activation of solidarity and social innovation initiatives. But perhaps above all, the spread of Covid-19 and its dramatic implications are reaffirming the evident paradoxical unsustainability of current economic models based on linear thinking and assumed infinite growth. These issues mainly involve an orientation toward sustainability. 

In such an era of disruption, this session aims at investigating the rising impacts of platforms ecosystems, as well as their managerial and organizational implications in terms of economic, social, environmental, and institutional sustainability. The more and more emerging platformization is shaping both people’s lives and a new socio-economic paradigm. However, while much of the research has so far focused on platform configuration, boundaries, actors’ role, and ecosystem configurations, little investigation still exists about the implications in terms of economic, social, environmental, and institutional sustainability that the platformization conveys. Unless governments are defining new rules and sanctions about specific issues related to platforms in the business and economy domain (e.g. the cybersecurity law imposed in China in 2017, the fines against Microsoft and Google imposed by the E.U., the fines against Facebook expected from the U.S.), many issues are still not caught. This session aims to move a debate around these key issues: if and in what way can the platforms promote a substantial capacity for transformative resilience in the context of sustainable development? If and how can they help to be less unprepared in facing unexpected future crises? What issues do they raise? If and how platforms are meeting -if not even permeating- the existing institutional and juridical voids?