ABSTRACT
In attempts to control the socio-economic impact of online platforms, political and regulatory intervention has received more attention than the corporate legal structure of the platform and its ownership. This chapter introduces an alternative response to the corporate platform economy, which relies on blends and variations of its ownership to steer its socio-economic effects. Complementing others in the book, the chapter examines what flexibility there is within (UK) social enterprise law to incorporate constitutional commitment to social purpose, community membership and inclusive governance within business organisations that run platforms. When these organisations are in corporate ownership, they operate from a perspective of satisfying the demands for regular profit income in order to stay ahead of the competition for growth and, ultimately, to improve shareholder value. Social enterprise law, on the other hand, by enabling communal blends of platform ownership, opens the possibility of steering their behaviour “from the inside out” by offering legal forms to adjust their governance, membership and purpose but without the need for (the same level of) external regulatory intervention.
