Journal of Management Information Systems, 2015, Volume 32,
Issue 4, Page 40-77.
Platform desertion, or a developer's stopping the development of an app for a platform, is a widespread phenomenon to the detriment of platforms. However, the extant literature focuses primarily on why app developers joinÑnot leaveÑa platform. This app-level study develops two ideas: (a) coordination costs borne by an app's developer are associated with platform desertion, and (b) these costs are, in turn, shaped by a nuanced interplay between app decision rights and app ÒmicroarchitectureÓ introduced here. We use survey and snapshot archival data spanning 2009Ð2014 on over 300 apps in the Mozilla Firefox ecosystem to test these ideas. Our novel contribution shows how, by influencing coordination costs, the previously invisible interplay between app decision rights and app microarchitecture shapes an app's platform desertion. We find that delegating app decision rights to its developer weakens the coordination cost-reducing benefits of decoupling an app from the platform but strengthens those of standardizing its interfaces to the platform. The key theoretical implication is that app decision rights and app microarchitecture symbiotically influence the coordination costs borne by an app's developer. The key practical implication for platform designers is that the choices about who ought to make what decisions are intertwined with the architecture of the governed information technology artifact. > >
Keywords: app developers; apps architecture; coordination cost; decision; rights; ecosystems ;mobile apps; modularity platforms