Institutional modeling and management of the firm’s ecosystem

Ural Institute of Management RANEPA, Ekaterinburg, Russia

^* Corresponding author: epopov@mail.ru

Abstract

By the early 20s of this century, it became clear that the network paradigm of inter-firm relations does not describe the entire landscape of business interactions. The introduction of digital technologies stimulated business development taking into account not only economic partners, consumers, suppliers and competitors, but also taking into account the influence of public organizations, authorities and social media. The paradigm of ecosystem analysis of the economy began to develop, the first works of which appeared at the end of the twentieth century. The purpose of this study is to develop an institutional model and principles for managing the firm’s ecosystem. The theoretical basis of the research is the authors’ model of the potential of digitalization of the company’s ecosystem. The article analyzes and criticizes previous studies, which demonstrated the relevance of formulating the problem of developing the formalized potential of digitalization of the firm’s ecosystem. Based on the authors’ development on the representation of ecosystem actors in the form of stakeholders, the main components of the external space of the company are identified: stakeholders, company resources and end-to-end digital technologies. The main factors forming the potential of digitalization of the company’s ecosystem are highlighted. Ecosystem stakeholders are divided into representatives of business, government, consumers, education and science, and mass media. The company’s resources are material, labor, financial and information resources. Digital technologies: artificial intelligence, additive technologies, blockchain, the Internet of Things, robotics, social networks, virtual reality. Various directions of application of the formalized potential of digitalization of the company’s ecosystem are presented: the possibility of assessing the use of potential in various directions; assessment of the impact of various components of the firm’s ecosystem on the development of its other elements; development of a general analytical model of potential; assessment of threshold values of factors for the development of the potential of digitalization of the firm’s ecosystem; a tool for developing a strategy for the firm’s ecosystem.