Platform adaptation across institutional regimes: A comparative study of Uber in the United States and Turkey

Abstract

Digital platform organisations are often portrayed as globally scalable, yet national institutional environments shape their structures and strategies. Drawing on institutional theory, this study examines how Uber Technologies Inc. adapts its business model, governance, and organisational boundaries across contrasting regulatory regimes. The paper compares the firm's responses in the United States and Turkey, two contexts characterised by different regulatory trajectories. Using qualitative document analysis of legal decisions, regulatory texts, corporate disclosures, and media sources, the study analyses adaptation across four dimensions: regulatory strategy, platform governance, labour intermediation, and organisational positioning. The findings show that adaptation is contingent rather than uniform. In the U.S., prolonged regulatory ambiguity enabled continued operation and organisational learning through reframing, boundary renegotiation, and the gradual integration of regulatory expectations into contractual and technological systems. In contrast, Turkey's centralised intervention-imposed constraints prompted strategic retrenchment and role redefinition, with Uber abandoning labour intermediation and repositioning itself as a digital interface for licensed taxi drivers. The study highlights retrenchment and organisational reconfiguration as underexamined forms of platform adaptation in restrictive institutional environments.