Beyond Spot Markets: How Thick Sociality in Online Labor Markets is Reshaping Firm Boundaries

The paper's central move is to challenge a foundational assumption in the theory of the firm: that complex, co-specialized work cannot be contracted out.

By introducing the concept of 'thick sociality' — the dense relational infrastructure that firms generate internally — and showing empirically that online labor markets are now capable of replicating it, the authors shift the analytical frame from transaction costs alone to social structure as a determinant of firm boundaries.

This is the kind of institutional question Coase and Williamson raised and that digital platforms have made newly urgent; the paper earns its place in that lineage by extending the framework rather than merely applying it.

For product directors leading platforms or making build-vs-buy-vs-outsource decisions, the two mechanisms identified (freelancer collaboration on non-decomposable work; trust accumulation between firms and freelancers) offer a genuinely useful analytical lens.

The platform-economics gap in the library is real, and this paper addresses it with an explicit theoretical extension rather than a domain-calibration exercise.