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Abstract

Each historical configuration of capitalism produces a specific form of corporate power. Changes in capitalist means of production, business models, and the organizational form of economic interactions, lead firms to control different power resources, pursue different goals, and use different political strategies. The central question of this dissertation is how business power is constituted in capitalism’s most recent historical configuration – digital capitalism.
I argue that the political preferences and strategies of business in digital capitalism are grounded in a firm’s position in digital ecosystems. This position, in turn, is determined by a firm’s control of digital power resources. Digital power resources describe the ownership of the central raw material (data), the means of production (digital technologies), and the infrastructure (standards and platforms) of digital capitalism. The relations of production and exchange in digital capitalism take place in digital ecosystems, in which some firms control the core inputs (hubs) and some own the digital infrastructure on which the ecosystem runs (ties). Being a hub and/or owning the ties puts firms in an upstream position, because they can control access to the central inputs and infrastructures of the ecosystem – access on which the economic fate of downstream firms depends. I find that firms’ position in digital ecosystems shapes their political preferences and influences their lobbying strategies. In short, how firms generate profit and how they interact with each other in the digital economy determines which means they have (digital power resources), what they want (preferences), and what they do politically (strategies).