Exploring the relationship between partnership model participation and interfirm network structure: An analysis of the Office365 ecosystem

Platform owners face complex decisions in managing an ecosystem of third-party application developers. Little is known about the effect platform governance has on the productivity, or degree of interaction, among complementors in the ecosystem. The presented study of the Microsoft Office365 ecosystem investigates the extent to which participation in the partnership model of Microsoft influences productivity and embeddedness of complementors by means of network analysis and statistical inference. Results show the Office365 ecosystem is populated by 550 complementors that developed 1204 applications and initiated 787 interfirm relationships. Statistical inference reveals that increased productivity and participation in the Microsoft Certified Partner Network coincide with increased embeddedness, implying retention of complementors results in more cohesive ecosystems. Yet, partnership model participation does not result in increasing productivity of complementors. Results presented in this paper provide increased understanding of the influence of partnership models on ecosystem structure, to the benefit of practitioners and academia.