Abstract
Purpose:
This study seeks to explore the ways in which women founders are able to exercise leadership authority in digital health ventures, particularly in platform ecosystems that are not owned or governed by them. It seeks to elucidate the impact of platform governance on the autonomy, legitimacy, and impact of leadership.
Design/methodology/approach:
The research adopts an interpretivist qualitative design based on semi-structured interviews conducted with 22 women founders operating in digital health ventures dependent on platform infrastructures. Thematic analysis was employed to explore how participants negotiate authority, legitimacy, and strategic decision-making within algorithmically governed ecosystems.
Findings:
The results indicate that platform dependency reconfigures entrepreneurial leadership along dimensions of limiting direct control over visibility, legitimacy, and resource access. Relational strategies of female entrepreneurs in building legitimacy, including alliance formation, external branding, and multihoming, were observed to address issues of asymmetric power relationships. Leadership authority was enacted in adaptive and negotiated forms.
Originality/value:
This research contributes to the field of gendered entrepreneurship and platform governance by conceptualizing leadership in digitally governed ecosystems as a relational and negotiated process. It extends existing leadership theory by illustrating how leadership is constructed in a setting of algorithmic dependency.
Keywords:
Digital health entrepreneurship; platform governance; women founders; entrepreneurial leadership; legitimacy; algorithmic dependency