Loner or team player: How firms allocate orchestrator tasks amongst ecosystem actors

Ecosystems have become a major trend in research and practice alike. Within an ecosystem, the so-called orchestrator is considered to be one of the most important roles. However, extant research falls short of explaining how and why this orchestrator role and the resulting tasks of orchestration are allocated to specific ecosystem members. Based on a case study with eight cases, this paper aims to shed light on this crucial question. Our results revealed three basic patterns of ecosystem orchestration: single-, double-, and multi-orchestration ecosystems. These were determined by two key contingencies: production related knowledge and consumption related knowledge. This discovery yields several contributions to research and managerial practice. We show whether, and under which circumstances, orchestrators might include other ecosystem participants in the key tasks of orchestration. We demonstrate how orchestrators allocate these tasks to specific participants in the ecosystem. Furthermore, our results shed light on how orchestrators manage their ecosystem partners and secure their position within the ecosystem. And finally, we introduce a new view on the role of the orchestrator.