Controversies and Their Impact on Market Plasticity: The Story of Digital Care Providers' Emergence in Swedish Healthcare

Sammanfattning: Markets are increasingly becoming contested spheres. Controversies resulting from actors' multiple attempts to shape markets play a crucial role in markets' dynamics and their plasticity, yet little is known about their impact. Adopting an abductive case study approach and drawing on actor-network theory, we follow the controversies surrounding the emergence of digital care providers in the Swedish primary care and pharmacy market and show that these can be observed on three different levels-material manifestations, strategies and goals, and underlying assumptions. Based on our findings, we propose a three-level model of controversies in markets and discuss controversies' varying impact on markets' plasticity-i.e., markets' ability to take new forms or retain old ones-depending on which level they play out. Our research suggests that conflicts about fundamental assumptions have greater impact on market plasticity than those about material issues. We contribute to the growing literature of market studies and controversies and argue that practitioners can benefit from acknowledging controversies' duality-being both destructive and productive.