Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 6-6-2018 10:30 AM The Rise of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: Coordination and Growth within Cryptocurrencies Ying-Ying Hsieh The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Vergne, Jean-Philippe The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Business A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Ying-Ying Hsieh 2018 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons Recommended Citation Hsieh, Ying-Ying, "The Rise of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: Coordination and Growth within Cryptocurrencies" (2018). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 5393. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/5393 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Abstract The rise of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is driving a paradigm shift in organization design. Their underlying blockchain technology enables a novel form of organizing, which I call the “decentralized autonomous organization” (DAO). This study explores how tasks are coordinated within DAOs that provide decentralized and open payment systems that do not rely on centralized intermediaries (e.g., banks). Guided by a Bitcoin pilot case study followed by a three-stage research design that uses both qualitative and quantitative data, this inductive study examines twenty DAOs in the cryptocurrency industry to address the following question: How are DAOs coordinated to enable growth? Results from the pilot study suggest that task coordination within DAOs is enabled by distributed consensus mechanisms at various levels.