Platform-enabled Accountability as Institutional Substitution: Digital Platforms, Governance, and Service Integration

How do Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) and platform vendors reallocate governance when institutions are fragmented? We advance Institutional Theory by specifying platform-enabled accountability as a falsifiable mechanism of institutional substitution in International Business (IB). Accountability operates through a Recording-Monitoring-Action (R-M-A) micro-mechanism that converts machine-readable records into monitoring routines and enforcement actions, reallocating governance functions (evidence production, sanctioning, coordination, dispute resolution) across micro, meso, and macro levels. Activation depends on three boundary conditions, reliability, recognition, and legitimacy, which determine whether substitution reinforces, succeeds, or collapses. Using an abductive, contrastive case design, we process-trace a UK service enterprise and probe boundary conditions through contrasts in the UAE and Nigeria. We find reinforcement under strong regulation and organizational capacity, success via state-mandated substitution with formal recognition, and collapse under infrastructure fragility and weak legitimacy. Institutional substitution thus operates through discrete governance functions, not whole-institution replacement, as platforms turn records into socially recognized cross-border accountability.