Flubber teams: The emergence of dynamic platform-enabled teams in business organizations

• Introduces “flubber teams” as a new form of platform-enabled collaboration. • Explores how proprietary crowdsourcing platforms reshape team structure and boundaries. • Compares flubber teams with flash and fluid teams across four key dimensions. • Shows how flubber teams balance flexibility with deep organizational embedding. • Discusses implications for leadership, HR policy, and the future of work. Digitalization is changing how organizations do business and organize their activities. New digital technologies have transformed sales, marketing, human resource management and other organizational processes. In this study, we examine the effect of digital transformation and the introduction of platform-enabled collaboration on the functioning of teams in organizations. Through a qualitative case study of a leading gas and oil company, which has introduced a proprietary freelance platform, we demonstrate a novel approach to project and teamwork management resulting in the formation of a new form of collaboration, which we call flubber teaming . Such teams have the ability to dynamically change their shape, form, hierarchy, and other properties, making these structures an attractive approach to teaming for large organizations. However, their emergence introduces additional pressures on organizational structures and culture.