Bolt’s sustainability paradox: global expansion, local legitimacy and the role of public media in platform internationalization

Abstract

This study aims to examine how digital platform firms (DPFs) navigate tensions between rapid international growth and sustainability, using Bolt as a case study. It investigates how sustainability paradoxes emerge as platform scalability encounters host-market legitimacy demands and highlights the role of media in mediating these tensions. The study uses a qualitative content analysis of 801 media articles, reader comments and corporate documents related to Bolt, primarily from Estonian media. Using emergent coding, the analysis is framed through the Platform-OLI (P-OLI) framework, organizational paradox theory and media framing theory to examine how corporate narratives, media framing and public discourse interact across phases of internationalization. The findings identify persistent sustainability paradoxes in Bolt’s international expansion, particularly between scalability and environmental credibility, algorithmic governance and labor rights and regulatory flexibility and accountability. Media emerges as a central arena shaping public legitimacy across institutional contexts. From an international entrepreneurship (IE) perspective, institutional and psychic distance are not eliminated by digitalization but reconfigured into post-entry legitimacy struggles driven by opportunity recognition focused on speed and scale. This study extends IE and platform internationalization research by integrating sustainability paradoxes and mediated legitimacy into the P-OLI framework. It demonstrates that for born-DPFs, distance operates less as an entry barrier and more as a driver of legitimacy contestation during scaling, offering new insights into sustainable internationalization under conditions of heightened visibility and public scrutiny.