If you have missed our article „The Rise and Fall of Interdisciplinary Research: The Case of Open Source Innovation“ in Research Policy in 2013, I am happy to say that you can read a version of it in the just now published book Open Source Innovation (Routledge). Thanks to Daniel Ehls and Cornelius Herstatt for editing and taking care of everything.
Kategorie: open source
Spaeth, S., von Krogh, G., & He, F. @ ISR (2014)
Abstract: Voluntary contributions are crucial to the success of open source software (OSS) projects. Firms sponsoring OSS projects may face substantial challenges in soliciting such contributions, since volunteer participants are neither regulated by an employment contract nor offered financial incentives. While prior work has shown the positive impact of motivation on the effort expended by volunteer participants, there is limited understanding of how specific firm attributes shape volunteers’ intrinsic motivation. We offer a theoretical model of how the perceived community-based credibility and openness of the sponsoring firm have a positive impact on the intrinsic motivation of volunteer participants. The model is explored using survey data on volunteer participants from two sponsored OSS projects. Results show that a sponsoring firm’s community-based credibility (OSS developers’ perception of its expertise and trustworthiness) and openness (its mutual knowledge exchange with the community) strengthen the volunteer participants’ social identification with the firm-sponsored community, which in turn reinforces their intrinsic motivation to participate. Moreover, the perceived community-based credibility of a sponsoring firm directly enhances volunteer participants’ intrinsic motivation, whereas perceived openness fails to affect motivation without the mediating mechanism of social identification. Implications for firms seeking voluntary contributions for their sponsored OSS projects are discussed.
Communication Director
A short 4-page article on the advantages of Open Source for organizations written by Spaeth and von Krogh has been published in the practitioner-oriented „Communication Director„.