TY - JOUR
T1 - Coordinating interdependencies in online communities
T2 - A study of an open source software project
AU - Lindberg, Aron
AU - Berente, Nicholas
AU - Gaskin, James
AU - Lyytinen, Kalle
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 INFORMS.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - To manage work interdependencies, online communities draw on a variety of arm's length coordination mechanisms offered by information technology platforms and associated practices. However, "unresolved interdependencies" remain that cannot be addressed by such arm's length mechanisms. These interdependencies reflect, for example, unidentified or emerging knowledge-based dependencies between the community members or unaccounted relationships between ongoing community tasks. At the same time, online communities cannot resort to hierarchical coordination mechanisms such as incentives or command structures to address such interdependencies. So, how do they manage such interdependencies? To address this question, we conduct an exploratory, theory-generating case study involving qualitative and computational analyses of development activities within an open source software community: Rubinius. We analyze the ongoing management of interdependencies within the community and find that unresolved interdependencies are associated with alternatively structured sequences of activities, which we define as routines. In particular, we observe that two distinct classes of interdependencies-development and developer interdependencies-are associated with alternative forms of routine variation. We identify two generalized routine components-direct implementation and knowledge integration, which address these two distinct classes of unresolved interdependencies. In particular, direct implementation deals with development interdependencies within the code that are not already coordinated through modular interfaces, while knowledge integration resolves unaccounted interdependencies between developers. We conclude with implications for research into organizing principles for online communities and note the significance of our findings for the study of coordination in organization studies in general.
AB - To manage work interdependencies, online communities draw on a variety of arm's length coordination mechanisms offered by information technology platforms and associated practices. However, "unresolved interdependencies" remain that cannot be addressed by such arm's length mechanisms. These interdependencies reflect, for example, unidentified or emerging knowledge-based dependencies between the community members or unaccounted relationships between ongoing community tasks. At the same time, online communities cannot resort to hierarchical coordination mechanisms such as incentives or command structures to address such interdependencies. So, how do they manage such interdependencies? To address this question, we conduct an exploratory, theory-generating case study involving qualitative and computational analyses of development activities within an open source software community: Rubinius. We analyze the ongoing management of interdependencies within the community and find that unresolved interdependencies are associated with alternatively structured sequences of activities, which we define as routines. In particular, we observe that two distinct classes of interdependencies-development and developer interdependencies-are associated with alternative forms of routine variation. We identify two generalized routine components-direct implementation and knowledge integration, which address these two distinct classes of unresolved interdependencies. In particular, direct implementation deals with development interdependencies within the code that are not already coordinated through modular interfaces, while knowledge integration resolves unaccounted interdependencies between developers. We conclude with implications for research into organizing principles for online communities and note the significance of our findings for the study of coordination in organization studies in general.
KW - Activity variation
KW - Coordination
KW - Interdependencies
KW - Online communities
KW - Open source software
KW - Order variation
KW - Routines
KW - Sequence analysis
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U2 - 10.1287/isre.2016.0673
DO - 10.1287/isre.2016.0673
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85010408653
SN - 1047-7047
VL - 27
SP - 751
EP - 772
JO - Information Systems Research
JF - Information Systems Research
IS - 4
ER -