The following is a presentation on the Sustainability of the OpenSim Community. It outlines a research agenda currently being conducted by researchers in Sweden and the United States on the use of private-collective communities for value creation.

1. SETTING THE STAGE
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EXPLORING ACTOR ROLES FOR PRIVATE-
COLLECTIVE COMMUNITY SUSTAINABILITY
RESEARCH-IN-PROGRESS
Robin Teigland Paul M. Di Gangi
Stockholm School of Economics Loyola University Maryland
Zeynep Yetis
Stockholm School of Economics
October 2011

2. Overview
Introduction & Research Questions
Research Setting
Proposed Methodology
Expected Contributions
Questions & Answers
Thank You!

3. Models of Knowledge Creation
Microsoft
~ Built by employees within
organizational boundaries
The Firm
vs The Collective
Linux
~ Built by users and distributed
freely regardless of affiliation

4. Communities
expanding across industries
• Software (e.g., LINUX, Apache, and MySQL)
• Pharmaceuticals (e.g., pinkarmy)
• Physical goods (e.g., farm machinery)

5. Threadless:
What came first –
the community or
the company?

6. 5,000+ 40,900
230+
eZ Customers in Community
70 emp Partners
130 countries members
• Open source content management software
• 70 employees in 9 countries (US, Europe & Asia)
• Customers: Financial Times, Wall Street Journal,
UN, Vogue, Hitachi, 3M, MIT

7. Private-collective Community
(von Hippel & von Krogh 2003)
Community and firm share experiences and
knowledge to co-create value
Community is a complementary asset to be
leveraged and combined with firm’s internal
assets to deliver competitive solutions
(Dahlander & Wallin 2006)

8. But there’s tension...
Collective Model
Openness and free
distribution of intellectual
ideas for common or
public good
VS
Private Model
Distribution of returns
and delegation of value
creation solely to
organization

9. Our Primary Research Question
How do private-collective communities sustain
themselves despite the challenges that the
tension produces?

10. Research Question One
Level of Analysis = Community
(not the individual nor the firm)
(RQ1) Who are the key actors in a private-
collective community, what roles do they
fulfill, and what resources do they contribute
to the community to ensure its sustainability?

11. Research Question Two
• Individual motivations from self-determination
theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Gagné & Deci, 2005; See summary by von
Krogh et al., Forthcoming)
– Intrinsic (e.g., fun, enjoyment)
– Internalized extrinsic
(e.g., reputation, reciprocity, learning, and own-use)
– Extrinsic (e.g., career and pay)
• Particularly when firms can freely leverage your
resources for private gains.
– Fairness & Transparency (Di Gangi et al., Forthcoming; Di Gangi
et al., 2010)

12. Divergent interests
O’Mahony & Bechky, ASQ, 2008

13. (RQ2a) What motivates an individual to contribute
privately held, valuable resources to a collective
that will make the outcome of his or her efforts
free to any that seek it?
or does it feel like firms are stealing their candy?

14. (RQ2a) What motivates a firm to contribute to a
collective that may produce unanticipated outcomes
that could diverge from its interests?
or does it feel like “customers” are looting the store?

15. Research Question Three
• As communities mature
– Go through different phases of governance
– Bureaucratic and democratic mechanisms are
blended in line with the community’s changing
conceptions of authority (O’Mahony & Ferraro, 2007)
(RQ3) What are the reciprocal effects of actor
behavior (and motivation) and the governance
structures used by the community to ensure its
sustainability?

16. Overview
Introduction & Research Questions
Research Setting
Proposed Methodology
Expected Contributions
Questions & Answers
Thank You!

18. The emerging 3D internet
O’Driscoll 2009

20. The OpenSim Community
Core Developers
Missing Core Developers
Retired Core Developers
Developers/ Testers/
Contributors
OpenSim Users

21. The Decision Makers

22. Organizational Agents
Dahlander & Wallin (2006)

23. More than just developers…

24. Overview
Introduction & Research Questions
Research Setting
Proposed Methodology
Expected Contributions
Questions & Answers
Thank You!

25. Proposed Methodology
Stage One Stage Two Stage Three
RQ Focus: RQ Focus: RQ Focus:
RQ 1 RQ 2 & RQ 3 Validation & Refinement
Core Methodology: Core Methodology: Core Methodology:
Semi-Structured Interviews; Archival; Textual; Network; Semi-Structured Interviews;
Questionnaires Event-driven Analysis Case Analysis
Approach: Approach: Approach:
Snowball technique Web Scraping Identified Interviewees
Outcome Focus: Outcome Focus: Outcome Focus:
Identification of key actors, Develop understanding of Validate existing findings
roles, and resources within evolutionary structure of with community members
the private-collective community as well as and extend based upon
community motivations feedback

26. Overview
Introduction & Research Questions
Research Setting
Proposed Methodology
Expected Contributions
Questions & Answers
Thank You!

27. Additional theory
• Contingency-based Perspective for Organizing (Lawrence &
Lorsch, 1967)
– Nature and form of organizing is determined by the environment in
which a phenomenon operates
– Absorption and reaction to sudden shocks are resolved through the
adaptive governance mechanisms derived from the inter-related web of
behaviors and motivations driving resource contributions from the key
actors of a private-collective community (Weick, 1969)
• Adaptive Governance of Social-ecological Systems (Folke et al.,
2005)
– “In a social-ecological system with high adaptability, the actors have the
capacity to reorganize the system within desired states in response to
changing conditions and disturbance events.”
– “Crisis, perceived or real, seems to trigger learning and knowledge
generation (58) and opens up space for new management trajectories
of resources and ecosystems.”

28. Additional theory
• Toward a Network Perspective of the Study of Resilience in
Social-Ecological Systems (Janssen et al., 2006)
– “Nodes and links are not always active. Some are sleeping nodes and
links that are activated only in specific situations such as a crisis.
Maintaining the capacity to reactivate these nodes and links in times of
crisis is an important contribution to the system’s resilience. When
nodes or links disappear from a system, it seems that one characteristic
of a resilient system is the ability to fill up that space in the network with
new nodes and links.” (Walker et al. 1999)

29. RQ 3: Evolution of Community Structure
Picture source: Wasko & Teigland 2004

30. RQ 3: Mapping Over Time
Change in Number of Participants
Part 2000 Part 2001 Part 2002 Part 2003 Part 2004
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Picture courtesy of Wasko

31. Intangible Resources
Exploratory Analysis Objective:
-------------------------------------------------------
Determine role characteristics of main actors
and what motivates them to contribute
resources over time.
Tangible Resources
Intrinsic Motivation Extrinsic Motivation

32. Overview
Introduction & Research Questions
Research Setting
Proposed Methodology
Expected Contributions
Questions & Answers
Thank You!

34. Research Questions
• How do private-collective communities sustain
themselves despite challenges that such conflicts
produce?
– RQ1: Who are key actors in private-collective community, what roles do they
fulfill, and what resources do these actors contribute to community to ensure
sustainability?
– (RQ2a) What motivates an individual to contribute his or her privately
held, valuable resources to a collective that will make the outcome of his or
her efforts free to any that seek it?
– (RQ2b) What motivates a firm to contribute its resources to a collective that
may produce unanticipated outcomes that could diverge from its private
interests?
– (RQ3) What are the reciprocal effects of actor behavior (and motivation) and
the governance structures used by the community to ensure its sustainability?