Abstract
We discuss and illustrate alternative analytical strategies for representing coordination networks in innovative virtual communities bounded by production relationships among participants. We use information on email communication networks reconstructed using data from the Apache Open Source project to give empirical contents to our arguments and to substantiate our claims that: (i) Self-organizing networks provide the basic principles of coordination in such communities; (ii) Once in place, deliberate governance arrangements affect coordination patterns within virtual communities; (iii) Structural properties of communication networks change significantly over time depending on their internal organizational logics, and (iv) Affiliation (a.k.a. two mode) networks provide a useful representation for detecting community structures.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Powell, W.W., Koput, K.W., Smith-Doerr, L.: Inter-organizational collaboration. Admin. Sci. Quart. 41(1), 116–145 (1996)
Ancona, D., Bresman, H., Kaeufer, K.: The comparative advantage of X-teams. MIT Sloan Manage. Rev. 43(3), 33–39
von Hippel, E.: Task Partitioning. Res. Policy 19, 407–418
Pich, M.T., Loch, C.H., de Meyer, A.: On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Complexity in Project Management. Manage. Sci. 48(8), 1008–1023 (2002)
Nickerson, J.A., Zenger, T.R.: A Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm: The Problem-Solving Perspective. Organ. Sci. 15(6), 617–632 (2004)
Ethiraj, S.K., Levinthal, D.: Bounded Rationality and the Search for Organizational Architecture. Admin. Sci. Quart. 49(3), 404–437 (2004)
Kleinbaum, A.M., Stuart, T.E., Tushman, M.: Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization. Admin. Sci. Quart. (2008) (under review)
Monge, P., Heiss, B.M., Margolin, D.B.: Communication Network Evolution in Organizational Communities. Communication Theory 18(4), 449–477 (2008)
Breiger, R.L.: The Duality of Persons and Groups. Social Forces 53(2), 181–190 (1974)
Newman, M.E.J., Givran, M.: Finding and Evaluating Community Structure in Networks Phys. Rev. E 69 (2004)
Freeman, L.C.: A Set of Measures of Centrality Based on Betweenness. Sociometry 40(1), 35–41 (1977)
Weiss, M., Moroiu, G., Zhao, P.: Evolution of Open Source Communities. International Federation for Information Processing 203, 21–32 (2006)
Watts, D., Strogatts, S.: Collective Dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks. Nature 393, 440–442 (1998)
Barabasi, A.L., Albert, R., Jeong, H.: Scale-free Characteristics of Random Networks: the Topology of the World-Wide Web. Physica A 281(15), 69–77 (2000)
Lerner, J., Tirole, J.: Some Simple Economics of Open Source. J. Ind. Econ. 50(2), 197–234 (2002)
Dalle, J.M., David, P.A.: SimCode: Agent-based Simulation Modeling of Open-Source Software Development (2006) (working paper)
O’Mahony, S., Ferraro, F.: The Emergence of Governance in an Open Source Community. Acad. Manage J. 50(5), 1079–1107 (2007)
Thompson, J.D.: Organizations in Action. McGraw-Hill, New York (1967)
Mockus, A., Fielding, R., Herbsleb, J.: Two Case Studies of Open Source Software Development. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. And Methodology 11(3), 309–346
Koch, S., Schneider, G.: Effort, Co-operation and Co-ordination in an Open Source Software Project: GNOME. Inform. Syst. J. 12(1), 27–42 (2002)
von Hippel, E., von Krogh, G.: Open Source Software and the “Private-Collective” Innovation Model. Organ. Sci. 14(2), 209–223 (2003)
Crowston, K., Howison, J.: The Social Structure of Free and Open Source Software Development. First Monday 10(2) (2005)
MacCormack, A., Rusnak, J., Baldwin, C.: Exploring the Structure of Complex Software Designs. Manage. Sci. 52(7), 1015–1030 (2006)
Simon, H.A.: The architecture of complexity. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106, 467–482 (1962)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Barberio, V., Lomi, A. (2009). Weighting Structures: Evolutionary Dynamics of Innovation Networks in Virtual Communities. In: Ozok, A.A., Zaphiris, P. (eds) Online Communities and Social Computing. OCSC 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5621. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02774-1_32
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02774-1_32
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-02773-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-02774-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)