This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent City Research OnlineThe periphery on stage:The intra-organizational dynamics in online communities of creation Francesco Rullani LUISS Guido CarliStefan Haefliger ETH Zurich July 2012 AbstractThis paper theorizes the intra-organizational dynamics of online communities of creation such as Free and Open Source software projects. It describes the role of the participants at the peripheries of these online communities and analyzes how the division of labor among peripheral and core members is handled. The paper further demonstrates that this mode of labor division is possible only if the periphery is able to acquire and absorb the standards associated with the developers' activities, described here as a social practice. We describe how the propagation of such standards takes place through non-material artifacts such as code and virtual discussions. We show that because of the capacity of these artifacts to effectively disseminate the standards of a social practice, such standards can be transferred not only face to face, but also asynchronously, asymmetrically and openly.

JEL classification: O31 O32 L86Keywords: Software Technological innovation Human capital Modularity This paper investigates the skills and the division of labor among participants in collective inventions. Our analysis draws on a large sample of projects registered at Sourceforge.net, the world's largest incubator of open source software activity. We test the hypothesis that skill variety of participants is associated with project performance. We also explore whether the level of modularization of project activities is correlated with performance. Our econometric estimations show that skill heterogeneity is associated with project survival and performance. However, the relationship between skill diversity and performance is nonmonotonic. Design modularity is also positively associated with the performance of the project. Finally, the interaction between skill heterogeneity and modularity is negatively associated with performance.

Research summary: Building on the problem‐solving perspective, we study behaviors related to projects and the communication‐based antecedents of such behaviors in the free open‐source software (FOSS) community. We examine two kinds of problem/project‐behaviors: Individuals can set up projects around the formulation of new problems or join existing projects and define and/or work on subproblems within an existing problem. The choice between these two behaviors is influenced by the mode of communication. A communication mode with little a priori structure is the best mode for communicating about new problems (i.e., formulating a problem); empirically, it is associated with project launching behaviors. In contrast, more structured communication fits subproblems better and is related to project joining behaviors. Our hypotheses derive support from data from the FOSS community. Managerial summary: We study how the way in which individuals communicate influence the project‐behaviors they engage in. We find that relatively unstructured communication is associated with the setting up new projects, while communication that is structured around an artifact is associated with joining projects. Our findings hold implications for understanding how management may influence project behaviors and problem‐solving: Firms that need to concentrate on more incremental problem‐solving efforts (e.g., because a sufficient number of attractive problems have already been defined) should create environments in which interaction is undertaken mainly via artifacts. On the other hand, if firms seek to generate new problems (e.g., new strategic opportunities), they should create environments in which open‐ended, verbal conversation is relatively more important than artifact‐based communication. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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