Abstract:Purpose: This article seeks to add to understandings of knowledge sharing in online communities through an investigation of the relationship between individual participant's motivations and management in Open Source Software (OSS) communities. Drawing on a review of literature concerning knowledge sharing in organisations, the factors that motivate participants to share their knowledge in OSS communities, and the management of such communities, it is hypothesised that the quality of management influences the extent to which the motivations of members actually result in knowledge sharing. Methodology: To test the hypothesis, quantitative data were collected through an online questionnaire survey of OSS web developers with the aim of gathering respondents' opinions concerning knowledge sharing, motivations to share knowledge, and satisfaction with the management of OSS projects. Factor analysis, descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were employed to explore the survey data. Findings: The analysis of the data reveals that the individual participant's satisfaction with the management of an OSS project is an important factor influencing the extent of their personal contribution to a community. Originality: Little attention has been devoted to understanding the impact of management in OSS communities. Focused on OSS developers specialising in web development, the findings of this article offer an important original contribution to understanding the connections between individual members' satisfaction with management and their motivations to contribute to an OSS project. The findings reveal that motivations to share knowledge in online communities are influenced by the quality of management. Consequently, the findings suggest that appropriate management can enhance knowledge sharing in OSS projects and online communities, and organisations more generally. Acknowledgments:The authors would like to thank Dr Nick Drydakis for advice on the presentation of the quantitative data and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions. In addition, the authors gratefully acknowledge Durham University for the doctoral scholarships from Ustinov College and Durham University Business School, which made possible the empirical research from which this article draws. IntroductionThe effective management of knowledge is a primary concern for organisations seeking to compete in the contemporary economic environment (Grant, 1996). Consequently, knowledge management strategies have become widespread (Hislop, 2013; Davenport and Prusak, 1998;Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; inter alia). Knowledge management may be defined as 'any process or practice of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge, wherever it resides, to enhance learning and performance in organisations' (Scarbrough et al., 1999, p. 1). Knowledge sharing is, then, central to knowledge management practices (Renzl, 2008;Cabrera and Cabrera, 2005). In the process of sharing, knowledge is not only...
Purpose Social media developments in the last decade have led to the emergence of a new form of word of mouth (WOM) in the digital environment. Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is considered by many scholars and practitioners to be the most influential informal communication mechanism between businesses and potential and actual consumers. The purpose of this paper is to extend knowledge about WOM in this new context by proposing a conceptual framework that enables a better understanding of how trust and reciprocity influence eWOM participation in ORCs. Design/methodology/approach This study applies non-probability convenience sampling technique to conduct a quantitative study of data from an online survey of 189 members of ORCs. Partial least squares (PLS) is used to analyse the correlations between individuals’ intention to seek opinion, to give their own opinion and to pass on the opinion of another within ORCs. Findings The data analysis reveals that opinion seeking within ORCs had a direct effect on opinion giving and opinion passing. Ability trust and integrity trust had a positive effect on opinion seeking, while benevolence trust had a direct positive effect on opinion passing. Reciprocity had a direct impact on opinion passing. While reciprocity did not affect opinion giving, the relationship between these two concepts was mediated by integrity trust. Research limitations/implications By studying the complexities that characterise the relationships between reciprocity, trust and eWOM, the study extends understanding of eWOM in ORCs. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of only a few papers that have examined the complex interrelationships between reciprocity, trust and eWOM in the context of ORCs.
has been published in nal form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joms.12040. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. We present an analysis of the articles published in the Journal of Management Studies (JMS) since its inception to assess to what extent JMS has: maintained its leading international ranking; maintained its founding mission as a broad based management journal; remained a broad based management journal compared to other general management journals. In terms of its impact factor and citations despite reaching a low point in 2001, we find that JMS today ranks higher than it has ever done throughout its 50-year history. From our content analysis covering the life-cycle of JMS we find four areas have been the most frequently represented, although their relative importance varies between decades: Organizational Management/Behaviour, Strategy, Human Resource Management and General Management, accounting for 67% of articles published over the period. JMS has strengthened its international author distribution through the increase in authors from the EU especially and the period 2000-2004 which saw the predominance of UK authors was an anomaly. There are marked differences between type of article and author country of origin. Our comparative analysis of the word networks between the journals JMS, AMJ, ASQ and HRM shows that over each decade the papers in the first three normally form a single cluster indicating that the words used in the papers in the different journals are similar, while papers from HRM often form an outlining group. Notably, in the early 2000s papers in JMS form a distinct cluster with papers from HRM paralleling the anomaly identified in the content analysis. Overall, JMS has regained its distinctiveness as a broad-based international management journal, not favouring any particular theoretical or empirical approach.3
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the definitions, dimensions, and classifications of online communities together with their potential to produce value for business. Those value options are then discussed in the context of empirical vignettes showing examples of business models focussed on one of the two potential benefits coming from online communities – clear financial gains and intangible long-run returns. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses systematic literature review method. In total, 67 academic paper in the area of business and management were chosen for the analysis. Findings The literature review shows multitude of online communities definitions and classifications, but hardly any comprehensive attempt to map the phenomena in full. This paper is looking into recognising potential revenue streams from online businesses and other non-financial benefits that can be combined to create strong and sustainable value proposition. Originality/value Drawing on the literature reviewed a novel categorisation of the commercial opportunities offered by the online communities is presented. These opportunities are discussed in a context of business model design.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how to find the optimal investment level in protecting an organisation’s assets. Design/methodology/approach This study integrates a case study of an international financial organisation with various methods and theories in security economics and mathematics, such as value-at-risk (VaR), Monte Carlo simulation, exponential and Poisson probability distributions. Thereby it combines theory and empirical findings to establish a new approach to determining optimal security investment levels. Findings The results indicate that optimal security investment levels can be found through computer simulation with historical incident data to find VaR. By combining various scenarios, the convex graph of the risk cost function has been plotted, where the minimum of the graph represents the optimal invest level for an asset. Research limitations/implications The limitations of the research include a modest number of loss observations from one case study, and the use of normal probability distribution. The approach has limitations where there are no historical data available or the data has zero losses. These areas should undergo further research including larger data set of losses and exploring other probability distributions. Practical implications The results can be used by leading business practitioners to assist them with decision making on investment to the increased protection of an asset. Originality/value The originality of this research is in its new way of combining theories with historical data to create methods to measure theoretical and empirical strength of a control (or set of controls) and translating it to loss probabilities and loss sizes.
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