Start Date
14-12-2012 12:00 AM
Description
The present study employs a knowledge-based view of the firm, within the larger framework of the resource-based theory, and gathers insights from social exchange theory to investigate how firms might influence the deployment of free resources by entities external to them. The authors use data from 109 open source software projects involving 110 firms to test hypotheses about whether firm-controlled resources affect the provision of free resources by external entities. The results suggest that firms can increase the external resource base, in the form of unpaid programmers, by increasing the number of paid programmers they deploy to a project. However, attempts to increase control by increasing the number of paid project leaders appears to detrimentally affect the number of unpaid programmers. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for information science and management research, as well as some intended next research steps.
Recommended Citation
Walsh, Gianfranco; Schaarschmidt, Mario; and Von Kortzfleisch, Harald F.O., "Harnessing Free External Resources: Evidence from the Open Source Field" (2012). ICIS 2012 Proceedings. 1.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2012/proceedings/ResearchInProgress/1
Harnessing Free External Resources: Evidence from the Open Source Field
The present study employs a knowledge-based view of the firm, within the larger framework of the resource-based theory, and gathers insights from social exchange theory to investigate how firms might influence the deployment of free resources by entities external to them. The authors use data from 109 open source software projects involving 110 firms to test hypotheses about whether firm-controlled resources affect the provision of free resources by external entities. The results suggest that firms can increase the external resource base, in the form of unpaid programmers, by increasing the number of paid programmers they deploy to a project. However, attempts to increase control by increasing the number of paid project leaders appears to detrimentally affect the number of unpaid programmers. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for information science and management research, as well as some intended next research steps.