A problem-solving perspective on governance and product design in open source software projects: Conceptual issues and exploratory evidence

Presenter Information

Mario Schaarschmidt, Institute for Management, University of Koblenz-Landau, Koblenz, Germany.Follow
Gianfranco Walsh, General Management and Marketing, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Jena, Germany.Follow
Alan MacCormack, Technology and Operations Management, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, United States.Follow
Harald Von Kortzfleisch, Institute for Management, University of Koblenz-Landau, Koblenz, Germany.Follow

Start Date

12-16-2013

Description

Previous research shows that organization architecture relates to the architecture of a product under development, and recent studies compare proprietary versus open source software (OSS) as examples of integrated and distributed forms of software development, respectively. This study goes a step further to investigate the correspondence of organization and product architectures by comparing single-vendor with community OSS. Using a problem-solving perspective, the authors seek to explain when and why vendor firms use a community to solve their problems. Furthermore, the combination of literature-based insights with field interviews supports an exploration of the assumption that single-vendor OSS exhibits a less modular product architecture than community OSS. With design structure matrices, this study analyzes differences in software code architecture and specifies the studied relationship.

Recommended Citation

Schaarschmidt, Mario; Walsh, Gianfranco; MacCormack, Alan; and Kortzfleisch, Harald Von, "A problem-solving perspective on governance and product design in open source software projects: Conceptual issues and exploratory evidence" (2013). ICIS 2013 Proceedings. 25.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2013/proceedings/ResearchInProgress/25