Citation
(2012), "Special issue on management and the future of open collaboration", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 25 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/jocm.2012.02325faa.002
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Special issue on management and the future of open collaboration
Special issue on management and the future of open collaboration
Article Type: Call for papers From: Journal of Organizational Change Management, Volume 25, Issue 6
As Ford et al. (2008) point out, much of the research regarding resistance to change in organizations has focused on its irrationality and unreasonableness. This Open collaboration is a field of rapid growth in organizational theory and innovation research. Initial work in this area focused on the management and governance of open source software communities (Demil and Lecoq, 2006; O'Mahony and Ferraro, 2007) as well as on a wide range of user communities formed by lead users in sports such as, for example, canoeing and sailplaning (Shah and Franke, 2003). Another research stream has focused on open innovation from a corporate perspective, studying the ways in which traditional organizations can harness the power of communities to innovate (Chesbrough and Appleyard, 2007; Jeppesen and Lakhani, 2010). Yet another stream has focused on open collaboration platforms, with particular focus on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, assessing the participation processes and collaboration outcomes in this particular setting (Konieczny, 2009; Spinellis and Louridas, 2008).
The wealth of practical and theoretical development has progressed hand in hand with a lack of conceptual clarity. Phenomena as diverse as open innovation; free and open source software; wikis such as Wikipedia, and other collaboration platforms; social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and CouchSurfing; game environments such as FoldIt; and online review sites such as Yelp! and Virtual Tourist, have been variously described as crowdsourcing; social, peer and collaborative production; or as wisdom of the crowds. The social consequences of the rapid development of new modes of collaboration have been described in terms both extremely positive (Benkler, 2006) and negative (Keen, 2007). Even relatively minor terminological differences, e.g. distinguishing between open collaboration communities and the virtual communities of practice (Dubé et al., 2005) indicate deep divisions in academic interpretations of similar processes.
Conceptually mapping these phenomena will generate a better understanding of the current state of research in this field. In order to do so, it is necessary to understand where open collaboration models come from, by examining their relationship to the means developed by members of epistemic communities (Haas, 1992) and of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) to integrate newcomers and generate new ideas, as well as what they owe to earlier forms of collaborative practice such as the management of public goods held in common (Ostrom, 1990). Together with conceptual mapping, a core research concern is the relationship of open models to traditional corporate models, a question which can be modulated in a variety of guises:
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What is the impact the open collaboration world on other business models?
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How does the existence of open collaboration enable or hamper corporate innovation and production?
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What are the possibilities for a framework for open collaboration between organizations and individuals?
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Is there a model for non-intrusive corporate participation and support in open collaboration similar to that adopted in ``open source'' software, and under what conditions can such models be successfully adopted?
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What metrics can be used to evaluate the success of open collaboration, and what are the development cycles in open collaboration projects?
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How is organizing practised and enacted in open collaboration?
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How are technology and social tools combined to manage and govern open communities?
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What do open collaboration settings teach us about how traditional organizations are or will be changing?
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Are there aspects of traditional organizations that we can better illuminate in open collaboration settings?
To further develop research on open collaboration settings it would be helpful to couple attention to the specifics of open collaboration models with insights regarding the changing character of global production and commerce in light of socio-economic, technological, political and legal changes. We are particularly interested in empirical papers that employ quantitative and qualitative methods to examine open collaboration processes and outcomes, and which explicitly aim to shed light on cross-level mechanisms and outcomes, ranging from society- and industry-level consequences to individual-level ones. In addition, we encourage efforts to map existing research in the area of open collaboration on a unified conceptual map by drawing from a variety of fields, ranging from organizational theory and innovation to information systems research and anthropology of virtual communities. We plan to use this Special Issue as a foundation to further develop a community of thought in this nascent field.
Deadlines
500-word abstract or full paper submission: January 31, 2013Notification of acceptance: February 28, 2013Submission of revised/final paper: May 1, 2013
Contact
Please e-mail your submissions in Adobe Acrobat PDF format to: Andreea Gorbatai (gorbatai@haas.berkeley.edu), Dariusz Jemielniak (darekj@kozminski.edu.pl), and Mathieu O'Neil (mathieu.oneil@anu.edu.au). If you have any questions feel free to contact any of the editors at the e-mail addresses listed above, specifying ``Special Issue JOCM question'' in the subject line.
References
Benkler, Y. (2006), The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Chesbrough, H. and Appleyard, M. (2007), ``Open innovation and strategy'', California Management Review, Vol. 50 No. 1, pp. 57-76.
Demil, B. and Lecoq, X. (2006), ``Neither market nor hierarchy nor network: the emergence of bazaar governance'', Organization Studies, Vol. 27 No. 10, pp. 1447-66.
Dubé, L., Bourhis, A.I. and Jacob, R. (2005), ``The impact of structuring characteristics on the launching of virtual communities of practice'', Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 145-66.
Haas, P.M. (1992), ``Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination'', International Organization, Vol. 46 No. 10, pp. 1-35.
Jeppesen, L.B. and Lakhani, K.R. (2010), ``Marginality and problem- solving effectiveness in broadcast search'', Organization Science, Vol. 21, pp. 1016-33.
Keen, A. (2007), The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture, Broadway Business, New York, NY.
Konieczny, P. (2009), ``Governance, organization, and democracy on the internet: the iron law and the evolution of Wikipedia'', Sociological Forum, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 162-92.
O'Mahony, S. and Ferraro, F. (2007), ``The emergence of governance in an open source community'', Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 50 No. 5, pp. 1079-106.
Ostrom, E. (1990), Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.
Shah, S. and Franke, N. (2003), ``How communities support innovative activities: an exploration of assistance and sharing among end-users, Research Policy, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 157-178.
Spinellis, D. and Louridas, P. (2008), ``The collaborative organization of knowledge'', Communications of the ACM – Designing Games with a Purpose, Vol. 51 No. 8, pp. 68-73.
Wenger, E. (1998), Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.