Content as Community Regulator: The Recursive Relationship Between Consumption and Contribution in Open Collaboration Communities

Gerald C. Kane () and Sam Ransbotham ()
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Gerald C. Kane: Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467
Sam Ransbotham: Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467

Organization Science, 2016, vol. 27, issue 5, 1258-1274

Abstract: Companies increasingly rely on open collaboration communities to create knowledge and organize work. Open collaboration communities are unique in that every consumer of the content created by the community is also a potential contributor. We show that consumption and contribution in open collaboration communities positively reinforce each other, but that the state of the content regulates that feedback loop. As content becomes more developed, it attracts more consumers, but these consumers are less likely to become future contributors. We exploit the abundant data available in our research setting to investigate the heterogeneity in these factors across different types of open collaboration communities. Our results have implications for both researchers and practitioners by suggesting that the feedback between consumption and contribution in an open collaboration community changes over its life span, that the productive life span of these communities may be finite, and that the type and state of the content the community creates may partly determine that life span.

Keywords: organization communication and information systems; computer-supported collaborative work; interpersonal and group communication; information technology and systems; electronic communication; longitudinal research design; field study; archival research; extant data; Wikipedia; open collaboration communities; peer production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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