Who Contributes Knowledge? Core-Periphery Tension in Online Innovation Communities

Hani Safadi (), Steven L. Johnson () and Samer Faraj ()
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Hani Safadi: Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602
Steven L. Johnson: McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903
Samer Faraj: Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1G5, Canada

Organization Science, 2021, vol. 32, issue 3, 752-775

Abstract: Where do valuable contributions originate from in online innovation communities? Prior research provides conflicting answers. One view, consistent with a community of practice perspective, is that valued knowledge contributions are primarily provided by central participants at the core of a community. In contrast, other research—including work adopting an open innovation perspective—predicts that valuable ideas primarily emerge from peripheral participants, those at the margins of a field of knowledge who provide novel ideas and viewpoints. We integrate these contrasting perspectives by considering two distinct forms of position: social embeddedness (a core social position within the social network of participants interacting within a community) and epistemic marginality (a peripheral epistemic position based on the network of topics discussed by a community). Analyzing contributions by 697,412 participants of 52 Stack Exchange online innovation communities, we find that both participants who are socially embedded and participants who are epistemically marginal provide knowledge contributions that are highly valued by fellow community participants. Importantly, among epistemically marginal participants, those with high social embeddedness are more likely to provide contributions valued by the community; by virtue of their epistemic marginality, these participants may offer novel ideas while by virtue of their social embeddedness they may be able to more effectively communicate their ideas to the community. Thus, the production of knowledge in an online innovation community involves a complex interaction between the novelty emanating from the epistemic periphery and the social embeddedness required to make ideas congruent with existing social and epistemic norms.

Keywords: online communities; social networks; organizing for innovation in the digitized world; quantitative text analysis; archival research: extant data; digital innovation; knowledge sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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