Commercial software project managers design project organizational structure carefully, mindful of available skills, division of labour, geographical boundaries, etc. These organizational “cathedrals ” are to be contrasted with the “bazaarlike” nature of Open Source Software (OSS) Projects, which have no pre-designed organizational structure. Any structure that exists is dynamic, self-organizing, latent, and usually not explicitly stated. However, in large, complex, successful, OSS projects, we expect that sub-communities will form organically within the “bazaar ” of developer teams. Studying these sub-communities, and their behavior can shed light on how successful OSS projects self-organize. This phenomenon could even hold important lessons for how commercial software teams might be organized. Building on wellestablished techniques for detecting community structure in complex networks, we extract and evaluate latent subcommunities from the email social network of several projects: Apache HTTPD, Python, PostgresSQL, Perl, and Apache ANT. We then validate them with software development activity history. Our results show that subcommunities do indeed form within these projects. We find, in other words, that “chapels ” (if not cathedrals) spontaneously arise within the bazaar as OSS systems and the teams evolve. We also find that these subgroups manifest most strongly in technical discussions, and are significantly connected with collaboration behaviour. 1.

Reducing the physical distance among R&D engineers and between R&D and marketing is widely believed to result in more frequent communication, and hence higher product development performance. However, the empirical evidence for the effect of co-location on communication frequency is problematic for two reasons: (1) the evidence often features either little contextual realism or doubtful internal validity, and (2) the analysis does not deal with the statistical problems typical of network data. Our study avoids the first problem by using sequential network data collected from a quasi-experiment at an industrial company that regrouped its R&D teams into a new facility. We avoid the second problem by using Wasserman and Iacobucci's (1988) method for the statistical analysis of sequential network data. Our results show that communication among R&D teams was enhanced after co-locating these teams. Surprisingly, communication frequency between R&D and marketing was not affected by the increa...

Business people and professionals come together regularly at trade fairs, exhibitions, conventions, congresses, and conferences. Here, their latest and most advanced findings, inventions and products are on display to be evaluated by customers and suppliers, as well as by peers and competitors. Participation in events like these helps firms to identify the current market frontier, take stock of relative competitive positions and form future plans. Such events exhibit many of the characteristics ascribed to permanent spatial clusters, albeit in a temporary and intensified form. These short-lived hotspots of intense knowledge exchange, network building and idea generation can thus be seen as temporary clusters. The present paper compares temporary clusters with permanent clusters and other types of inter-firm interactions. If regular participation in temporary clusters can satisfy a firm’s need to learn through interaction with suppliers, customers, peers and rivals, why is the phenomenon of permanent spatial clustering of similar and related economic activity so pervasive? The answer, it is claimed, lies in the restrictions imposed upon economic activity when knowledge and ideas are transformed into valuable products and services. The paper sheds new light on how

Human information behavior is emerging as an important component of information studies. As in many emerging research areas, one challenge is to identify important facets of human information behavior and understand how different methods can be best used to research these facets. This paper presents the framework of an approach to designing and synthesizing research studies in human information behavior. The framework emerges from previous research in human information behavior and incorporates Ranganathan’s framework for knowledge organization. It proposes that research studies that investigate human information behavior should consider the following facets: personality, matter, energy, space, and time. Personality refers to actors, and in this framework includes participants and their social networks. Matter refers to the target of the action. It includes information and information resources, including services and technology that may provide access to information. Energy is the action itself, including the participants ’ tasks, processes, and goals. Space is the environment of the action, and includes physical space as well as organizational and sociopolitical contexts. Time is the nonspatial continuum in which actions and events occur; in the framework, time is considered an episode, interval, or eon. Facets that should be investigated and taken into account in a study help guide the selection of the research methods for the study. Furthermore, research results from multiple studies can be synthesized by understanding the relationships among the facets investigated in the different studies. We thank Bob Losee, Paul Solomon, and Barbara Wildemuth for their comments on a draft of this paper, and our study participants throughout the years.

Effective collaboration dynamics are at the core of learning, knowledge exchange and innovation processes. Nevertheless, in today’s global environment, a large number of collaboration initiatives fail to deliver the value expected, as complexity is increased by the diversity and the distributed nature of the people, groups, and knowledge sources and by the knowledge integration processes involved. Effective collaboration competencies are hence emerging as a key condition for productive and sustainable value creation at the individual, team, organizational and inter-organizational level. L2C- Learning to Collaborate- is an ongoing research project addressing the design of effective immersive simulation-based learning experiences su pporting the development of collaboration competencies both at the individual and organizational level. The key characteristic of such advanced learning tools consists in the integration of psychological, motivational, cognitive, organizational, cultural and technological factors affecting the success or failure of collaboration into the modeling of a set of virtual characters with whom learners can interact dynamically within a challenging and realistic collaboration scenario. This paper provides an overview of the conceptual basis, key design principles and expected pedagogical impact of this new type of immersive simulation-based learning experience.

expertise. We thank Mark Edwards of Recombinant Capital for making their various databases available to us. We thank Shanti Agung for research assistance and Megan Hess for editorial assistance. All opinions expressed as well as

Gatekeeping theories have been a popular heuristic for describing information control for years, but none have attained a full theoretical status in the context of networks. This paper aims to propose a theory of Network Gatekeeping comprised of two components: Identification and Salience. Network Gatekeeping Identification lays out vocabulary and naming foundations through the identification of gatekeepers, gatekeeping and gatekeeping mechanisms. Network Gatekeeping Salience, which is built on the bases of the Network Identification Theory, utilizes this infrastructure to understand relationships among gatekeepers and between gatekeepers and gated, the entity subjected to a gatekeeping process. Network Gatekeeping Salience 1 proposes identifying gated and their salience to gatekeepers by four attributes (1) their political power in relation to the gatekeeper; (2) their information production ability; (3) their relationship with the gatekeeper; and (4) their alternatives in the context of gatekeeping.

This paper is based on research-in-progress that examines how a firm’s information technology (IT) capabilities affect its ability to innovate. Prior research has identified five dimensions of IT capability and three activities related to innovation. The current research draws on these themes and examines the interplay among these factors. We used a multiple case study method and studied innovation activities at three case sites. The findings so far have revealed that the different aspects of IT capability do indeed affect an organization’s ability to innovate and influence the innovation process in different ways. The paper explains how and why this is so, and identifies areas for further enquiry.

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Geographically distributed, inter-organisational product development projects are becoming increasingly common. However, companies face challenges in managing this kind of complicated projects. Most of the challenges are related to communication. This study focused on communication needs, problems and practices in distributed interorganisational product development projects. The main objective was to identify and describe successful communication practices. In addition, the study aimed to increase the understanding of the communication needs behind the practices, as well as to identify communication problems and unsuccessful practices. From the methodological point of view, studying daily communication in distributed projects is challenging. In this study we experimented with the usage of social process simulation as a tool to study communication. Methodologically, the research was a qualitative multiple-case study consisting of 12 case projects. The cases were grouped into two separate studies according to the industry. Study 1