Proceedings of the 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2006

Should I stay or should I go? Worker commitment to virtual organizations Yulin Fang Richard Ivey School of Business The University of Western Ontario [email protected]

Abstract As society enters the twenty-first century there is a growing realization that information technology (IT) is heavily influencing organizational structures [1]. One such structure is the virtual organization, in which individuals rely on IT to mediate traditional geographical and temporal boundaries of the firm. The result is a “company without walls” that operates as a virtual “collaborative network of people,” independent of location or affiliation [2]. This paper is concerned with exploring how this ITenabled shift influences worker commitment, a critical factor identified in the organizational behavior literature. Using Wenger’s practice-based learning perspective and theory of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP), we conducted a longitudinal, qualitative analysis of commitment in one open-source software (OSS) project. Results indicate that commitment was strongly associated with engagement in LPP processes (participation, learning and identity transformation). Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are discussed.

1. Introduction Working virtually has become a prevailing trend in the last two decades. Approximately 15% of the adult workforce in Canada and the United States was engaged in some forms of virtual work by 2002, up from 4% a decade ago [3, 4]. Global corporations have an even higher percentage of virtual workers. For instance, Intel Corporation reported that approximately 70% of its employees collaborate with colleagues located in different time zones, without ever meeting face-to-face, while approximately 17% of employees work remotely during their business trips [5]. Similarly, AT&T reported that 22% of employees are engaged in full-time virtual work, and another 17% work remotely at least once a week [6].

Derrick J. Neufeld Richard Ivey School of Business The University of Western Ontario [email protected]

Virtual work has become an important way of working in modern organizations [7]. Meanwhile, the organizational behavior literature has established the importance of employee commitment, with particular regard to its effects on employee turnover behavior [8, 9]. Because employees possess a tremendous amount of firmspecific knowledge [10], employee turnover results in loss of knowledge resources, and a waste of the employer’s financial resources previously spent on training and developing the departing employees [8, 11]. Drucker [12] argued that contemporary organizations must direct their paid workers as if they were unpaid volunteers, and gain their commitment by helping them to adopt and internalize the organization’s aims and purposes. This seems appropriate, considering that employees – and particularly virtual workers – increasingly value personal time and autonomy over greater income and advancement, and as interest in self-employment and part-time work arrangements continues to grow [13]. Unfortunately, this appears to be much easier said than done, especially in the context of the dispersed virtual organization [13, 14]. For instance, Staples [15] reported that organizational commitment of their employees was one of the most important abiding concerns of managers of virtual workers. Research has also shown that the dispersion and dislocation characterizing virtual organizations may reduce communication among employees, increase their feelings of isolation, and consequently reduce their commitment to the organization [16]. The objective of this study is to explore how virtual workers become committed to projects, and the processes by which deep commitment is established. In this study we investigate one kind of economic enterprise that operates like a virtual organization – the open source software (OSS) development environment. OSS development projects are Internet-based communities of software developers who voluntarily collaborate to develop

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Proceedings of the 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2006

software applications [17]. OSS projects are essentially collaborative endeavors involving tens or hundreds of software developers from around the world who volunteer their time to write code for a particular software application. As one developer solves a piece of the problem, he or she posts the solution to a shared repository in source-code form, so that other volunteers can “pick up” where they left off (hence the term “open source”). The OSS development process is by nature one of knowledge construction that requires both creativity and a broad array of knowledge about problem domains, logic, and computer technologies [18, 19]. The absence of a traditional employment relationship in this research context allows us to focus more exclusively on how worker commitment is formed, internalized and sustained, without the “noise” of traditional financial inducements. Thus, the OSS project environment provides a fascinating and unique opportunity to examine worker commitment to virtual organizations. The remaining sections of the paper are organized as follows. First, we briefly review three bodies of research – organizational commitment, virtual organizations, and open source software projects – and describe a new conceptual perspective that accounts for virtual knowledge workers’ commitment based on the theory of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger 1991). Second, we present preliminary results of an empirical study of developer commitment for one popular OSS project: phpMyAdmin. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for theory and practice, and directions for future research.

2. Literature review The amount of research on commitment in virtual organizations, OSS in particular, is surprisingly low in comparison to the literature on commitment in traditional organizations. The purpose of the following review is to highlight existing gaps with regard to commitment research in the OSS context, and to propose a new theoretical lens to guide further exploration.

2.1. Organizational commitment Commitment has been studied extensively and for many years in the organizational behavior literature [8]. Two general forms of commitment are distinguished: attitudinal and behavioral [20]. Attitudinal commitment focuses on the processes by which people come to think about their relationship with the organization. It can be thought of as a “mind set” in which individuals consider the

extent to which their own values and goals are congruent with those of the organization. Three forms of attitudinal commitment have been defined and generally accepted: affective commitment refers to an emotional attachment to the organization [21]; continuance commitment refers to an awareness of the costs associated with leaving the organization [22]; and normative commitment refers to a feeling of obligation to continue employment [22]. Behavioral commitment, on the other hand, relates to the process by which individuals become linked to a certain organization [23], and develop a behavioral intention to stay in the organization [24]. As this study focus on the process by which OSS workers’ actual commitment changes as manifested by their behavioral working practices, we primarily consider commitment from a behavioral point of view in our study – i.e., the maintenance of ongoing voluntary participation behavior. In terms of behavioral commitment in virtual organizations, some researchers have observed that although physical dispersion of workforces can pull an organization apart, communication technologies can serve to draw virtual workers back into the fold, and keep them committed to the organization [16, 25]. Such communication technologies must be effective (e.g., convenient, fast, and allow for dynamic exchange of information), and can also serve to break down perceived formal hierarchies and promote a feeling of equality, so that virtual workers feel they are central to the organization [16]. It is possible that technology-supported environments lead to formation of deeper levels of commitment compared with traditional environments, since connected employees can stay in touch with their colleagues any time and from any place [16, 25].

2.2. The OSS movement Research into the OSS movement has proliferated in recent years. Most studies examining developer behavior have focused on identifying motivating factors, such as software use value [26, 27], learning and personal enjoyment [28], a sense of ownership and control [29, 30], recognition and reputation [31], career advancement opportunities [32], and collective identity [33]. Although these studies help explain why “thousands of top-notch programmers contribute freely to the provision of a public good [OSS software]” [32], most are based on cross-sectional surveys and interviews, and thus fail to capture the possibility that developers’ motivations to participate may change over time, or that different motivations may contribute to different levels of participation over time.

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Rather than considering factors associated with initial participation in a virtual community (as is the case with most of the existing motivation research), we were drawn to consider the on-going maintenance of motivation over time [34] – in other words, the processes through which on-going commitment is established in a virtual community.

2.3. Legitimate peripheral participation In order to account for existing findings and to develop a cohesive understanding of worker commitment in the voluntary virtual organization context, we turned to the theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) [35]. As a practicebased learning theory that explains how participants learn and grow in a community of practice [36], LPP is concerned with the theoretically generative interconnections between persons, activities, knowing, and the world [35]. From this perspective, learning is about developing skills through active participation – skills that relate to particular kinds of performance that are valued and recognized in the community of practice. Thus, learning is inherently inseparable from the action embedded in a particular social context – it is essentially “knowing in action” [37]. It implies that participants become dynamically involved as they perform new tasks and functions and master new understanding. Its central thesis is that learning is inherent in the growth and transformation of identity, as the individual matures from a peripheral participant to a full participant. The more one participates, the more they learn (and contribute to the learning of others), the more their identity and sense of authority within the community evolve, and the more they are able to continue participating. In this way the individual can move from being a peripheral participant in the community, to a full participant. Since participation is the premise of the framework on which learning, identity transformation and eventually commitment behavior are based, what makes participation possible at the first place? The key to peripheral legitimate participation, according to Lave and Wenger [35], is access by newcomers to the community, including direction about what membership entails. To become a full participant of a community of practice requires access to a wide range of ongoing activities and other members of the community, and to information, resources and opportunities for participation. Two additional aspects are closely related to participation, and thus increased commitment behavior: control and understanding [35]. Control refers to the extent to which the organization

promotes or prevents legitimate participation. If full participants in the community are welcoming of new peripheral participants and encourage them to access community resources (i.e., people, information, activities), then peripheral participants will be more likely to engage the community and participate more frequently and for longer time periods. The issue of understanding relates to the technological artifacts employed in the ongoing practice of a community. It is what learning aims to achieve, at the same time what learning is based on. Becoming a full participant requires engaging with the technologies and techniques of the community’s practice. Understanding the technology of practice is more than learning to use a tool; it involves understanding the history of the practice, and participating with its culture [35]. The easier the community makes its technology and practice available for access to its participants, the more likely that the participants will engage with the social practice of the community using the technology. To summarize (as illustrated in Figure 1), there appear to be two fundamental requirements for initial participation: motivation (which prompts the individual to get involved), and access (degree to which the individual is encouraged and allowed to engage with the community’s resources). Once a member begins to participate, the mutually reinforcing LPP process ensues: the more a member engages with the community, the more they learn (and contribute to others’ learning), and the more their identity within the community evolves. The result of the LPP process determines member commitment, and vice versa. If participation, learning and identity transformation are positive and increasing, commitment will grow stronger – if the LPP components are declining, commitment will decline.

Figure 1. Conceptual framework

3. Research method The content analysis method was used to collect and analyze data for this study (i.e., a research technique for making replicable and valid references from data to their contexts." [38]) The content analysis method enables the researcher to search for

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structures and patterned regularities in the text and make inferences on the basis of these regularities. [38]. This approach allowed us to look into everyday IT-based interactions and participation in a real OSS context, and fit nicely with the theoretical lens of LPP, which emphasizes learning and practice situated in their social context. Content analyses can also complement traditional data collection methods (such as surveys and interviews), and control for social desirability bias [39]. Although we started out with the LPP concepts described above, our intention was to allow new theory to emerge through open-ended analyses. Our understanding about commitment in the OSS context was developed through ongoing iterations between the LPP conceptual framework and the themes that emerged during data analysis.

3.1. Research context An OSS project is a community of volunteer developers who collaborate to produce a software product using a number of Internet-based cooperative tools, including e-mail, mailing lists, concurrent versioning systems (CVS) and bug reporting software. The asynchronous mailing list is the communication tool of choice; face-to-face interactions among community members are rare [40]. These communication tools make available a nearly complete history of practice and cultural artifacts [35] for newcomers to learn and participate. For instance, mailing lists log all the communications among developers; CVS data provide a complete history of the program with all the changes reported by members; bug reporting software keeps track of the bugs found over time. Furthermore, control of access to legitimate participation is enforced through use of these computer tools. For instance, while the read and write privilege of mailing lists and the read privilege of CVS are given to anyone, only a small number of core developers have the privilege to write into CVS. Becoming a member of an OSS project is easy. OSS projects are wide open for legitimate peripheral access to the community by anybody who is interested. All the project documentation, source code and communication histories are freely available on the Internet. Pending tasks for completion are also available for visitors to read and if interested, participate. Such a sense of legitimacy granted to anyone provides the initial condition for potential peripheral participation, regardless of the specific motivations that drive newcomers to participate. OSS developers’ commitment behavior is critical to project success [41]. However, to the extent that

different developers make different levels of contribution to an OSS project (e.g., core participants are more valuable than active participants), it is in most cases more beneficial for an OSS project to have a smaller number of committed developers who stay with and contribute to the project over time, as opposed to a large number of developers who contribute temporarily. The purpose of the phpMyAdmin project under investigation was to develop a web-based front-end for managing MySQL databases. This project was founded by Tobias Ratschiller in September 1998, and then restarted by an OSS developer (hereafter referred to as OM) and two others in March 2001. The project is registered on www.sourceforge.net (SF.net is an internet-based virtual community that supports OSS project development). At the time of data collection, a total of 715 individuals were registered for the project between 2001 and 2004, and 16 of these had been granted permission to “write” to the distributable source code. The current stable version had been adopted by a majority of opensource distributors and Internet service providers. The software possessed major database management features (e.g., capabilities to create and manipulate databases structures, execute SQL statements, and clean and manage data). We selected this project for our study for the following reasons. First, it was a healthy and busy project with stable growth. Both CVS commits and mailing list messages were being contributed steadily over time, and no major interruptions were observed. Second, this project was highly regarded in the OSS community, consistently ranked within the top ten most active projects in SF.net, and was considered a “must-have” program for those who rely on both php and MySQL. Third, OSS developers in this project varied in their commitment behaviors, and this afforded an opportunity to explore reasons for the differences.

3.2. Data sources Data were gathered from four sources: public project documentation relating to phpMyAdmin; e-mail messages posted on the public mailing lists; project documentation available on the website; and CVS log files that had been edited between the project registration date and the study end date (3/18/2001 to 6/18/2004 – a total of 14 quarters of time). Our final dataset consisted of 4,332 e-mails posted by 715 participants, 33,440 CVS logs committed by 15 core participants, the entire official

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project website 1 , and a collection of public news reports.

3.3. Data coding and analysis We focused on the commitment behaviors of individual OSS developers within this single OSS site. Individual developers were selected and then grouped according to commitment behavior characteristics, using established guidelines for theoretical sampling [42]. Data were content-analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Non-commitment

Unsustained Commitment

Sustained Commitment

Type

Total Note: Code C A P

Email Total

2772 (64%) 346/p

CVS Total

32795 (98%) 4099/p

289 (7%)

643 (2%)

36/p

80/p

199 (5%)

0

14/p

75%

100%

Name MD MC AT LC GH RJ BM OM SA AF GL BG KC SG IV AB LU DA MM JB LD SM CF SA FE TA JO PK LA TB MK

Quarter (3/18/2001- 6/18/2004) 1 2 3 4

5 6

7 8 9 C

10 11 12 13 14

P

C C

C

P

A

P C

C C

P N

C

C

P C

C C

P C

C

C C C P C

P

P

P P

C

P

A A P

A A P P A A A P

P P A A P A P A P

P

P A P

P 1 2 3 4

5 6

7 8 9

P 10 11 12 13 14

Description Core Active Perihperal Non-Participation

Figure 2. Developers’ commitment behavior First, we plotted the evolution of participation for each individual by counting quarterly frequencies of mailing list submissions and CVS commits. As shown in Figure 2, if an individual in a given quarter had one or more CVS commits, we labeled the cell with a “C” (representing Core participation). If the member had not made any CVS commits but had contributed more than ten e-mail messages, the cell was labeled “A” (representing Active participation). 1

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmyadmin/

If the member made between two and ten e-mail contributions in the quarter, the cell was labeled “P” (representing Peripheral participation). All other cells were left blank, representing non-participation. Second, we inductively classified the developers into three groups. The first group was comprised of developers who were engaged in core participation for more than four quarters (this group was labeled “sustained commitment” or SUS). The second group included developers who less engaged as core participants, but who actively participated for at least two quarters (labeled “unsustained commitment” or UNS). The third group included developers who engaged with the community only occasionally (labeled “non-commitment” or NON). Given the large size of this third group (N=699 developers), we focused our attention on the top 15 most active developers in this group. The final grouping is shown in Figure 2. We observed the following differences in commitment behavior across the three groups. The SUS group contributed 64% of the total e-mail messages (average of 346 per person), and 98% of the total CVS commits (average of 4,099 per person). The UNS group contributed 7% of the e-mails (average of 36 per person), and 2% of the CVS commits (average of 80 per person). The NON group contributed 5% of the e-mails (average of 14 per person), and none of the CVS commits. Next, we qualitatively analyzed within-group data, paying special attention to e-mail conversations and documents that were close to the dates of the following two events: (1) when developers first began participating; and (2) when developers “upgraded” or “downgraded” their level of commitment behavior, as manifested by a change in their participation status (e.g., moving from Core to Active participation). We focused extra attention on messages that reflected motivational concepts identified from the OSS and the LPP literature. We then compared the qualitative data between groups, trying to detect any between-group difference in terms of the above two analyses.

4. Results and discussion By grouping the varying commitment behavior and focusing on individuals’ participation processes, we made two general observations. First, the community’s output was highly reliant on a small number of developers who demonstrated sustained commitment. Second, there appeared to be mutually reinforcing relationships between participation, learning and identity transformation (as suggested by LPP theory), which we believe help to explain

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differing degrees of commitment behavior across the three groups. Below we present the evidence supporting these findings.

MM: “… Good to make it [the software] in another language …”

4.2. Dynamic changes of commitment 4.1. Motivation for starting LPP Everyone can have legitimate, peripheral access to the project, but the literature suggests that motivation to participate may vary. In our analyses, similar motivations to begin participating were found across the three groups. The data showed that user value, learning and personal enjoyment were consistent across the three groups. For instance, OM was a core developer in the SUS group, as well as the initiator of resuming and registering the project. In a web-based press release, he mentioned that it was use value that motivated him to take over the project: OM: “… For me it started when I noticed the phpMyAdmin project was "clinically dead": no new release … for the last 18 months, no feedback about submitted patches, etc … [PhPMyAdmin could] take away all the pain of creating and maintaining a MySQL database … [so I] asked Tobias for his permission to take over the project (he accepted).” RH, another a core developer in the SUS group, expressed his interest in contributing when he posted his first e-mail on the mailing list: RJ: “… Wishes to apply for position doing some development work on phpMyAdmin …” An in-depth reading of his earlier messages also indicated that PhPMyAdmin had instrumental use value for his daily work. RJ: “… I have also put a lot of work into my school webpage, as I did all the programming behind it, and i"m hosting it for my school at the moment … the real stuff uses PHP & MySQL to provide the functionality & content …”. Developers in the UNS and NON groups exhibited very similar use values and personal interests for programming as reasons for participating at the beginning. For instance, KC – a member of the UNS group – reported the following in her first e-mail message: KC: “When I first met phpMyAdmin, I found it to be the essential tool I [can] use almost all the time. Now I wish it [could be] easier to use than Access, even with its web-interface limitation. So comes my feature request …” Developer MM, a member of the NON group, reported in his first few e-mail messages: MM: “Guys, I am “new”. … I have seen you working hard for this release … I am interested in join[ing] the project.”

Although developers in different groups exhibited similar motivations to join, important differences were detected across developers in the three groups, in terms of their situated learning and action. Unlike developers in the SUS group, those in the UNS group experienced “blocks” that stopped them from reinforcing their LPP experience (while those in the NON group did not even get the LPP cycle started). To examine these effects further, we tracked three individuals, one per group, to understand their changes in commitment behavior. 4.2.1. A case in the SUS group. RJ, a persistent core participant from Q1 through Q12, was an experienced programmer in many programming languages. As indicated earlier, he joined PhPMyAdmin for use value and personal interest. By the time he registered and introduced himself, the project leader, OM, welcomed him and legitimized him with certain assignments: OM: “Welcome to you - Please document every changes and updates in the changelog, and on the devel list, thanks! And for the user-admin stuff, maybe that working on a separate tree at the beginning (phpmyadmin-devel) would be a good idea, what do you think?” Starting with the first few assignments, RJ engaged himself in situated learning by participating, questioning, proposing ideas, discussing with core participants and thus, contributing to the project. He actively opened himself to new opportunities, gained exposure to a wide range of functions, took on new commitments, and subsequently delivered on those commitments. For instance, in Q1 and Q2 he recommended a software application to manage a TODO list; completed “Feature 414807”; proactively fixed a synchronization crisis between language files; and questioned the problem of synchronization between CVS trees. In this process, he gained increased understanding of the technological artifacts specific to the PhPMyAdmin project. RJ’s engagements were recognized by his peers (core participants in particular), and increasingly so over time. For instance, another core developer, MD, commended him in the public mailing list: MD: “Thanks [RJ] for the new table maintenance features …” RJ’s access to control features and functions were correspondingly expanded over time. For instance,

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privilege to access certain features was requested and granted: RJ: “Please mark Feature 414807 … as closed as I have completed it and placed it in the CVS. Can you also please mark Feature 419841 … as assigned to me, as I intend to work on it next and it should be done in the next few days.” LC: “Done. I’ve also updated your profile so you do it yourself now …”. This ongoing iterative learning, participating, recognition, and role transformation were clearly evident throughout RJ’s engagement with the project. 4.2.2. A case in the UNS group. KC was a core participant between Q1-Q3, a peripheral participant in Q6, and a non-participant since then. She worked as an assistant researcher at a government organization. As indicated earlier, KC’s motivation to join the project was similar to RJ’s. When she joined the project she was also warmly welcomed into the community: LC: “I’m proud to announce another new developer: the biggest contributor to the "bugs" and "feature requests" trackers at this time, i.e. [KC].” KC was quickly granted CVS write privileges, and this role transformation apparently stimulated her to participate more frequently in the project. As one of the core participants, between Q1-Q3 she engaged herself with multiple programming tasks (such as developing an edit demo function), frequently interacted with other core participants, and actively submitted to the CVS source code base. A self-report of her working progress in one message revealed that she had taken on even more responsibilities: KC: “… I agree that the change [of a function she had done] won’t be very complicated but now I am working with my in-place edit feature [one function in the project]. So I will work on cloning later unless someone does… [the next job already in pipeline].” KC’s contribution to the project in the first two quarters was broadly recognized within the community, and she was included in the author team for the 2001 version of the product. The reinforcing cycle between learning and role transformation carried on until her commitment behavior was impeded by an external intervention: KC: “BTW: I will be very busy for a while. Forgive me for not being active” … “I have switched job from a (sort of) programmer to a lecturer at a new university … I will start giving my first lecture “Calculus I” next month and after a few months (or years ^_^).”

Subsequently she became a non-participant between Q4 and Q5. By the time KC came back and rejoined the project in Q6, two things had changed. First, her understanding of the code (the technological artifact of the project) was no longer adequate. The project had advanced so much that her existing knowledge and skills were no longer sufficient: KC: “… It is to my surprise to see the project progress so much. I need to spend some time to study the code again. So much features …” Second, due to her non-participation in the past year, she had lost her CVS write privileges, as indicated by two core participants’ conversation in the mailing list: AM: “btw, who has removed [KC] from the developers list at SF? :o) …” MD: “… I did. We will put him back on the list if he becomes a regular Contributor …” As positive changes in understanding and control spiraled up the LPP cycle, reduced understanding and control drove the process in the opposite direction. Subsequently, KC disappeared from the project after Q6, as indicated by her zero participation in both the mailing list and CVS trees. 4.2.3. A case in the NON group: MM, an active participant in Q2, peripheral in Q3 and nonparticipant ever since, began with similar motivations to join the project, as indicated previously. However, MM’s LPP experience was not that smooth. His work scope was restricted in translating programming languages, reporting and fixing bugs. No increases in responsibilities led to new opportunities for more exposure, nor thus to learning by participation. In addition, the quality of his contributions appeared to be weak. In Q2, he criticized himself due to a mistake he had made. MM: “I AM A LAMER!! I use php3 files not php but for some reason there IS a .php file on my dir (I AM TERRIBLY SORRY). I was editing .php instead of php3.” Consequently his work was not widely recognized or appreciated. At the same time, MM expressed interest in getting more involved: MM: “Give me a task, and evaluate the way I do it … I am all ears” … “This time I’m not being THAT lame … I swear it used to work under r2 …”. When he was apparently not taken up on his offer to contribute, MM subsequently retreated fully from Q3, and did not return.

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5. Conclusion By comparing developer groups with varying degrees of commitment behavior, this preliminary empirical study suggests that the LPP cycle is evident and applicable to the virtual development context. Specifically, developers in the sustained commitment (SUS) group maintained full access to the entire project, were widely recognized and enjoyed a highprofile within and perhaps outside the community, maintained a strong understanding of the software artifacts, and did not experience any “blocks” to the LPP cycle. Individuals in the unsustained commitment (UNS) group experienced spiral-up of the LPP cycle in early stages, but spiral-down when their CVS write privileges were suspended (leading to negative change in control), or when they were unable to participate for a period of time due to other commitments (leading to decreased understanding of the current status of the project). Individuals in the non-commitment (NON) group did not get the chance to start the LPP cycle, as their motivation to start LPP was not followed up either by themselves or by the project core participants.

and control/access to these technologies, should be carefully dealt with, as these are important enablers to the LPP reinforcing cycle. Blockages of either of these two factors could result in substantially decreased learning and commitment behavior, and could ultimately lead to project failure and abandonment.

5.3. Limitations and future research This study suffers from several important limitations. First, only preliminary empirical analyses have been reported on this dataset; further analyses and validation must be completed. Second, although we have argued that this OSS project is representative of typical smooth-running OSS projects, the generalizability of the findings to other projects is subject to further investigation and validation. Third, although this study has utilized multiple data sources, direct interviews with developers would be a plus. Follow-up research will be done to triangulate the findings with interview results.

6. References 5.1. Theoretical implications This study offers three main contributions. First, to our knowledge it is the first attempt to explore OSS commitment behavior through the lens of situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation, and thus contributes to the OSS and commitment literature by adding a useful theoretical perspective. Second, this study supports the contention that OSS developers’ motivation to participate could change over time as a project evolves, and that developers’ learning is a key motivation contributing to OSS projects sustainability and viability [43]. Third, this study is one of the very few longitudinal case studies focusing on the processes by which commitment behaviors change over time, and thus adds to the commitment literature.

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5.2. Practical implications This study has important implications to practicing managers, OSS managers, and technological entrepreneurs. First, project success may demand the sustained commitment of a small number of “core” developers, who should be expected to be major contributors to the project. These core developers must have strong technology skills, organizational skills and discipline, and an intrinsic desire to play a vital role in the project. Second, participant understanding of technologies utilized in the project,

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