Are we in this together?  Exploring private-collective knowledge communities

• A growing trend within the literature on value creation is the introduction of private-collective knowledge communities, which create opportunities for organizations to leverage knowledge. In these communities, participants privately invest in a project’s success by freely revealing and contributing their personal resources such as expertise and time to a public good. Firms then use these public goods as the basis for their own product offering. In this paper, we focus on describing the nature of the relationships that exist within private-collective knowledge communities and subsequently develop a framework for how researchers and practitioners can understand the organization-user dynamics found within these communities. As such, our research questions are as follows: What factors impact the organization-user dynamics in private-collective knowledge communities and how do these factors affect the nature of the relationships within these communities? We conclude with initial results supporting our model and discuss future steps, limitations, and contributions.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Online Communities and Digital Collaborations

Online communities

Open Source Software

public-private knowledge communities

Value creation

relational dynamics

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)