Sharing my way to success: A case study on developing entrepreneurial ventures using social capital in an OSS community

How do different stakeholder groups within an open source software project influence the project's development: a case study of OpenSimulator

Purpose

This research investigates how the value creation interests and activities of different stakeholder groups within one open source software (OSS) project influence the project's development over time.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a case study of OpenSimulator using textual and thematic analyses of the initial four years of OpenSimulator developer mailing list to identify each stakeholder group and guide our analysis of their interests and value creation activities over time.

Findings

The analysis revealed that while each stakeholder group was active within the OSS project's development, the different groups possessed complementary interests that enabled the project to evolve. In the formative period, entrepreneurs were interested in the software's strategic direction in the market, academics and SMEs in software functionality and large firms and hobbyists in software testing. Each group retained its primary interest in the maturing period with academics and SMEs separating into server- and client-side usability. The analysis shed light on how the different stakeholder groups overcame tensions amongst themselves and took specific actions to sustain the project.

Originality/value

The authors extend stakeholder theory by reconceptualizing the focal organization and its stakeholders for OSS projects. To date, OSS research has primarily focused on examining one project relative to its marketplace. Using stakeholder theory, we identified stakeholder groups within a single OSS project to demonstrate their distinct interests and how these interests influence their value creation activities over time. Collectively, these interests enable the project's long-term development.

Knowledge and Human Capital as Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Human Resource Management

The ability to do business successfully and to stay on the market is a unique feature of each company ensured by highly engaged and high-quality employees. Therefore, innovative leaders able to manage, motivate, and encourage other employees can be a great competitive advantage of an enterprise. Knowledge of important personality factors regarding leadership, incentives and stimulus, systematic assessment, and subsequent motivation factors are parts of human capital and essential conditions for effective development of its potential. Familiarity with various ways to motivate leaders and their implementation in practice are important for improving the work performance and reaching business goals. Pearson’s chi-square test is used to test correlation between the motivation factors relating to career aspiration and education. Following the research results, the fact that there is dependence between the motivation factors relating to career aspiration and completed education can be stated. The motivation factors relating to career aspiration are important, even very important for highly educated employees and employees with upper secondary education. Following the research results, the fact that the requirements and expectations relating to career aspiration are more demanding when the education completed by employees is higher is confirmed.