The Effects of Diversity in Global, Distributed Collectives: A Study of Open Source Project Success
Authors: Daniel, Sherae; Agarwal, Ritu; Stewart, Katherine J.
Journal: Information Systems Research (2013)
<jats:p> Diversity is a defining characteristic of global collectives facilitated by the Internet. Though substantial evidence suggests that diversity has profound implications for a variety of outcomes including performance, member engagement, and withdrawal behavior, the effects of diversity have been predominantly investigated in the context of organizational workgroups or virtual teams. We use a diversity lens to study the success of nontraditional virtual work groups exemplified by open source software (OSS) projects. Building on the diversity literature, we propose that three types of diversity (separation, variety, and disparity) influence two critical outcomes for OSS projects: community engagement and market success. We draw on the OSS literature to further suggest that the effects of diversity on market success are moderated by the application development stage. We instantiate the operational definitions of three forms of diversity to the unique context of open source projects. Using archival data from 357 projects hosted on SourceForge, we find that disparity diversity, reflecting variation in participants' contribution-based reputation, is positively associated with su…