BENKLER REVISITED – VENTURING BEYOND THE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE ARENA?

The organizational principles of open source software (OSS) development have challenged traditional theories in economics, organization research and information systems. In a seminal paper, Benkler (2002) provided a comprehensive framework to structure and explain these OSS principles. Coined Commons-Based Peer Production (CBPP), his framework has inspired a large stream of research on OSS. The objective of our paper is to determine whether CBPP also provides a viable framework to investigate projects of open innovation in non-software related domains. Using a case study approach, we focus on four projects that attempt to operate in line with the OSS phenomenon, but deal with tangible outputs (biotechnology, automobiles, entertainment hardware, and public patent review). We show that in general the CBPP framework is well-suited to explain open value creation in these domains. However, we also find several factors which limit its adoption to non-software related arenas

Public crowdsourcing: Analyzing the role of government feedback on civic digital platforms

Government organizations increasingly use crowdsourcing platforms to interact with citizens and integrate their requests in designing and delivering public services. Drawing on attribution theory, this study asks how the causal attributions of the government response to a citizen request affect continued participation in crowdsourcing platforms. To test our hypotheses, we use a 7-year dataset of both online requests from citizens to government and government responses to citizen requests. We focus on citizen requests that are denied by government, and find that the reasoning for denying a request is related with continued participation behavior. Citizens are less willing to collaborate further with government via the platform, when their requests are denied although the locus of causality is with the government. This study contributes to research on the role of responsiveness in digital interaction between citizens and government and highlights the importance of rationale transparency to sustain citizen participation