This research project examines how the conflicting institutional logics are dealt
with in a hybrid organisational form. The empirical setting of the study is an Open
Source – business collaboration in software development projects. The idea of
making a case study of the Open Source – business collaboration is interesting
from both theoretical and business perspectives. Since companies realised that the
world’s most talented people are distributed throughout various organisations,
rather than members of a single team or corporation, the open innovation model
could be neither underestimated nor ignored by the business. However, that
solution brings new challenges, especially for business-oriented organisations. The
challenges come from the significant differences between new open models and
the classic closed-innovation model, which grew on the concept of the institution
of the intellectual property rights. Open Source, on the contrary, is intrinsically an
anti-corporational, pro-knowledge-sharing and creativity motivated movement. As
a result, in the era of open collaboration in knowledge-integrating platforms the
everyday problems are constituted of dealing with mixture of institutional
backgrounds, business models and professional identities.....
