Abstract
This chapter explores how two organisations have changed their software development practices by introducing Open Source technology. Our aim is to understand the institutional changes that are needed in, and emerge, from this process. This chapter develops a conceptualisation building on the insights of entrepreneurial institutionalism, concentrating on the changing relationships of organisational groups in the areas of decision-making, rewarding and communication. We identify the links between the (1) emerging, yet embedded technology and (2) the underlying institutional decision-making, reward and communication structures. We move the Open Source 2.0 research agenda forward by concentrating empirical work on the nuances of institutional change that open source brings about in large hierarchical organisations. We will discuss the appropriateness of internal accounting organised according to the principle of an open market vs. a local library. We believe that both of these metaphors can support innovation, but different groups will find different approaches more appealing.
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Notes
- 1.
We use the terms “OSS-style development” and “OSS practices” synonymously, encompassing “OSS technologies” as a form of open innovation technologies. Our main interest is how these can be used within companies developing products, not necessarily OSS as such. By “OSS technologies” we do not mean the licence of the developed software, but the common infrastructural tools used in OSS communities. The tools include concurrent versioning systems, issue trackers, email-driven and archived communication, and web presence, which all support software development practices similar to OSS in creative commons, but in our cases within a single organisation.
- 2.
One of the main reasons for companies to adopt OSS technology is their interest in improving software reuse. At the same time, companies are adopting distributed and virtual teamwork practices and changing their software development processes from waterfall to iterative, thus adopting agile practises (about traditional, agile and open source practises in Barnett 2004). These two changes favour the adoption of OSS tools, but failed to address the challenge of reuse.
- 3.
In the classic, pure-form OSS development the motivational factors are quite well known, including fun and enjoyment, peer recognition and so on, but these do not directly transfer into the corporate setting where business unit leaders make such decisions.
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Further Reading
Barnett, L. (2004). Applying Open Source Processes in Corporate Development Organisations. (http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/applying_open_source_processes_in_corporate_development/q/id/34466/t/2, Forrester Research.
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Lindman, J., Riepula, M., Rossi, M., Marttiin, P. (2013). Open Source Technology in Intra-Organisational Software Development—Private Markets or Local Libraries. In: Eriksson Lundström, J., Wiberg, M., Hrastinski, S., Edenius, M., Ågerfalk, P. (eds) Managing Open Innovation Technologies. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31650-0_7
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