A presentation made at Utrecht University at the SIKS Symposium on Advancing Dynamic Capability in March 2014. The presentation presents our research findings of a study of the eZ Systems online community eZ Publishg: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471772714000025

1. Balancing on a Tightrope:
Managing the Boundaries of a
Firm-sponsored OSS Community and
its Impact on Innovation and Absorptive Capacity
March 2014
Robin Teigland
Stockholm School of Economics
Sweden
Paul M. Di Gangi
Loyola University of Maryland
USA
Björn-Tore Flåten
University of Agder
Norway
Elia Giovacchini
Stockholm University
Sweden
Nicolas Pastorino
eZ Systems
Director Community

2. Presentation Structure
Start
Finish
Key Findings
Methodology
Conclusions
Research Questions
Background of the Study

3. The Firm
The Collective
vs
Second Life
~ Built by employees within
organizational boundaries
Open Simulator
~ Built by users and distributed
freely regardless of affiliation.
Models of Knowledge Creation

4. * More and more, firms are becoming part of distributed knowledge
creation. e.g. IBM, Oracle, Intel (Bonaccorsi et al., 2006)
* Community and firm share experiences and knowledge to co-create value
* Community is seen as a complementary asset to be leveraged and
combined with firm’s internal assets to deliver competitive solutions
(Dahlander & Wallin, 2006)
* However resources of community that firm wants to leverage are outside
firm boundaries and embedded in community with competing logic
* Firms try to influence the communities in different ways (Dahlander &
Wallin, 2006; Dahlander &Magnusson, 2008; Jarvenpaa & Lang, 2011; West
& O’Mahony, 2008)
Involvement of Firms
in Open Source Communities

5. Opportunities and Challenges with Firm-
sponsored OSS Communities
 OSS communities as complementary
asset for firms with great potential for
firms to turn community outputs into
new service offerings
 BUT, potential for goal conflict between
the firm and the community since firms
in control
– Firm’s goal is to profit from the
investment
– Community’s goal is to improve the
shared technology

6. But there’s tension...
Private Model
Distribution of returns
and delegation of value
creation solely to
organization
Collective Model
Openness and free
distribution of intellectual
ideas for common or
public good
VS
von Hippel & von Krogh 2003

7. Theoretical Background
Boundary management
(Jarvenpaa & Lang 2011)
The set of activities involved in defining, negotiating, and
protecting organizational resources and domains of action
as well as managing external stakeholder relationships to
achieve organizational goals
Four boundary management logics:
1. Boundary of power
2. Boundary of identity
3. Boundary of competence
4. Boundary of transactional efficiency
These four cannot be studied in isolation as it is their
integrative management that influences the community’s
innovation capacity
Absorptive capacity (Cohen & Levinthal 1990)
The firm’s ability to continuously transform knowledge and
ideas (e.g., learn) into new innovations
Please see our paper for references: Teigland, R., Di Gangi, P., Flåten, B-T., Giovacchini, E., Pastorino, N. (2014). Balancing on a
tightrope: Managing the boundaries of a firm-sponsored OSS community and its impact on innovation and absorptive capacity. Information &
Organization, 24, 25–47.

8. Research Questions
1. How does the boundary management of a
firm-sponsored OSS community impact the
community’s innovation capacity?
1. How does the boundary management of a
firm-sponsored OSS community impact the
firm’s absorptive capacity?

9. 105 emp
350+
Partners
42,000+
Community
members
15,000+
Customers in
130 countries
• Founded 1999
• Content management software, #1 in media industry
• 250,000 sites in 170 countries
• Customers: UN, FT, WSJ, Vogue, Hitachi, 3M, BMW
• 105 employees in 9 countries (US, Europe & Asia)

10. eZ Systems wants to create a killer community
“As a community... if you give them the little finger, they take
the whole hand – they want more when you give them
something, and if they don't get something, then they get
irritated. We are a company and not a charity, so we have to
make money – but this is a challenge and you have to
differentiate between what you give away for free and what
you sell." - eZ senior manager

11. Research Methodology
• Case study of eZ Systems and its firm-sponsored
OSS community
• 19 semi-structured interviews
– 5 eZ employees
– 14 affiliated partners, entrepreneurs, or OSS hobbyists
– On average, interviewees were 34,9 years old, were
male, and held a minimum of an undergraduate degree
(typically Computer Science)
– Interviews lasting 45-120 minutes each
– All interviews recorded and transcribed
• Literature-driven thematic analysis with coding of
the transcripts
11

12. RQ1: Boundary Management &
Community Innovation Capacity
• Power
– Sometimes maybe people do want to share results of their work, but their boss
does not want them to do so because the results of their work would then be given
to the competition – so you always feel there is this tension of sharing some things
but not everything … because of competitors.
• Identity
– And then eZ systems says yes, no, you know, well, we could do this, and we could
do that, and bla-bla-bla, but at the end of the day, nothing is done. And that
generates a negative point of view from the community towards eZ Systems.
• Competence
– Most of the code was written by us (eZ), and extensions and addon modifications
were done by the community.
• Transactional Efficiency
– The great advantage is that it will also allow us all to work together much more
easily on larger product features. From A to Z - from the idea being submitted in eZ
Roadmap to the final QA, testing and documentation, through functional
specifications, technical specs, and development.

13. RQ2: Boundary Management &
Firm Absorptive Capacity
• External Environment
– We went the way that the community suggested …. and this is exactly where
we got very big value from community – if we had executed our internal plans,
then we would have probably distanced ourselves from our customers and
partners.
• Collective Dimension
– He (Community manager) is formalizing the unspoken roles we have had for a
while. And he is trying to see how we can … bring people to do something we
can use immediately through the community project.
• Individual Dimension
– It is not very simple for employees to act in the community – everything is
taken as a statement by the company even if this was on personal level... But it
becomes problematic because within the company there is not too much
communication. So when roadmaps and priorities change and then an
employee says something, this might not be true anymore.

14. Findings – Research Model

15. Key Findings
eZ’s boundary management of the community plays a crucial role
in community’s innovation capacity, with Power having the most
importance.
Importance of maintaining relationships not only
within eZ to understand and absorb ideas and
knowledge from community but also with the
larger OSS and business community.
Community’s innovation capacity
directly impacts eZ’s absorptive
capacity. Additionally, an integrative
IT platform supports the development
of community innovation capacity
and firm absorptive capacity.
1
2
3

16. Conclusions
• The study extends our understanding of
boundary management of firm-
sponsored OSS communities.
• Firms interested in leveraging a firm-
sponsored community must balance on a
tightrope since tension between the
firm’s goals and the community’s goals.
Further research should investigate how firms that want to
sponsor or engage communities can adapt their internal
organizations to better fit with community-intensive
innovation activities.

17. Thank
You!
If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact us:
pdigangi@gmail.com
robin.teigland@hhs.se
bjorn-tore.flaten@uia.no
egi@fek.su.se