At this year’s International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Auckland, New Zealand, I’ll have the pleasure to present a poster on an ongoing research project on online community health. I was made aware of the concept by several of the community managers I interviewed for my dissertation. They used it as a way to describe the overall functioning and well-being of their communities. Ever since, I’ve been following the work in this area. Lithium, a consultancy, has introduced a so called community health index, for example. In 2011, Wang and Lantzy published the first academic paper on the topic. You’ll find the abstract, the conference poster, and the link to the final article below. Continue reading Conference Paper on Online Community Health
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Call for Applications: 6 PhD Positions
The PhD program in ‘Dynamic Capabilities and Relationships’, which I graduated from earlier this year, is currently seeking applications for six PhD positions, starting in April 2015. Deadline for applications is January 5, 2015. I think the terms are quite attractive, ranging from the choice of your own topic, a monthly scholarship, access to a laptop and research software to a personal research budget for seminars and conferences. More details can be found here.
My Top 4 Articles for 2013
Given that the year 2014 is coming to an end, I asked myself the other day which recent papers have influenced my thinking and writing this year. First on the list is the MISQ special issue by Bharadwaj et al. (2013). In the paper, the authors attempt to bring together the strategy and information systems literature and emphasize the strategic role of information technology in organizations. Next, there’s the ISR special issue by Aral et al. (2013) on social media and business transformation, which sheds light on the transformative power of social media technologies as a specific class of information technologies. Third on the list is Treem & Leonardi’s (2013) book chapter on social media affordances, explaining how social media technologies differ from previous forms of computer-mediated communication and what kind of actions they facilitate. Ultimately, there’s Wang et al.’s (2013) OS paper, which highlights the competitive nature of online groups as they compete for members’ attention and time. Continue reading My Top 4 Articles for 2013
Conference Paper on Social Capital
The concept of social capital is something I’ve been interested in ever since the beginning of my PhD (here’s a blog post from 2010, for example). This summer, I presented a conceptual paper on the development of social capital in online communities at the 20th Americas Conference on Information Systems in Savannah, GA. You’ll find the abstract, the conference presentation, and the link to the final article below.
“The present paper extends social capital theory by exploring the creation of social capital in a highly innovative, yet under-researched organizational form: online communities. It is shown that social capital development has thus far not been sufficiently theorized and research on how social capital may be created in online communities is missing altogether. Attempting to fill this gap, I draw on earlier contributions to the sociological literature by Coleman and Bourdieu. More specifically, four mechanisms that lead to the creation of social capital are identified, namely closure, stability, interdependence, and interaction. The concept of fluidity is then introduced as an important characteristic of online communities. The impact of fluidity on the mechanisms for social capital development is consequently scrutinized and some propositions are developed. The paper concludes with a discussion of opportunities for overcoming the challenges identified earlier. Implications for research and practice are advanced.” Continue reading Conference Paper on Social Capital
ISR Special Issue on Online Communities
Samer Faraj, Georg von Krogh, Karim Lakhani, and Eric Monteiro are editing a special issue of ISR on online communities. Here’s the call for papers. Deadline for submissions is October 1, 2014.
This special issue seeks papers that help the field to understand community dynamics, collaborative practices, and value-creation processes in OCs in order to both improve and move beyond traditional views of the online phenomena. All theoretical and methodological perspectives are welcomed, and novel and original perspectives are especially sought. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:
Continue reading ISR Special Issue on Online Communities