Company soldiers and gone-natives: role conflict and career ambition among firm-employed open source developers

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorSchaarschmidt, Mario
dc.contributor.authorStol, Klaas-Jan
dc.contributor.funderScience Foundation Irelanden
dc.contributor.funderEuropean Regional Development Funden
dc.date.accessioned2018-10-02T11:38:30Z
dc.date.available2018-10-02T11:38:30Z
dc.date.issued2018-12
dc.date.updated2018-10-02T09:17:49Z
dc.description.abstractSoftware companies are increasingly shifting their role in open source software (OSS) projects from passive adopters to active contributors, and creators of OSS projects. Many firms now employ developers to work on OSS projects to influence their further development. These developers may gain considerable influence in OSS communities, though this typically takes a long time. Previous research found that those individual developers’ agendas are not always aligned to that of the firm. While so-called “company soldiers” strongly identify with their firm, other developers may have “gone native”: they identify more strongly with the OSS community rather than the firm. We study the effect of such an imbalance of identification on firm-community role conflict, which may lead to an intention to quit either the firm or the OSS community. We also consider the moderating effects of developers’ career ambitions on this relationship. Furthermore, we include the effects of developers’ desired career paths on their intentions to quit the firm and community. We test our model using a sample of 177 firm-employed OSS developers, and find that identification imbalance is associated with firm-community role conflict and that these conflicts drive both intentions to quit the firm and the community. Other findings include a significant negative moderating effect of developers’ firm career aspirations on the relation between role conflict and intentions to quit the firm. Several of our hypotheses were not supported, but we found “regions of significance,” which suggests several avenues for further research. We conclude with recommendations for managing firm-community relationships.en
dc.description.sponsorshipEuropean Regional Development Fund (through the Southern & Eastern Regional Operational Programme to Lero—the Irish Software Research Centre (www.lero.ie).en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationSchaarschmidt, M. and Stol, K.-J., (2018) 'Company Soldiers and Gone-Natives: Role Conflict and Career Ambition Among Firm-Employed Open Source Developers', forthcoming conference, ICIS 2018, San Francisco, 13-16 December.en
dc.identifier.endpage17en
dc.identifier.startpage1en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/6970
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherAssociation for Information Systems (AIS)en
dc.relation.projectinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/SFI/SFI Starting Investigator Research Grant (SIRG)/15/SIRG/3293/IE/Software Development with Alternative Workforces/en
dc.relation.projectinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/SFI/SFI Research Centres/13/RC/2094/IE/Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre/en
dc.relation.urihttps://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2018/management/Presentations/5/
dc.relation.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10468/6644
dc.rights© 2018 the authors.en
dc.subjectOpen sourceen
dc.subjectPaid developersen
dc.subjectSurveyen
dc.subjectRole conflicten
dc.subjectCareer ambitionen
dc.titleCompany soldiers and gone-natives: role conflict and career ambition among firm-employed open source developersen
dc.typeConference itemen
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
ICIS2018_Company-Soldiers-Gone-Natives_v5-with17page-limit.pdf
Size:
502.35 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Accepted version
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
license.txt
Size:
2.71 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description:
Download
Collections
Computer Science - Journal Articles