The quest fot new organizational forms: the strange case of open source software communities

My goal is to identify the principle organizational features of Open Source Software communities, to establish how coordination occurs within them, and to compare them with the structures and coordination mechanisms within conventional corporations. In the process it should be possible to shed light upon the fundamental tasks and processes of economic organization. I examine the principal features of conventional corporations and the changing environmental conditions which are creating the need for different types of organizational structures. I review the extent to which the novel organizational forms identified by different management scholars share common features, and the extent to which such organizational trends are capable of empirical verification. I then focus ecplicitly upon network organization. both interfirm networks ad then OSS communities.