Open Source Culture as New Management Knowledge: Towards New Cycles of Innovative Business

Résumé En

This paper proposes a contingency framework to help understand dynamic policies in open source (OS). Also, it creates links between open strategies and new interorganizational and heterogeneous structures. From an empirical viewpoint, this work is based on a multi-case study approach (six case studies were conducted). Coupling theory and empirical observations, we suggest a typology of organizational forms in OS. Two kinds of organizations are described: the firm based development (FBD) one and the community based development (CBD) ones. This taxonomy has permitted to assert two propositions. The first one (P1) is the empirical finding that CBD model can be used to produce closed source software (CSS). This observation highlights the necessity of disentangling community based design organization from business logic in software production. The second proposition (P2) introduces a new historical cycle of innovative business where CBD and FBD logics are articulated and combined by firms. Thus a new chapter of management knowledge seems in development behind the OS phenomena.