Creating Value in Online Communities: The Sociomaterial Configuring of Strategy, Platform, and Stakeholder Engagement
COM2 Level 4
Executive Classroom, COM2-04-02
ABSTRACT:
How is value created in an online community (OC) over time? We explored this question through a longitudinal field study of an OC in the healthcare arena. We found that multiple kinds of value were produced and changed over time as different participants engaged with the OC and its evolving technology in various ways. To explain our findings, we theorize OC value as performed through the ongoing sociomaterial configuring of strategies, digital platform, and stakeholder engagement. We develop a process perspective to explain these dynamics and identify multiple different kinds of value being created by an OC over time: financial, epistemic, ethical, service, reputational and platform. Our research points to the importance of expanding the notion of OC users to encompass a broader understanding of stakeholders. It further suggests that creating OC value increasingly requires going beyond a dyadic relationship between the OC and firm to encompassing a more complex relationship involving a wider ecosystem of stakeholders.
BIODATA:
Eivor Oborn is current Professor of Healthcare Management, in the area of Innovation and Organisational Behaviour at Warwick Business School, UK. She earned her PhD at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and was a recipient of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She is also a honourary Fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School and Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Digital Innovation (CDI). Her research interests span technology, multidisciplinary working, knowledge management and collaborative innovation processes. She has published in numerous journals including Information Systems Research, Organisation Science, MISQ and the Academy of Management Journal.