Organizing without formal organization: group identification, goal setting and social modeling in directing online production

A challenge for many online production communities is to direct their members to accomplish tasks that are important to the group, even when these tasks may not match individual members’ interests. Here we investigate how combining group identification and direction setting can motivate volunteers in online communities to accomplish tasks important to the success of the group as a whole. We hypothesize that group identity, the perception of belonging to a group, triggers in-group favoritism; and direction setting (including explicit direction from group goals and implicit direction from role models) focuses people’s group-oriented motivation towards the group’s important tasks. We tested our hypotheses in the context of Wikipedia's Collaborations of the Week (COTW), a group goal setting mechanism and a social event within Wikiprojects. Results demonstrate that 1) publicizing important group goals via COTW can have a strong motivating influence on editors who have voluntaril...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: CSCW
• Authors: Haiyi Zhu, Robert Kraut, Aniket Kittur
• Keywords: Computer Supported Collaborative Work, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW 2012, Governance Mechanisms, Social Sciences