Should I stay or should I go? Worker commitment to virtual organizations Yulin Fang Richard Ivey School of Business The University of Western Ontario yfang@ivey.uwo.ca Derrick J. Neufeld Richard Ivey School of Business The University of Western Ontario dneufeld@ivey.uwo.ca Abstract As society enters the twenty-first century there is a growing realization that information technology (IT) is heavily influencing organizational structures [1]. One such structure is the virtual organization, in which individuals rely on IT to mediate traditional geographical and temporal boundaries of the firm. The result is a “company without walls” that operates as a virtual “collaborative network of people,” independent of location or affiliation [2]. This paper is concerned with exploring how this IT- enabled shift influences worker commitment, a critical factor identified in the organizational behavior literature. Using Wenger’s practice-based learning perspective and theory of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP), we conducted a longitudinal, qualitative analysis of commitment in one open-source software (OSS) project. Results indicate that commitment was strongly associated with engagement in LPP processes (participation, learning and identity transformation). Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are discussed. 1. Introduction Working virtually has become a prevailing trend in the last two decades. Approximately 15% of the adult workforce in Canada and the United States was engaged in some forms of virtual work by 2002, up from 4% a decade ago [3, 4]. Global corporations have an even higher percentage of virtual workers. For instance, Intel Corporation reported that approximately 70% of its employees collaborate with colleagues located in different time zones, without ever meeting face-to-face, while approximately 17% of employees work remotely during their business trips [5]. Similarly, AT&T reported that 22% of employees are engaged in full-time virtual work, and another 17% work remotely at least once a week [6]. Virtual work has become an important way of working in modern organizations [7]. Meanwhile, the organizational behavior literature has established the importance of employee commitment, with particular regard to its effects on employee turnover behavior [8, 9]. Because employees possess a tremendous amount of firm- specific knowledge [10], employee turnover results in loss of knowledge resources, and a waste of the employer’s financial resources previously spent on training and developing the departing employees [8, 11]. Drucker [12] argued that contemporary organizations must direct their paid workers as if they were unpaid volunteers, and gain their commitment by helping them to adopt and internalize the organization’s aims and purposes. This seems appropriate, considering that employees – and particularly virtual workers – increasingly value personal time and autonomy over greater income and advancement, and as interest in self-employment and part-time work arrangements continues to grow [13]. Unfortunately, this appears to be much easier said than done, especially in the context of the dispersed virtual organization [13, 14]. For instance, Staples [15] reported that organizational commitment of their employees was one of the most important abiding concerns of managers of virtual workers. Research has also shown that the dispersion and dislocation characterizing virtual organizations may reduce communication among employees, increase their feelings of isolation, and consequently reduce their commitment to the organization [16]. The objective of this study is to explore how virtual workers become committed to projects, and the processes by which deep commitment is established. In this study we investigate one kind of economic enterprise that operates like a virtual organization – the open source software (OSS) development environment. OSS development projects are Internet-based communities of software developers who voluntarily collaborate to develop Proceedings of the 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2006 1 0-7695-2507-5/06/$20.00 (C) 2006 IEEE