The provision of online public goods: Examining social structure in an electronic network of practice Molly McLure Wasko a, , Robin Teigland b, 1 , Samer Faraj c,2 a MIS, College of Business, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, United States b Institute of International Business, Stockholm School of Economics, Box 6501, Stockholm,113 83 Sweden c 1001 Sherbrooke St. W., McGill University, Montreal, Quebec Canada H3A 1G5 abstract article info Available online 11 March 2009 Keywords: Online communities Digital social networks Computer-mediated communication Electronic networks of practice Electronic networks of practice are computer-mediated social spaces where individuals working on similar problems self-organize to help each other and share knowledge, advice, and perspectives about their occupational practice or common interests. These interactions occur through message postings to produce an on-line public good of knowledge, where all participants in the network can then access this knowledge, regardless of their active participation in the network. Using theories and concepts of collective action and public goods, ve hypotheses are developed regarding the structural and social characteristics that support the online provision and maintenance of knowledge in an electronic network of practice. Using social network analysis, we examine the structure of message contributions that produce and sustain the public good. We then combine the results from network analysis with survey results to examine the underlying pattern of exchange, the role of the critical mass, the quality of the ties sustaining participation, the heterogeneity of resources and interests of participants, and changes in membership that impact the structural characteristics of the network. Our results suggest that the electronic network of practice chosen for this study is sustained through generalized exchange, is supported by a critical mass of active members, and that members develop strong ties with the community as a whole rather than develop interpersonal relationships. Knowledge contribution is signicantly related to an individual's tenure in the occupation, expertise, availability of local resources and a desire to enhance one's reputation, and those in the critical mass are primarily responsible for creating and sustaining the public good of knowledge. Finally, we nd that this structure of generalized exchange is stable over time although there is a high proportion of member churn in the network. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Recent advances in internet communication technologies have led to the rapid growth of electronic social networks. Participants in these networks leverage the connectivity of the internet with a variety of web-based tools to communicate, collaborate and participate in the co-production of information goods and services. This new mode of value creation has been termed “peer production”, describing how mass collaboration is changing how people organize, share knowl- edge, innovate and create value [53]. Popular forms of these networks include open source software communities, interactive blog sites, P2P networks, wikis, tagging sites and discussion forums. One of the most famous examples is www.wikipedia.org, where tens of thousands of individuals making relatively small contributions have created an encyclopedia of everything, available to everyone. One of the key enablers of this change is that once digitized, information becomes a public good. In tangible form, an encyclopedia has signicant costs associated with manufacturing, distributing and updating content. Additionally, if an individual lends the tangible encyclopedia to a friend, they cannot both read it unless they are collocated. In contrast to tangible goods, digitized information goods have the critical public good characteristic of nonrivalry — meaning that these goods are not used up or diminished with consumption. This has fundamentally changed how people think about, contribute to, value and make purchasing decisions regarding information goods. Despite the growing interest in mass collaboration and virtual organizing, surprisingly little theoretical and empirical research has investigated the communication and organizing processes in electro- nic social networks. As management in many organizations has discovered, the creation of a virtual social space for collaboration and knowledge exchange is no guarantee that knowledge sharing will Decision Support Systems 47 (2009) 254–265  Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: mwasko@cob.fsu.edu (M.M. Wasko), robin.teigland@hhs.se (R. Teigland), samer.faraj@mcgill.ca (S. Faraj). URL: http://www.teigland.com (R. Teigland). 1 Tel.: +46 8 755 2172; fax: +46 8 3199 27. 2 Tel.: +1 514 398 1531; fax: +1 514 398 3876. 0167-9236/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.dss.2009.02.012 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Decision Support Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dss