The influence of membership turnover dynamics on innovative performance of user innovators: A study of the XDA developers' forum

The online user innovation community is a well-known phenomenon where members participate to seek solutions for their specified problems. User innovation communities are often viewed to be unique in the sense that they have... [ view full abstract ]

The online user innovation community is a well-known phenomenon where members participate to seek solutions for their specified problems. User innovation communities are often viewed to be unique in the sense that they have restricted sanctioning mechanisms to control the activities of participating members (Magee and Galinsky, 2008). Members can freely participate in communities in any desired fashion. As a consequence, user innovators with various types of interest participate simultaneously in user innovation communities, forming social structures based on interactions within the topic of interest (Dahlander and Frederiksen, 2012). Each participant forms different social structural configurations between one another reliant on their interaction patterns. Different social structural configurations influence members differently in terms of exposure to critical knowledge resources where one configuration can be more beneficial than another (Tsai, 2001; Cowan and Jonard, 2004). Motivated by this perspective this study explores the influence of membership turnover dynamics on innovative performance of user innovators within online user innovation communities. In addition, the study also explores how multiple boundary spanning activities influence innovative performance of network communities.
This study examined 142 network communities of the XDA developer’s forum, and traced membership turnover dynamics for all 142 network communities to grasp the influence of different social structural configurations on innovative performance of user innovators. The results show a positive relationship at a moderate level of membership turnover on network community’s innovative performances. However, the possible difference in innovative performance from membership status was not found in this relationship. The relationship between boundary spanning and innovative performance of network communities were found to have a positive relationship were increase in boundary spanning increased innovative performance of network communities. Membership status level differences were found were higher membership status holders has a curvilinear relationship with innovative performance.