A Theoretical Perspective on Social Capital to Sustain Open Communities.

Abstract

This paper develops a theoretical approach to explain how social capital – cognitive, relational and structural – affects long-term sustainability of open communities. Organization studies have shown that social capital provides critical resources that support sharing, participation and collaboration in organizations, networks and communities. But the contextual assumptions in that research are less relevant for open communities which have unique structures and composition – i.e. global scale, high heterogeneity of members, voluntary participation, and quasi-open access to resources. Drawing from observations of global genomic data and information centers, this article argues that sustainability of open communities such as global centers, depends heavily on the establishment and leveraging of cognitive social capital, while relational and structural social capital may be designed in to bound the community, manage homogeneity and increase trust among members. Open communities should be aware of such relationships if they want to ensure long-term sustainability of their project.