Abstract
We study how contributors to Open Source Software (OSS) projects – special cases of non-traditional production communities – self-select into projects, and how this affects project performance. Drawing on theory from personnel economics and strategic human resource management, we propose and empirically demonstrate that contributors sort on skill when they seek to sharpen their career profiles by engaging in non-for-profit work, and when they seek personal enjoyment from coding. They avoid sorting on skill when seeking to learn for their own benefit by engaging in a project. Tests are carried out on a custom-tailored original dataset merging observations from Stack Overflow and GitHub.
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