Variations in Information Processing Capacity
Aron Lindberg, James Howison · Academy of Management Proceedings · 2015
In this paper we advance an explanation of variation, or heterogeneity, in Open Source Software (OSS) development routines. Variation in routine heterogeneity manifests variation in the project’s information processing capacity and such variation is crucial for satisfactory performance, since circumstances vary throughout a develoment project. Through exploratory sequence analysis of digital trace data we uncover substantial variations in routine heterogeneity across four OSS projects: Rails, Django, Rubinius, and Bootstrap. To explain such variation, we conduct qualitative inquiry to uncover the generative mechanisms behind the observed variations in routine heterogeneity. We propose that routine heterogeneity is influenced by