The social scaffolding of online communities

Online communities have become cornerstones of how work gets done in the 21st century. While being considered as a way to access a global workforce and often praised for their resources and open collaboration, there is not much consensus on how knowledge-intensive online communities actually “work”. In this paper, we develop a theory of the “social scaffolding” of online communities. We advance prior research by arguing that online communities can feature one of four possible combinations of high and low degrees of fluidity and stability. We then theorize about the influence of these combinations on three “shades” of reciprocity as core mechanisms in online communities. Finally, we discuss the implications of our research and present an agenda for future research in which we call for increased attention to theoretical approaches toward online communities. Organizations will be able to use our framework in order to develop a strategic fit with – and thus, more effectively utilize the potential of – online communities.