IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ororsc/v33y2022i6p2519-2540.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Building Status in an Online Community

Author

Listed:
  • Inna Smirnova

    (School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109)

  • Markus Reitzig

    (Department of Accounting, Innovation, and Strategy, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria)

  • Olav Sorenson

    (Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095)

Abstract

We argue that the actions for which actors receive recognition vary as they move up the hierarchy. When actors first enter a community, the community rewards them for their easier-to-evaluate contributions to the community. Eventually, however, as these actors rise in status, further increases in stature come increasingly from engaging in actions that are more difficult to evaluate or even impossible to judge. These dynamics produce a positive feedback loop, in which those who have already been accorded some stature garner even greater status through quality-ambiguous actions. We present evidence from Stack Overflow, an online community, and from two online experiments consistent with these expected patterns.

Suggested Citation

  • Inna Smirnova & Markus Reitzig & Olav Sorenson, 2022. "Building Status in an Online Community," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(6), pages 2519-2540, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:33:y:2022:i:6:p:2519-2540
    DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2021.1559
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1559
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/orsc.2021.1559?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:33:y:2022:i:6:p:2519-2540. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.