One potentially powerful way of organizing in the new Internet world is through the medium of the virtual Internet community. An effectively managed virtual community provides economic gains to the community organizer and to its members. We attempt to build theory grounded in the study of TimeZone.com, a virtual Internet community devoted to wristwatch hobbyists and enthusiasts. We argue that a member’s off-site communication, experience, perceived value of site management, content, and collectively held knowledge are positively associated with a member’s e-based economic transactions within this virtual community. Building on our theorizing attempts at the individual level, we develop propositions at the organizational level that relate characteristics of virtual Internet communities (membership size, scalability, and level of site management) to commercial success.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Arthur, W. B. (1996). Increasing returns and the new world of business. Harvard Business Review, 74, 100–109.
2.
Astley, W. G. (1985). The two ecologies: population and community perspectives on organizational evolution. Administrative Science Quarterly, 30, 224–241.
3.
Avery, C., Resnick, P., & Zeckhauser, R. (1999). The market for evaluations. American Economic Review, 89, 564–584.
4.
Bell, C., & Newby, H. (1974). The sociology of community. London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd.
5.
Bressler, S. E., & Grantham, C. E. (2000). Communities of commerce. New York: McGraw-Hill.
6.
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1991). Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation. Organization Science, 2, 40–57.
7.
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2000). The social life of information. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
8.
Brown, S. L., & Eisenhardt, K. M. (1998). Competing on the edge: strategy as structured chaos. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
9.
Business Week-Harris Poll. (1997). Who’s doing what on-line? April, 24.
10.
Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review, 14, 532–550.
11.
eMarketer. 1999. The E-Business Report. December [URL: www.emarketer.com].
Figallo, C. (1998). Hosting web communities: building relationships, increasing customer loyalty, and maintaining a competitive edge. Chicester, UK: Wiley.
14.
Fombrun, C. J. (1996). Reputation: realizing value from the corporate image. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
15.
Glanz, W. (2000). Information overload weighs web. Insights on the News, 16, 1–27.
16.
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory. Chicago, IL: Aldine.
17.
Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 481–510.
18.
Hagel, J., & Armstrong, A. G. (1997). Net gain: expanding markets through virtual communities. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
19.
Hawkins, R., Mansell, R., & Steinmueller, W. E. (1999). Toward digital intermediation in the information society. Journal of Economic Issues, 33, 383–391.
20.
Hillery, G. A. (1955). Definitions of community: areas of agreement. Rural Sociology, 2, 111–123.
21.
Hiltz, S. R., Turoff, M. (1993). The network nation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
22.
Hoskisson, R. E., Hitt, M. A., Wan, W. P., & Yiu, D. (1999). Theory and research in strategic management: swings of a pendulum. Journal of Management, 25, 417–456.
23.
Karp, D., Stone, G., & Yoels, W. (1977). Being urban: a social psychological view of city life. Lexington, MA: Heath and Company.
24.
Kelbaugh, D., & Kelbaugh, D. (1997). Common place: toward neighborhood and regional design. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
25.
King, J. (1999). Disintermediation/reintermediation. Computerworld, 33, 54-54.
26.
Kozinets, R. V. (1999). E-tribalized marketing? The strategic implications of virtual communities of consumption. European Management Journal, 17, 252–264.
27.
Lawrence, T. B. (1995). Power and resources in an organizational community. Academy of Management Best Papers Proceedings, pp. 251–255.
28.
Lei, D., Hitt, M. A., & Bettis, R. (1996). Dynamic core competences through meta-learning and strategic context. Journal of Management, 22, 549–569.
29.
Murphy, L. P. (1997). Web ‘communities’ a target marketer’s dream. Marketing News, 31, 2–3.
30.
Nua. (1999). Internet Surveys. [URL: www.nua.ie].
31.
Orr, J. (1990). Sharing knowledge, celebrating identity: war stories and community memory in a service culture. In D. S. Middleton & D. Edwards (Eds.), Collective remembering: memory in society (pp. 169–189). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
32.
Perloff, J. M. (1999). Microeconomics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
33.
Plumely, D. J. (2000). Global eCommerce: the market, challenges, & opportunities. Irvine, CA: Bowne Global Solutions.
34.
PRNewswire. (1999). Ashford.com to add community and content through acquisition of TimeZone.com, October 27.
35.
Resnick, P., & Varian, H. R. (1997). Recommender systems. Communications of the ACM, 4, 56–58.
36.
Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
37.
Rothaermel, F. T., & Sugiyama, S. (2000). Virtual Internet communities and individual transactions: an empirical study of TimeZone.com. Working Paper, The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.
38.
Shapiro, A. L. (1999). The control revolution: how the Internet is putting individuals in charge and changing the world we know. New York: Public Affairs.
39.
Shapiro, C., & Varian, H. R. (1999). Information rules: a strategic guide to the network economy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
40.
Shay, J. P., & Rothaermel, F. T. (1999). Dynamic competitive strategy: towards a multi-perspective conceptual framework. Long Range Planning, 32, 559–572.
41.
Simon, H. A. (1960). The new science of management decision. New York: Harper and Row.
42.
Starbuck, W. H. (1993). Keeping a butterfly and an elephant in a house of cards: the elements of exceptional success. Journal of Management Studies, 30, 885–921.
43.
Strauss, A. (1978). A social world perspective. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 1, 119–128.
44.
Tönnies, F. (1912). Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie, 2nd edition, Berlin: Curtius.
45.
Tönnies, F. (1967). Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. In C. Bell & H. Newby (Eds.), The sociology of community (pp. 7–12). London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd.
46.
Turoff, M., Hiltz, S. R., Bieber, M., Rana, A., & Fjermestad, J. (1998). Collaborative discourse structures in computer mediated group communications. Working paper. New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ. [URL: eies.njit.edu/;turoff/Papers/CDSCMC/CDSCMC.htm].
47.
Van Maanen, J. E. (1995). Representation in Ethnography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
48.
Van Maanen, J. E., & Barley, S. R. (1984). Occupational communities: culture and control in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 6, 287–365.
49.
Weick, K. (1995). What theory is not, theorizing is. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40, 385–390.
50.
Wellman, B., Salaff, J., & Dimitrova, D. (1996). Computer networks as social networks: collaborative work, telework, and virtual community. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 213–238.
