Works
- The emergence of governance in an open source community, Academy of Management Journal 50(5), 1079 to 1106, 2007
- Boundary organizations: enabling collaboration among unexpected allies, Administrative Science Quarterly 53(3), 422 to 459, 2008
- Progressing to the center: coordinating project work, Organization Science 22(4), 961 to 979, 2011
In Organizational Structures
Known for
Governance of open source communities
Ideas
Emergent governance in a community. With Ferraro, O'Mahony studied how one open source community came to govern itself: members developed a shared basis of formal authority but limited it with democratic mechanisms, and the conception of authority they settled on was more expansive than the original design. Caveat: One community.
Boundary organizations. With Bechky, showed how open-source projects and firms collaborated by creating boundary organizations that managed governance, membership, ownership, and control over production. Caveat: Four projects.