Research On The Network Operating Mechanism Of Peer Production Which Based On Social Network Theory

With the growing popularity of the Internet and increasing competition in the market, lots of enterprises are using user innovation as a effective method to gain competitive advantage and reduce R&D cost. Among the user innovation paradigms, Peer production model which appeared in knowledge product field is undoubtedly the most representative one. The main body of Peer production is composed of thousands of participants. They are scattered all over the world and never meet each other. They generally do not have financial rewards, only communicate with others through the internet. They can join in or exit the project without any restrictions.How can such a loose organization give birth to high efficiency, high-quality operating system, encyclopedias, other public knowledge and products? Obviously, Peer production makes a mystery of the business-how can hundreds of volunteers organize together and achieve their objectives in the absence of formal organizational structure, economic incentives and constraints of the contract situation. The starting point and fundamental purpose of this article is to analyze how the structure characteristics, relationship characteristics, cognitive characteristics of the Peer production act on the Peer production organization, which based on social network theory. Therefore, this article reveals the running mechanism mystery of the Peer production network. In this aiticle, after sortting out the domestic and foreign scholar's research results, the author builds on the theoretical model of the operational mechanism of the Peer production network. It uses structure embeddedness, relationship embeddedness and cognitive embeddedness as independent variables, uses coordinate behavior, maintain behavior and motivate behavior as intermediate variables, uses organizational performance as the dependent variable. In other words, the fundamental purpose of this article is to analyze how the three independent variables act on the dependent variable through three intermediate variables.The chapters of this Paper are arranged as follows:Chapter First is the introduction, which states the background and significance, the research methods, the logical frame and innovation of this paper. The second chapter is the literature review, which specificly reviews, comments on Peer production in domestic and at abroad and its current research situation of network system. The third chapter is the section to build theoretical model and research design, the theoretical model of operating system of Peer production network bases on the analysis of the variables and the relationship of each variable. The fourth chapter is data analysis, which uses analysis software to do the descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, variance analysis and SEM analysis for the related variables. The fifth chapter is the conclusions and recommendations, which outlines the main findings and study limitations of this paper, makes targeted management recommendations, while points out the future research directions.Conclusions of this Paper are as follows:(1) The relationship between Peer production network dimension and behaviors of participation, the relationship strength, the relationship between shared vision of cognitive, the community identity and others significant positively influence on expertise configuration behavior and incentive behavior. The scale of the network, network center degrees, common vision and community identity significant positively impact on the administrative coordination level among participants. Peer production participants'strength, stability, the relationship between Shared vision and community identity cognitive significant positively influerce the network maintenance behavior. (2) The relationship of Peer production behaviors of participats and continued willingness for participation, the administrative coordination behavior, the community maintenance behavior and the incentive behavior significantly positive impact on the continued willingness to participation behavior of peer production participants. Technical configuration level has no significantly positive influence on the continued willingness to participate.(3) The relationship between Peer production network dimension and behaviors of participation, the relationship strength, the relationship between shared vision of cognitive, the community identityand others significant positively influence on the continued willingness of the participants to participate. The network scale, the stability of network and the relationship stability of participations have no significantly positive correlation. Based on the conclusions above, this paper brings forward some corresponding suggestions which are for how to strengthen community management and improve the operation efficiency for the Peer Production managers and related enterprise in order to lay a good theory and practice foundation for the future development of Peer production community.