| With the development of computer technology and networks,open collaboration emerges as a new way of organizing production—individuals collectively create products such as software and encyclopedia through information systems like wikis and the products are open to everyone.Since the inputs of open collaboration projects are provided by voluntary participants,the functioning,success,and sustainability of open collaboration projects depend on participation behavior and more importantly,participants’ effort invested in projects,that is,task effort.This has generated a series of information systems studies that explored the contributing factors in open collaboration participants’ task effort and the mechanisms.Recent work notes how environmental factors at the community level affect participants’ contribution.However,the environment participants interact with is actually local,and these interactions are task oriented,which in most cases are collaborations between a participant and his or her collaborators.Therefore,the direct source of external impacts is locally situated factors and collaboration processes,while few studies address the impacts of environmental factors within the local context and collaboration processes on participants’ contribution.To fill this research gap,this study introduced the theoretical framework of team interpersonal processes to investigate the impacts of task and relationship conflicts,intrinsic motivation,and anger on participants’ task effort.Moreover,based on uncertainty reduction theory,this study introduced transactive memory systems(TMS)as a local situational factor affecting team interpersonal processes,and specifically investigated the impacts of TMS on task and relationship conflicts,intrinsic motivation,and anger,which in turn affect participants’ task effort.Using the data from a survey of 206 Chinese Wikipedia’s editors for main analysis and the data from a survey of 97 Github’s developers for post-hoc analysis,this study confirmed the impacts of TMS on participants’ task effort through team interpersonal processes.Specifically,TMS within a participant’s team reduces task conflict,relationship conflict,and anger reactions the participant has while increases intrinsic motivation.These changes in interpersonal processes further influence participants’ task effort.Specifically,relationship conflict decreases task effort;task conflict directly increases task effort while indirectly decreases task effort due to the linkage between task conflict and relationship conflict;intrinsic motivation increases task effort.Thus,the main analysis supported that team interpersonal processes,specifically conflict management and motivation building,act as mediating mechanisms that transmit the positive effects of TMS to participants’ task effort.The post-hoc analysis supported conflict management acts as a mediating mechanism.The findings have important theoretical and practical implications. |
