How to Create Rules and Norms? Institutional Work in Peer Production
There is no single way of establishing institutions in peer production. Given the participatory and emerging nature of its endeavors, users stress the idea that regulations and normative stances have to reflect established consensus and routines: practice reifies in policy. In effect, institutions should be linked back to changing consensus about the aims and scope of a project, conventional ways to contribute, or shifting values. Rules also ought to respond to urgent issues that require regulation. In this respect, a Wikipedia manual for example declared that “policies and guidelines are typically altered to reflect changing practice on the site or to solve a problem that has arisen” (Ayers, Matthews, & Yates, 2008, p. 369). Rules and social norms codify the status quo of practice and sensemaking in peer production and provide them with an obligatory force.
These purposive actions of creating and implementing institutions can be understood as a kind of “institutional work,” that is, in the words of Lawrence, Suddaby, and Leca (2009), “practical actions through which institutions are created, maintained, and disrupted” (p. 1). In peer production, the construction of rules, the formulation of social norms, and the disposition of more widespread institutional understandings should be an ongoing, inclusive, and open‐ended process. It runs through different stages from informal, local, and ad hoc rulings to more long‐term and holistic determinations (Kriplean et al., 2007). In ideal form, institutions are created in proposals which are then discussed and modulated until a consensus can be reached among the contributors. If commonly accepted, they become codified both in texts as well as in software which then direct their interpretation and enforcement. In this regard, institutions usually are “socially constructed, routine‐reproduced,” as Jepperson (1991, p. 149) held, despite instrumental schemes to install particular regulations or to exact a ruling deemed official and binding. In principle, the formulation and adaptation of institutions is conceived of as an incremental bottom‐up process.
Rules in peer production typically arise from many individual contributions. Their repute stems from the alleged broad inclusion of perspectives, the user acceptance of the process in which the institutions are configured and implemented, and the concrete provisions of what to do in terms of promoting productive cooperation and social interaction. In written form, they are shared and can be inspected and revised if need be. Yet rightly because the process and its outcomes are designed to be open and integrative, there is no linear development from heuristics to negotiated formal rules. Instead, the contributors uphold an enduring debate. The contentious struggles about the adequate form, scope, and application of institutions originates in the fluctuating user base with veterans leaving projects while new participants enter. These shifting populations, in connection with the fluid formation of the projects, propel continuous discussions around the organization of cooperation and the inspection of project products.
In order to compensate for this kind of friction, peer production collectives have proceduralized and decentralized the creation and enforcement of institutions (Beschastnikh, Kriplean, & McDonald, 2008; Jemielniak, 2016). For instance, in Wikipedia, Forte, Larco, and Bruckman (2009) discovered, on the one hand, a formalization of rule‐making and, on the other, tendencies to decentralize their implementation. As the project matured, the formation of governance mechanisms was refined and assigned to institutionalized bodies. Hence, in the early Wikipedia conflicts among users were usually resolved according to fiat with the project founder Jimmy Wales acting as ultimate “benevolent dictator.” Over time, a special arbitration committee assumed many of these competencies. It follows a set course of evidence and deliberation in order to make decisions. These procedures were reproduced in separate projects and sub‐projects of Wikipedia. Therefore, the effort to apply rules was decentralized and spread across a broader set of contributors. Decentralization, therefore, helped to reflect community concerns and to involve a growing editor base in these tasks.
However, the increasing standardization of activities implies the decelerating creation of new policies whereas the interpretation of existing rules rests with senior members, rendering them less open to reversion (Kriplean et al., 2007; Morgan et al., 2012). “Calcification of policy is disproportionately felt by newer editors, who see their policy edits rejected at a higher rate,” hence concluded Halfaker et al. (2013, p. 683). In the English‐language version of Wikipedia, the growth of policies began to slow down in 2006 (Forte et al., 2009). In 2005, 217 new policies were proposed, 12 of which were accepted. In 2011, this number had dwindled to only 16 new proposals while the acceptance rate of 7.5 per cent remained stable (Halfaker et al., 2013). In contrast, institutional innovation has switched to essay format. These less restricted and binding documents responded to an increasing bureaucratization of the overall policy‐making procedures and supported a kind of soft regulatory mechanism. So the number of essays had increased from 69 in 2005 to more than 185 in 2006 and in the following years (Morgan & Zachry, 2010).
5 Whither Rules and Norms? Governance, Hierarchies, and Bureaucracy in Peer Production
Rules, social norms, as well as basic understandings and values constitute an essential element in the governance of peer production. Governance can be understood, following Markus (2007), as “the means of achieving the direction, control, and coordination of wholly or partially autonomous individuals” (p. 152). In peer production, governance does not preclude autonomy, but presupposes free will and a non‐contractual nature of cooperation. On this note, O’Mahony (2007) defined it as a “community‐managed governance model” (p. 144). Governance manifests in the independence from commercial organizations, a pluralism of interests and solutions, decentralized decision‐making, and the prospect of autonomous choice.
For free and open source software, governance includes the free licensing of the software provided and usually of the technological infrastructure used for collaboration. It also encompasses the signaling and allocation of tasks to be completed, the inspection and selection of contributions, and the control of release versions (Markus, 2007). Besides written rules and normative creeds, governance rests on code features such as the concurrent versions system (CVS) used to keep track of changes to a file. The source code management system therefore helps to control software revisions. Developers also check the file transfer protocol (FTP) for the transmission of files between clients and servers on a computer network. Governance also covers the communication among project members in chats, via mailing lists, or forums. It deals, for instance, with bug reports, votes, or the communicative sanctioning of troublemakers like flaming, shunning, or kill‐filing, that is, automatically discarding posts from particular users.
A core concern of peer production governance are hierarchies. Despite their egalitarian ambitions, structures of authority and influence have loomed in most projects (Dahlander & O’Mahony, 2011; de Laat, 2007; O’Neil, 2009; Weber, 2004). They frequently rest on seniority and thus on the length of continuous participation, as well as on the volume of engagement. Along these criteria, many ventures exhibit a loose onion‐like segmentation into core contributors, regular or occasional contributors, and users or beta‐testers (Raymond, 1999). Peer production relies on voluntary support and personal commitment so that “heavy‐handed control can deter participation” (Shah, 2006, p. 108). In other words, leadership does not rest on formal command positions. Rather, authority is a matter of meritocratic achievement and acceptance (von Krogh, Spaeth, & Lakhani, 2003; Stewart, 2005). It presupposes a number of qualities such as communicative skills, the ability to recognize valuable contributions as well as the competence to set goals, control tasks, and motivate fellow users.
The role model for this type of “benevolent dictator” (Weber, 2004, p. 89f.) is Linus Torvalds who founded Linux. In the project, he assumed a gatekeeper position from which he was able to monitor the release of official versions of the software. Being aware that his authority depended on the goodwill and appreciation of participants, he “never orders anyone to do anything and even his suggestions are mild‐mannered” (Moon & Sproull, 2000). Such attitude and diligence are, however, precarious and nothing that can be taken for granted. Hence,
