Resultado Objetivo 1

To gain an understanding of why people contribute to forums and help each other, it may be valuable to step back from educational settings and look at behavior in broader settings. This section will examine concepts from organizational citizenship behavior (Bateman & Organ, 1983; Organ, 1988, 1997) and Meyer and Allen’s organizational commitment (1991) as possible lenses for understanding interactions in informal online learning settings.

In 1964, in a frequently-cited paper, Katz outlined three types of behavior necessary in a functioning organization:

 People must be induced to enter and remain within the system.

 They must carry out their role assignments in a dependable fashion.

 There must be spontaneous and innovative activity in achieving organizational objectives which go beyond role specifications. (Katz, 1964, p. 131)

Based on these ideas, Bateman and Organ (1983) outlined an influential set of dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) or “supra-role” or

discretionary behaviors – behaviors not prescribed in job descriptions (Bateman & Organ, 1983, p. 588), and also termed pro-social behavior or contextual performance (Borman & Motowidlo, 1997). Although regrouped frequently, the most common dimensions included altruism, courtesy, conscientiousness, civic virtue, and sportsmanship.

In 1997, Organ redefined OCB as “individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization” (1997, p. 86) and “performance that supports the social and psychological environment in which task performance takes place” (Organ, 1997, p. 95).

This revision reflected the difficulty of separating in-role and extra-role behaviors, with citizenship behavior often rewarded indirectly by organizations, for example in performance ratings (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000). The 1997 modification also noted the work of Williams and Anderson (1991), who divided OCBs into OCB-I for behaviors directed towards individuals, such as courtesy and

helpfulness; and OCB-O, for behaviors directed toward the organization, such as punctuality, saving resources, or using time carefully.

Examples of OCBs described by Smith et al. (1983) and Bateman and Organ (1983) included punctuality, volunteering, orienting newcomers, giving notice if unable to work, helping co-workers with job-related problems, putting up with temporary inconveniences, making constructive statements about work to outsiders, protecting organizational resources, and minimizing conflict.

For Bateman and Organ (1983), such behaviors “lubricate the social machinery of the organization,” and contribute to the success of organizations through greater

teamwork, improved service, cost reduction, increased commitment, and higher output (Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, & Blume, 2009; Podsakoff, Ahearne, & MacKenzie, 1997; Reilly, Lojeski, & Ryan, 2006; Yaghoubi, Mashinchi, & Abdollahi, 2011).

OCBs can come at a cost: Peddibhotla and Subramani (2007) noted the costs in time and effort borne by individuals in writing Amazon reviews or commenting on posts. Bergeron (2011) noted that some OCBs can reduce time-on-task and productivity, with some OCB-practicing employees receiving smaller salary increases and advancing more slowly.

Understandings of OCBs may vary significantly between cultures, and Liu et al. (2004) argued for further OCB research in non-US settings (Farh, Earley, & Lin, 1997; Liu, Chen, & Lin, 2004). In China, for example, Farh, Zhong, and Organ (2004) found helping, for example, to include helping sick colleagues at home, rather than just at work, and behaviors seen as supra-role in the US more associated with in-role behaviors. Lam et al. (1999) found sportsmanship and courtesy viewed as in-role behaviors in Hong Kong (1999), and Paillé (2009) found a greater role for altruism in France, attributing it to a lower score on Hofstede’s masculinity index (1983). Paine and Organ (2000) similarly suggested that positions along individualism-collectivism scales or in power distance may influence OCBs. While Organ’s dimension of civic virtue included being assertive to further the organization’s interest, such

assertiveness may clash with the need for group harmony in collective cultures. Despite frequent regrouping and cultural variation, (Podsakoff et al., 2000; Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1994), Organ (1997) maintained that organizational citizenship was a valuable concept which academics and practitioners can “readily and intuitively” grasp (Organ, 1997, p. 91).

2.5.1 OCBs in Online Settings

Fang and Chiu (2010, p. 236) suggested that it is “reasonable to assume” that citizenship behaviors contribute to performance in virtual communities. Similarly, Bateman, Gray, and Butler (2011) proposed that organizational commitment was an “appropriate theory base” for examining voluntary behavior online (Bateman et al., 2011, p. 843).

Despite such views, little research has been done on virtual OCBs (Fang & Chiu, 2010), and most is recent. In 2010, Chen et al., examining a large Taiwanese fashion website, noted that studies of online pro-social behavior had received only “limited attention” (Chen, Chen, & Farn, 2010), and Reilly et al. (2006), investigating leadership in US virtual teams, also described online OCB as relatively unexplored. Yong, Sachau, and Lassiter (2011) described virtual community citizenship behaviors (VCCPs) as integral to the sustainability of online community, with dimensions including supporting others in need, addressing other community members’ issues, and knowledge sharing. Altruism in programming has been examined in several studies (Fang & Chiu, 2010; Hars & Ou, 2002; Kwok & Gao, 2004; Wasko & Faraj, 2000), and spontaneous knowledge sharing behavior was described as an OCB by Chang and Chuang (2011), following work by Yu and Chu (2007).

Borrowing Brief and Motowidlo’s definition, Yong et al. described such spontaneous behaviors online as the “glue which holds collective endeavors together” (Brief & Motowidlo, 1986, p. 712; Yong et al., 2011, p. 683). Kang, Lee, Lee, and Choi (2007) described online community voluntary behavior, or OCVB, as positive community- relevant behavior, and Joe and Lin (2008, p. 367) similarly defined community citizenship behaviors (OCCBs) as “the propagation and advancement of online community norms, as well as the encouragement and development of socially proper conduct.”

2.5.2 Organizational Commitment and Patterns of Interaction

A related and well-known study by Meyer and Allen (1991) examined three

interlinked types of commitment – continuance, affective, and normative – which influence decisions to participate in organizations.

Building on Meyer and Allen’s model, a study by Bateman, Gray, and Butler (2011) proposed that online behaviors would reflect particular types of commitment. High levels of continuance commitment, for example, might be manifested in reading more

threads, whereas affective commitment might result in more posting activity. As Butler, Sproull, Kiesler, and Kraut (2007) pointed out, reading threads involves effort, and therefore a belief that the benefits outweigh the costs, providing an example of continuance commitment.

A study by Fugelstad et al. (2012) similarly divided behaviors in a movie review website into basic, discretionary, and social or community behaviors, with logging in and rating movies as examples of basic behaviors, and editing film reviews, applying tags, and activities not necessary for site functioning classed as discretionary.

Community behavior included creating personal profiles, writing help files, adding friends, and activities focusing on the community rather than individuals. Members who signed up for utilitarian reasons or for fun generally engaged in the basic behavior of rating films, whereas social and expressive reasons for membership resulted in more social behavior but less rating of movies.

Fugelstad et al. made “no large claims” for this categorization (2012, p. 973), other than noting that it helped them to organize their results, and that it could be used in other online settings.

Online Roles

As seen above, the relationship between behaviors, interactions and roles in online communities in the literature appears to be weighted towards descriptions of fixed roles, rather than towards views of evolving or dynamic roles and membership. Typical of such descriptions of fixed patterns of participation, Yeh (2010) identified 13 roles in online discussion including opinion providers, information providers, problem solvers, and atmosphere constructors. Using network analysis rather than content analysis, Chan, Hayes, and Daly (2010) proposed eight roles, including popular participant, taciturns, popular initiators, ignored, and elitists. Gleave, Welser, Lento, and Smith (2009) examined social roles such as answer person, discussion person, or discussion catalyst in forums, and experts in Wikipedia

(Welser, Gleave, Fisher, & Smith, 2007). Strijbos and de Laat (2010) described eight participative stances, depending on the group size and the individual’s effort and orientation to the group.

Scripted roles are a type of fixed role designed by moderators or teachers for particular outcomes and assigned to individuals, such as starter or wrapper of a discussion (Hara et al., 2000) or starter, moderator, theoretician, and summarizer (De Wever, Van Keer, Schellens, & Valcke, 2010).

Fixed patterns of participation can also result from expectations formed offline or in previous online experiences or particular motivations, or from the structures of a community providing only a restricted range of possible interactions through design or technological limitations.

However, pigeon-holing users into roles such as lurker, contributor, non-contributor (Fugelstad et al., 2012; Panciera, Masli, & Terveen, 2011), answer person (Welser, Gleave, Fisher, & Smith, 2007), or any of various taxonomies of roles (Chan et al., 2010; Strijbos & de Laat, 2010; Yeh, 2010) can restrict the participation choices of members. Identifying members as consumers rather than as contributors (Panciera et al., 2011) may create barriers to other forms of participation, with scripted roles (Strijbos & Weinberger, 2010) restricting newcomers and creating externally- determined hierarchies of roles instead of more emergent or egalitarian structures. In contrast to views of roles as being fixed, however, Strijbos and de Laat (2010) described a continuum from micro, through meso, to macro. Micro roles are activities at a particular time; meso-level roles are a pattern of behaviors; and macro roles represent a stance or an attitude towards the task. Gleave et al. (2009) noted the ecological setting and symbiotic relationship of roles, with answer people, for

example, requiring a larger number of question people: too many answer people can upset the community balance. Strijbos and Weinberger (2010) similarly describe emerging roles which develop spontaneously among members as a result of group and individual dynamics, and evolve over time as the learners’ knowledge increases and needs and perceptions change.

Summary of Interaction and Behaviors

This section has suggested that models from organizational theory can help probe how and why people join and why – or if – they contribute. Whether member roles can be described as basic, discretionary, or supra-role behaviors may depend on the virtual community’s intent.

Models of commitment and citizenship that grew out of conventional organizations may require rethinking if applied to online learning communities, in which many forms of participation may be regarded as core rather than discretionary activities. Educational settings often come with ready-made assumptions or established expectations of choices, scripted roles, and forms of community. In informal or autonomous learning settings, however, these roles and assumption may need reexamination.