Motivating open source software developers: influence of transformational and transactional leaderships

ABSTRACT

Open Source Software (OSS) is developed by geographically distributed unpaid programmers. The success of such a seemingly chaotic OSS project will largely depend on how the project leader organizes and motivates the developers to contribute. Grounded on leadership and motivation theories, we proposed and tested a research model that seeks to explain the behavioral effects of a leader on the developers' motivation to contribute. Survey data collected from 118 OSS developers on Sourceforge.net was used to test the research model. The results indicate that leaders' transformational leadership is positively related to developers' intrinsic motivation and leaders' active management by exception, a form of transactional leadership, is positively related to developers' extrinsic motivation.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.3 Software Management
          Subjects: Software development

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Performance

Keywords:
leadership, motivation, open source software development