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The Power of Communities: From Observed Outcomes to Measurable Performance

Considerable research has sought to establish the benefits that technology-mediated online communities offer their members. In an effort to capitalize on these benefits, organizations have been introducing internally oriented communities to support a wide range of tasks. As a result, such communities have become quite common within organizations and it is therefore becoming increasingly important to link community participation to business outcomes such as team and organizational performance. This paper develops a model linking three commonly identified outcomes of communities: knowledge access, trust, and bridging ties to team performance. We examine two routes from community outcomes to performance, one direct and the other mediated by individual team member innovation. Results of empirical analysis conducted with members of 115 global teams linked to 41 distinct communities support our hypotheses. These findings provide evidence for the business value of communities and offer insights into the value of communities across levels of analysis.