Do modular products lead to modular organisations? Evidence from open source software development

Abstract

This study examines whether a modular product architecture leads to a modular organisational architecture or the mirroring hypothesis under the context of open source software development. We develop new metrics of product and organisational modularity and provide empirical evidence supporting the mirroring hypothesis. We also extend prior literature by showing that the number of organisational members contributes positively to organisational modularity. Furthermore, we show that organisational modularity is a dynamic concept and tends to vary during different stages of the product development life cycle. Our findings have important theoretical and practical implications.

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