Firm-specificity and organizational learning-related scale on investment in internal human capital for open source software adoption

Abstract

This study investigates two antecedents of organizational investment in the development of human capital in the context of Open Source Software (OSS). Survey data collected from 114 senior Information Technology (IT) managers and IT professionals indicates that an organization's perception of firm-specificity of OSS human capital and the extent of learning-related scale are positively associated with the investment it makes in cultivating internal OSS human capital. Additionally, we observed that learning-related scale moderates the impact of firm-specificity of OSS on its investment in human capital for OSS platform products. Copyright 2008 ACM.