Leading the Collective: Social Capital and the Development of Leaders in Core-Periphery Organizations

Abstract

Wikipedia and open source software projects have been cited as canonical examples of collectively intelligent organizations. Both organizations rely on large crowds of contributors to create knowledge goods. The crowds that emerge in both cases are not flat, but form a core-periphery network in which a few leaders contribute a large portion of the production and coordination work. This paper explores the social network processes by which leaders emerge from crowd-based organizations.