Research question for empirical work

The proposed research area leads to a more specific exploratory research question than that proposed in the previous chapter:

94 CHAPTER 3. LITERATURE REVIEW

Research proposition: A narrative form of open source business model can offer a balance of power between the focal firm and their member network.

RQ2: “What is the balance of power between the firm and work- ers in firms that have adopted a narrative form of open source business model?”.

How it will be examined: Through an empirical study of busi- nesses that have adopted elements of the narrative form of open source business model developed in the Literature Review chap- ter.

The methodology to address this research question takes a case study ap- proach using design methods, where the open source guild model (Larner, 2013) was offered as a design provocation, as it is the nearest existing model to the narrative form of business model proposed in this literature review. The methodology and methods used, including participant observation and design workshops, are detailed in the next chapter.

3.10

Conclusion to the chapter

This chapter has taken an integrative approach to review the literature on narrative approaches to entrepreneurship, business models and open source. The review is from a social constructionist perspective, focusing on the power exerted by discourse in society, where narratives are a form of dis- course that can both reflect and create institutions through shared meaning. The literature on narratives was first analysed to arrive at a definition for the purposes of this study which is shown in Section 3.4.3, then a narrative framework in Section 3.4.4 that was used to frame entrepreneurship as a narrative, open source as a narrative, and business models as a narrative.

Business models have been poorly defined and poorly understood, but there is some agreement that the components of a business model include personal factors, competence, opportunities, activities, value creation, value capture, boundaries, context, costs and profit. The business model can be viewed as a boundary object, where narratives can be an important aspect of boundary spanning. Narrative forms of business model can connect with open source as a narrative, in that they could enable a single individual or small group to coordinate a much larger creative network. Consider- ing business models as a narrative and how this could connect with open source as a narrative opens up the potential for new business models that

3.10. CONCLUSION TO THE CHAPTER 95

have the fluid boundaries and power-balanced structure of open source. The literature review thus answers the research question RQ1 proposed in the previous chapter, “How can open source inspire narrative forms of business model?”.

There is little literature on open source as a narrative, and also little literature on business models as a narrative. Where these areas of knowl- edge meet, narrative forms of business model based on open source, there appears to be no previous literature. The open source guild is the closest model in the existing literature, although it not framed as a narrative form of business model. There is thus potential to investigate these forms of busi- ness model, where a narrative form of open source business model can offer a balance of power between the focal firm and their member network. The proposed research area leads to RQ2, a more specific exploratory research question, “What is the balance of power between the firm and workers in firms that have adopted a narrative form of open source business model?”. The following Methodology and Research Design chapter documents the re- search methodology and methods that were used to explore this research question.

Chapter 4

Methodology and Research

Design

4.1

Introduction to the chapter

The previous Literature Review chapter explored the literature on business models, narratives and open source, concluding that there was a gap in the area of narrative forms of open source business model. The empirical work that is presented in this study aims to answer the research question RQ2, “What is the balance of power between the firm and workers in firms that have adopted a narrative form of open source business model?”. This chapter documents the research methodology and research design adopted in this study.

Underpinning this study is the theoretical stance is that organisational reality, including business models, can be created through narratives, which aligns with the epistemological position of critical theory. Critical theory is where the researcher enters into a dialogue with research participants to enable understanding of how structures in society have gained their own reality independent of their creators, and how these structures could be changed. This perspective implies research is a change process, not so much about observing the world as it is but exploring what it could be.

Research approaches that are about change include action research and design methods. These approaches imply abductive reasoning, or pattern discovery rather than pattern matching, in a research process that aims to create rather than discover knowledge. Abductive reasoning suggests a design approach, where design can be seen as a process of co-evolution of problem definition and solution formulation. This study applies a de- sign methodology in three stages with three case study organisations. The

98 CHAPTER 4. METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH DESIGN

first stage uses narratives and persona techniques in workshops with the founders of two of the cases study organisations. Personas are widely used in human-computer interaction, where they can represent the users of a software system. In this study, personas are used to represent the stake- holders in an organisation. The second stage uses personas and scenarios in a design workshop with a third case study organisation, while the third stage uses annotated portfolio techniques to analyse ethnographic data from the first two case study organisations. Analysis of the ethnographic data as an annotated portfolio in the third stage of this study was undertaken using the narrative form of open source business model from the Literature Re- view as a framework, an example of using prior theory to inform a design process.