SGER: The Synergy of Conflict and Creativity in Open Source Software Development Communities

本研究的目的是探讨任务、过程和相互关系的冲突如何影响创造性过程，以及哪些具体形式的冲突避免、管理和解决策略有利于促进创造性过程和组织创新。具体的个人，群体和组织特征的计算模型将用于定义项目配置，这将影响假设的开源软件开发社会和文化中的群体和组织动态。每一个这样的项目都需要一个虚拟组织和一个实践社区，其成员合作和协调其活动，以设计和开发创新和创造性的软件产品。模拟研究预计将产生关于机制的假设，开源软件开发社会可以实施，以提高组织的创造力，在多个决议，包括人，团队和组织的水平。假设将被概括为建议原则的设计认知和IT工具的支持，促进选定的战略的实施。基于开发的试验平台，将能够对此类IT战略进行基于模拟的设计。在研究期间，PI将在奥本大学组织非正式会议，以提高对创造力研究的认识，促进工程和社会科学系跨学科研究人员小组的发展。研究结果将被转移到奥本大学PI提供的软件建模和设计课程中。这将通过改进的流程和活动（例如，协作解决问题的风格），这将被假设为有利于设计创造力。一个少数民族学生，谁已经在开源软件开发过程模拟项目的工作，作为他的硕士论文的一部分，PI的监督下，将资助作为研究生研究助理。这个机会将增加由PI领导的奥本建模和仿真组的多样性水平。

The objectives of this project are to explore how task, process, and interrelationship conflicts affect creative processes and what specific forms of conflict avoidance, management, and resolution strategies are conducive to promoting creative processes and organizational innovation. Computational models of specific individual, group, and organization characteristics will be used to define project configuration, which will influence the group and organizational dynamics in hypothetical Open Source Software development societies and cultures. Each such project entails a virtual organization and a community of practice, the members of which collaborate and coordinate their activities to design and develop innovative and creative software products. The simulation study is expected to generate hypotheses regarding mechanisms that open source software development societies could implement to improve organizational creativity at multiple resolutions, including human, team, and organization levels. The hypotheses will be generalized to suggest principles for design cognition and IT tool support that facilitates implementation of the selected strategies. Simulation-based design of such IT strategies will be enabled based on the developed testbed.Broader Impact. During the period of the study, the PI will organize informal meetings at Auburn University to raise awareness on creativity research to facilitate development of an interdisciplinary group of researchers across engineering and social sciences faculty. The findings of the study will be transferred to the software modeling and design class offered by the PI at the Auburn University. This will enhance design learning and cognition via improved processes and activities (e.g., styles of collaborative problem solving) that will be hypothesized to be conducive to design creativity. A minority student, who is already working on an Open Source Software Development Process Simulation project as part of his master thesis under the supervision of the PI, will be funded as a graduate research assistant. This opportunity will increase the level of diversity in the Auburn Modeling and Simulation Group that is led by the PI.