With the rise of social networking platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace, interest in social networks has surged among researchers and practitioners. Organized groups of individuals hold significant value for firms, yet a deeper understanding of these dynamics remains elusive. User communities consist of individuals who come together to share ideas, insights, and experiences. While leveraging these communities for innovation is not a new concept, existing literature often assumes their existence and focuses on how firms can collaborate with them, neglecting the emergence and persistence of such communities. Celine Schulz aims to address this gap by exploring the reasons behind the existence of user communities, their goals, and their functioning. Her dissertation investigates individuals within user communities of the software firm Computer Associates (CA), utilizing an online survey to create a unique dataset from 161 different CA user groups. The dissertation comprises three empirical studies based on this dataset. The first two studies analyze why individuals communicate within their communities, exploring their willingness to share information and the benefits they derive from these interactions. The third study investigates how firms can leverage user communities for innovation, focusing on the individual and group attributes of customer collaborators.
