Innovation without me: whyemployees do (not) participatein organizational innovationcommunitiesAnke Wendelken1, Frank Danzinger2,Christiane Rau3and Kathrin M. Moeslein41Information Systems I Innovation and Value Creation, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg,Nuremberg, Germany. anke.wendelkenwiso.uni-erlangen.de2Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS, Fraunhofer Institute for IntegratedCircuits (IIS), Nuremberg, Germany. frank.danzingerscs.fraunhofer.de3Centre of Innovation and Product Management University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Wels,Austria. christiane.raufh-wels.at4Information Systems I Innovation and Value Creation, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg,Nuremberg, Germany; Center for Leading Innovation and Cooperation (CLIC), HHL Leipzig GraduateSchool of Management, Leipzig, Germany. kathrin.moesleinwiso.uni-erlangen.deA key issue in community research is the set of motivations stimulating individuals toparticipate and contribute voluntarily to communities. This article examines the motiva-tions of employees, who are traditionally not involved in the innovation process, to (not)participate in organizational innovation communities. Building on an in-depth single casestudy, we aim to answer the following research questions: (1) What motivates participantsof organizational innovation communities to participate? and (2) What motivates nonpar-ticipants of organizational innovation communities to not participate? We find and catego-rize multiple factors that motivate non-research and development employees to participateand to not participate. Moreover, we find an overlap as well as differences in the set ofmotivations of participants and nonparticipants. With nonparticipants normally being alarge but barely explicitly recognized group, we argue that the found deviations contributeto the understanding of motivations in the context of organizational innovation communitiesand allow for direct design implications for innovation managers.1. IntroductionBeing a promising form of collaboration in thecontext of innovation, the concept of commu-nities has received an increase in recognition in thelast decade (Jeppesen and Frederiksen, 2006; Westand Lakhani, 2008). Various forms of innovationcommunities have emerged inside (e.g., within Bom-bardier Aerospace or IBM) and outside (e.g., initiatedby Dell or SAP) of organizations (Bjelland andWood, 2008; Ebner et al., 2009; Di Gangi et al.,2010; Dahl et al., 2011; Muhdi and Boutellier, 2011;Mahr and Lievens, 2012). As communities infor-mally tie together individuals from different areasbs_bs_banner 2014 RADMA and John Wiley & Sons Ltd217who share a common expertise, passion, problem,etc. (Wenger and Snyder, 2000), they support cross-ing boundaries, which is a vital precondition to theconcept of open innovation (e.g., Enkel et al., 2009;Dahlander and Gann, 2010). Firms can open theirinnovation processes by integrating external sourcesi.e., universities or suppliers) and/or internal sources(e.g., non-research and development (R&D) staff(Neyer et al., 2009; Dahl et al., 2011).After the introduction of the community-conceptinto business research, it became a well-researchedphenomenon and was adapted to various contexts(West and Lakhani, 2008). As a result, a plethora ofvarying definitions and terms has been developed inthe past 20 years. This fact leads West and Lakhani(2008) to encourage researchers to explicitly articu-late the theoretical and phenomenological boundariesof their use of the term what should allow for both,to build upon earlier scholarship and to enable sub-sequent scholars to build on them (p. 224). Wefollow this appeal and define in accordance toBansemir (2012) and Bansemir et al. (2012) anorganizational innovation community as a group ofemployees that connects online as well as offlinewithin the boundary of a focal firm focusing on thedevelopment of innovations. Such a group is furthercharacterized by mutual engagement, a shared reper-toire, a shared objective, as well as by voluntaryparticipation and contribution of employees who aretraditionally not engaged in R&D activities.Our concept of organizational innovation commu-nities builds upon three streams of literature. First,the literature on communities of practice (CoPs)(e.g., Brown and Duguid, 1991; Lave and Wenger,1991), which highlights the informal connections inthe context of an enterprise (Wenger and Snyder,2000). Second, a more recent stream on (open) inno-vation communities (e.g., Lthje and Herstatt, 2004;Franke et al., 2006; Muhdi and Boutellier, 2011) thathighlights the innovative character and output ofcommunities. Finally, the literature on virtual com-munities (e.g., Romm et al., 1997; Hertel et al., 2003;Oreg and Nov, 2008) that addresses the fact thatpeople inside and outside of organizations establishand maintain informal connections today throughnew information and communication technology.The observation that individuals apparently partici-