‘DNA’ of virtual organizing: towards a new construct to theorize with digital trace data

Abstract

We introduce a new theoretical construct to empirically measure and analyze the dynamics of actions and events in virtual organizing through digital trace data: DNA of virtual organizing. The new construct captures the actions and events that form the basic building blocks of all possible and actual paths in virtual organizing. By possible paths, we refer to all ways to get work done in a given context. By actual paths, we refer to all ways that have been enacted to get work done in the past. DNA of virtual organizing reconciles two seemingly opposing poles in digital-trace data-driven process theorizing: it not only empirically measures the idiosyncratic dynamics of virtual organizing, but also allows for comparing and generalizing findings across cases and data sets. We illustrate how we can apply DNA of virtual organizing with actual data we obtained from GitHub, the largest virtual organizing platform for software development. We showcase different scenarios where we measure and compare the DNA of virtual organizing at the level of projects and developers.