How Software Quality Mediates the Impact of Intellectual Capital on Commercial Open Source Software Company Success

ABSTRACT The recent surge in the number of commercial open-source software (COSS) companies shows the growing importance of COSS companies in the software industry. As knowledge-based firms, COSS companies’ success depends heavily on the interplay among intangible resources such as human capital, relational capital, structural capital, and software quality. To observe these relationships, we conducted a hypothesis-testing questionnaire-type survey involving 200 software development experts and users working at 60 multinational COSS companies. Accordingly, the study unearthed two different but conjoint ways (i.e., direct and indirect) in which intellectual capital impacts COSS company’s success. On the one hand, relational capital one of the intellectual capital components directly affects COSS company success. One the other hand, relational and structural capital indirectly affect COSS company success through human capital, which, in turn, is itself mediated by software quality in a sequential mediation model. Therefore, COSS companies may need to prioritize software quality as it is the most critical variable impacting the success of COSS companies.

摘要：近年来，商业开源软件（COSS）公司数量的激增显现了COSS公司在软件产业中的日益重要性。作为知识型公司，COSS公司的成功在很大程度上依赖于无形资源之间的相互作用，如人力资本、关系资本、结构资本以及软件质量。为了观察这些关系，我们对200名在60家跨国COSS公司工作的软件开发专家和用户进行了假设检验问卷调查。据此，本研究揭示了两种不同但相互关联的成功影响途径（即直接和间接）。一方面，关系资本作为知识资本的一个组成部分，直接作用于COSS公司的成功。另一方面，关系资本和结构资本通过人力资本间接影响COSS公司的成功，而人力资本本身又受到软件质量的顺序中介作用。因此，COSS公司可能需要将软件质量作为最关键的影响其成功的变量进行优先考虑。