PEOPLE

The research project 'Social norms and entrepreneurship in online professional communities' is concerned with several questions that come up when discussing these communities: how are they governed, how can they be researched, and what is their relevance and significance from a business and in particular entrepreneurial perspective? The project is thus situated at the intersection of social science, economics, and computer science, with a focus on methodology, in particular the use of mixed methods. The project uses longitudinal data from an extensive case study of one online community. Interview, survey, and archival data were collected. Different types of qualitative and quantitative analyses (content analysis, statistical analysis, semantip maps, discourse analysis, social network analysis, event analysis) provide rich data to build and partially test theory. First results suggest that the community is governed by three social norms: sociality, sharing, and support. Furthermore, the community functions as a point of departure for entrepreneurs, thus inspriring the theory of embedded entrepreneurship. Finally, use of mixed methods seems to be very useful, since data can be triangulated, thus providing strong support for theory building.