Governing for Growth in Scope: Cultivating a Comparative Understanding of How Peer Production Collectives Evolve

One of the early challenges for any peer production collective is how to govern the growth of new members or contributors. Scope growth was not a topic of concern when scholars were focused on understanding the emergence of peer production collectives as a phenomenon and on identifying the conditions enabling their growing prevalence. But, with the emergence of peer production communities addressing domains as diverse as problem solving at NASA; to engaging in other innovative and technical endeavors, the time has come to treat the topic of scope growth with the import it deserves. Scope growth is important to understanding the current and future challenges that maturing peer production collectives face for several reasons. Governance rights offer participants the opportunity to make decisions that affect the participation architecture, or the social, legal, and technical capabilities that guide interactions and exchange in a collective.