The Mirroring Hypothesis: Theory, Evidence and Exceptions
By Lyra J. Colfer, Carliss Y. Baldwin. 2016
362 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The mirroring hypothesis predicts that the organizational patterns of a development project (e.g. communication links, geographic collocation, team and firm co-membership) will correspond to the technical patterns of dependency in the system under development. Scholars in a range of disciplines have argued that mirroring is either necessary or a highly desirable feature of development projects, but evidence pertaining to the hypothesis is widely scattered across fields, research sites, and methodologies. In this paper, we formally define the mirroring hypothesis and review 102 empirical studies spanning three levels of organization: within a single firm, across firms, and in open community-based development projects. The hypothesis was supported in 69% of the cases. Support for the hypothesis was strongest in the within-firm sample, less strong in the across-firm sample, and relatively weak in the open collaborative sample. Based on a detailed analysis of the cases in which the mirroring hypothesis was not supported, we introduce the concept of actionable transparency as a means of achieving coordination without mirroring. We present examples from practice and describe the more complex organizational patterns that emerge when actionable transparency allows designers to 'break the mirror.'
Subfields: Computer Science Applications, Strategy and Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/25be578f7ab6c4476dd631892b9079d96f9175ea
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In Computer Science Applications
In Strategy and Management
- Geoffrey G. Parker
- Silvia Massini
- Panos Constantinides
- Martin Kenney
- Ola Henfridsson
- Lucia Piscitello
- Ranjay Gulati
- Marlo Raveendran
Citations in the corpus
- The Role of Interdependence in the Micro-Foundations of Organization Design: Task, Goal, and Knowledge Interdependence (2020, background): “…significantly influenced how organization design is studied by translating its view of product design and production processes to the design of organizations and tasks (Campagnolo & Camuffo, 2010; Colfer & Baldwin, 2016; Sanchez & Mahoney, 1996; Sosa, Eppinger, & Rowles, 2004; von Hippel, 1990).”
- Introduction - Platforms and Infrastructures in the Digital Age (2018, background): “Although, Colfer and Baldwin (2016) primarily focus on open-source software development projects, other types of “open” interactions—similar to those found on digital platforms—show even stronger evidence that the mirroring hypothesis does not hold true.”
- Digital technologies, innovation, and skills: emerging trajectories and challenges (2021, background): “These characteristics allow the technology to coevolve with firm innovation and organization in ways that enable the creation of new business models and value propositions (Colfer and Baldwin 2016).”