K Nowledge C Ontribution in O Nline N Etwork of P Ractice : T He R Ole of It

We use fine-grained longitudinal data of user activities in a leading enterprise software vendor’s Internet-enabled community network to explore knowledge contribution and exchange patterns among countries. We measure knowledge contribution using data on 1.8 million forum discussion threads involving more than 276,000 active users from 224 countries over the period of 2004 2010. We find that a country's IT infrastructure and knowledge spillovers from international exchange in the forms of foreign direct investment and immigration are positively associated with knowledge contribution. Interestingly, we also find evidence that the marginal effects of economic (FDI) and human capital (immigration) spillovers on knowledge production is weaker with higher levels of information technology. We discuss implications for research and practice.