Here’s a link to my “completed” dissertation. Its the culmination of several years of interest in Open Source and Small Businesses and aims to add to research into the competitiveness of small and micro enterprises through collaboration and integration of small and micro enterprises in the backdrop of a global economy. The work is completed in part fulfillment of an Msc. in Management of Information Systems in Trinity, a course I can whole heartedly endorse on many levels. Not only did it allow me to distill my interests in Open Source and commerce into a (hopefully) relevant body of work, but also gave me a broader insight into higher levels of the technological economy.
Caveat: The dissertation could be improved upon in various ways due to time constraints in completing it. The statistical analysis could have gone into further detail the quantity and quality of the data. Additionally the findings in the document are presented rather weakly and I feel a much stronger link between Open Source and Small Business could be made from the research. A few extra diagrams wouldn’t have gone astray either 
All in all, I was relatively satisfied with the document but will now invest time into cleaning the work up and making a decent paper for conferences and journals etc. I’m working on it at the moment and will publish it here once complete.
The flow of the dissertation is as follows:
Title:
“Is There a Place for Community in Business?”
Free and Open Source as a Model for Coordinating Distributed Micro-Enterprises.
1. Introduction.
2. Effects of Technology on the Global Economic Landscape
3. The Increased relevance of small and micro enterprises in this economy and an atttempt to unify the traits of small businesses as a whole ( intelligence gathering, decision making processes, procurement patterns etc.)
4. Open Source presented as an organisation model, with a focus on the culture, models and tools of open source.
5. Research:
a. Survey of open source / free software users and developers (210 respondents globally). An attempt to get empirical data on the motivations and usage patterns of users and developers.
b. Interview with Andy Law of The Law Firm. An advertising company utilising what Andy has branded “Open Source Creativity” and “Network Nodes” as tools to create a global network of advertising companies to compete against and deliver greater value over the existing global players.
6. Findings – Very difficult to empirically link the traits of small and micro-enterprises with that of the open source model but inferences can be drawn. Given the similarites, an Open Source organisation model presents an interesting way for small organisations to both compete against larger rivals whilst maintaining their natural abilities of generating innovative ideas and delivering value through a close relationship with their customers.
7. Further Research – A definite need to prove that an Open Source organisation model could effectively allow small businesses to integrate and collaborate with their partners.
Full dissertation here: