The COVID-19 pandemic has catalyzed a global transition to working from home (WFH) arrangements. This unprecedented shift to remote work has instigated profound and lasting impacts on work productivity. Understanding such impacts on work productivity is crucial for guiding policy and decision-making at multiple levels. It can help reshape individual approaches to work-life balance, redefine organizational strategies on WFH arrangements, and inform governmental policies or legislation aimed at supporting remote work. However, the impact of lockdown on work productivity, especially within innovation-driven domains such as open source software (OSS) development, remains largely unexplored.

Jin Hu, a doctoral student co-supervised by Associate Professor Daning Hu of the Business School at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), and Professor Michael Chau of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), recently published a paper that delves deep into the impacts of lockdown on developers’ contributions to OSS while WFH during the COVID-19 pandemic. The global shift towards WFH, prompted by pandemic-induced lockdown measures, significantly impacted various industries, particularly the information sector. This transition to WFH has undeniably altered productivity dynamics, yet its influence on OSS contributions remained largely unexplored.

Their work, entitled “The impacts of lockdown on open source software contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic”, has been published in Research Policy, a leading journal in the field of innovation studies. It is listed as one of the 50 journals used by the Financial Times to compile its business-school research ranks, and scores “4*” in the Association of Business Schools (ABS) 2021 ranking of innovation-focused journals.

To fill this research gap, the paper utilizes two lockdowns in China as natural experiments to investigate their impacts on developers’ OSS contributions on GitHub, the world’s largest OSS platform. The findings revealed that the lockdown increased developers’ OSS contributions by 9% during the late-stage pandemic. A survey study indicated that this was due to developers adapting to WFH and effectively leveraging their time and flexibility at home. Moreover, the study showed that the lack of face-to-face interactions had a negative impact on OSS contributions, challenging the assumption that online interactions can substitute for face-to-face interactions without a loss in productivity.

The study allowed the researchers to understand their adaptation to the new normal of WFH throughout various pandemic stages. It also provided various stakeholders with vital knowledge to prepare for future disruptions, foster sustainable resilience, and adeptly navigate the evolving landscape of remote work in a post-pandemic world.

Jin Hu is the first author of this paper. Prof. Daning Hu is the sole corresponding author, with SUSTech as the exclusive corresponding affiliation.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Shenzhen Humanities & Social Sciences Key Research Bases, Guangdong Province Focus Research Project, and Guangdong Province Research Fund.

Paper link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733323001695

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