Technological Forecasting & Social Change 162 (2021) 120394

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Technological Forecasting & Social Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore

What antecedent attitudes motivate actors to commit to the ecosystem of T

digital social innovation?
L. Rodrigoa,b, M. Palaciosa,
⁎

a
Management Department, ESCP Business School, C/ Arroyofresno, 1, 28035 Madrid
b
Department Organización, Admón. Empresas y Estadística, ETSII. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid UPM. C/ José Abascal, 2. 28006 Madrid

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The purpose of this article is to identify those antecedent factors affecting the commitment among professionals
Digital social innovation and managers of projects and initiatives that are part of the ecosystem of Digital Social Innovation (DSI) in Spain.
Organizational commitment These factors are related to the commitment experienced towards their job, as well as to their commitment to the
Motivation cause or social goal pursued by the project or organization. The study of the literature allows the development of
Quality of working life attitudes
an iterative theoretical framework that measures the most relevant variables that affect the attitude of these
Social change
actors. Finally, a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is carried out to test a new model looking for those
antecedent attitudes that become core conditions to the success of organizational commitment. What emerges
from the research is that the presence of antecedent factors that belong to the cognitive dimension leads to a high
level of commitment, while the absence of some factors from the affective dimension, together with high levels
of anxiety, lead to a lack of commitment.

1. Introduction Birnbaum, 1998), to build legitimacy and alliances (Ozman and

Digital Social Innovation (DSI) emerged as a sort of social innova-
tion (SI) that would rely on new technologies to solve a wide range of
social problems (Milwood and Roehl, 2019). The success of these sort of
projects and initiatives depends on the capacity of the professionals
involved to engage users, citizens and communities in their projects.
The White paper on the future of Europe ' (European Commission 2017)
points out that professionals are initially motivated by a desire to foster
social change (Stokes et al., 2017). But what factors really generate
commitment in order to get committed professionals for the long-term
in DSI initiatives?
The study of commitment in organizations involved in social and
non-profit purposes has focused mainly on the set of volunteers. The
reason why the study of this segment has been relevant is that volun-
teers are decisive for the survival of the organizations (Clary et al.,
1998). In the case of DSI, volunteers operate both online and offline and
are the link between the digital platforms developed by professionals
and the community. The success of any initiative encompassed by this
young phenomenon necessarily requires citizen participation. But,
within the framework of DSI, professionals are fundamental pillars
when it comes to achieving success precisely as they are responsible for
citizen engagement. Consequently, their commitment is a key outcome
to keep the organizations alive and productive (Somers and
Gossart, 2018). To achieve social change, it can be decisive to know
how these recent social systems influence behaviour (Cajaiba-
Santana, 2014), in particular what are the factors that increase or de-
crease commitment in these interconnected organizations.
Multiple areas of research (sociology, innovation, psychology…)
converge within DSI, all of which were already brought together by the
phenomenon of SI, in addition to those contributed by the inclusion of
technology. In both phenomena, there is an interrelationship between
the subject that operates within the network and the social network
itself. Necessarily, therefore, in the study, two behavioural perspectives
converge, an individualistic and a structuralist approach established by
the social context (Cajaiba-Santana, 2014).
On the one hand, commitment, job satisfaction or work motivation
are invisible, hypothetical constructs (Pinder, 1998). Studies in relation
to these concepts have been developed extensively in the psychological
scientific field trying to identify the most relevant factors of the quality
of working life (QWL) attitudes of employees (Cook and Wall, 1980).
On the other hand, theories that address social change fail to make
forecasts or predictions, mainly due to the complexity of formulating
models that include the myriad of causes that intervene in social phe-
nomena and unexpected changes (Haferkamp and Smelser, 1991).
In general, DSI is a young field of research that lacks literature re-
view and specific behavioural measurement tools. The purpose of this

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: lrodrigo@escp.eu (L. Rodrigo), mpalacios@escp.eu (M. Palacios).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120394
Received 17 June 2020; Received in revised form 2 October 2020; Accepted 5 October 2020
Available online 19 October 2020
0040-1625/ © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
L. Rodrigo and M. Palacios
article is to identify those antecedent factors affecting the commitment
experienced among professionals towards their job and to social goals
pursued by DSI organizations. The literature review allows the devel-
opment of a theoretical framework that takes into account the most
relevant factors that affect the commitment of actors. To illustrate the
causal relationships, an fsQCA analysis is provided. The findings show
some relevant sufficient conditions. According to the most relevant
solutions, commitment arises in professionals for whom work is a cru-
cial component of their lives, who seek success and for that purpose are
committed to doing a good job and have second order needs that drive
them to train and optimize their capabilities. On the other hand, it has
been observed that the lack of commitment could be attributed to
professionals whom work is not close to their life centre or those ones
that show absences in non-work related life issues, such as lack of life
satisfaction, the little importance given to second order needs and a
high degree of anxiety.
This study builds on previous research based on the specific char-
acteristics of the Spanish DSI ecosystem (Rodrigo et al., 2019). From the
field of research, it sheds light on this recent phenomenon, being the
first attempt to measure the motivational attitudes of this unit of ana-
lysis. Moreover, it extends fsQCA applications in the DSI field.
Attitude constitutes a management indicator that allows the com-
parison of different organizations and the generation of useful in-
formation when making management decisions and strategy
(Mitchell, 1982). Thus, this study contributes to give support to man-
agers in order to design effective collaborative structures and processes
in the actor networks (Söderholm et al., 2019). The analysis of this
process-based approach (Butzin et al., 2014), together with the find-
ings, can help to identify the most suitable candidates to achieve the
objectives of the project, assessing their attitudes and the impact of
their activity on the project success (Davis, 2018). In this regard,
findings provide a planning tool for selecting professionals and provide
them with network management skills for specific assignments in order
to achieve the mission that gathers each community.
The following section develops a theoretical framework of events
that describes the motivation process. When dealing with behavioural
aspects, it is designed based on two dimensions, cognitive and affective,
according to the theories related to the motivation. The events are
distributed in three phases. The first one will take into account general
aspects that the professionals experience in relation to their life situa-
tion and the aspects about the way they approach work. The second
phase includes events related to the work experience that the profes-
sionals have developed during their time in the specific projects or
initiatives of the DSI ecosystem. In the last stage, the consequences
derived from the events and situations experienced in the previous
phases are highlighted.
2. Theoretical background
A literature review was done in order to determine the importance
of the attitudes under study. Typically, behavioural issues deal with the
question “why”. Why does an individual behave in a certain way? What
are the reasons that generate the behaviours of individuals? Is it pos-
sible to predict actors’ commitment?
According to Meyer et al. (2004), there is a relation between mo-
tivation and commitment, commitment being a component of the mo-
tivational process. Motivation is a psychological process that activates
the behaviour and directs individuals towards the achievement of cer-
tain goals that satisfy their needs. Mitchell (1997) divides motivation
into processes, “the processes that account for an individual's intensity,
direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal”. Commit-
ment, in turn, influences other variables such as the propensity to leave
the organization or absenteeism and according to Mowday et al. (1982)
is a potential predictor of turnover.
In order to carry out the research, a theoretical framework would
allow a better understanding of the relationship between motivation
2
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 162 (2021) 120394
and commitment. Different models in the field of motivation arise from
diverse methodologies and influences of the dominant orientations. The
conceptual framework proposed represents an iterative motivational
process based on the one developed by Omoto and Snyder (1995) for
organizations with social purposes. It divides the different phases of the
process in three areas: background, experiences and consequences (see
Figure 1. Theoretical motivation process.).
Among the concerns that affect the individual at the antecedent
stage are needs, goals and expectations. Apart from the primary im-
pulses that satisfy physiological needs, there are secondary motivations
that apparently come to satisfy psychological needs (higher order
needs). One of the strongest is the need for achievement (Locke et al.,
1981), which is usually related to success. In addition to the need for
achievement, there are other motivational traits in the workplace: self-
esteem (Korman, 1970) and a tendency to intrinsic motivation. Col-
lected around the Self-determination Theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000),
these conditions inherent to the individuals show variability in beha-
viours like job satisfaction, life satisfaction or performance.
This stage shows two dimensions that define the behavioural pro-
cess:
• Cognitive dimension, comprising activities stemmed from the de-
gree of understanding that the individual has of his own needs, in-
terests and personality (Judge et al., 2002), and
• Affective dimension, gathering activities that assign value to the
actions to be carried out. This dimension reflects the duality be-
tween personal interest and the social structure in which the in-
dividual develops, the influence the individual can exert on his own
activity and on his environment (Bandura, 2006).
Focussing on work motivation, Locke and Latham (2002) describes
it as an internal force that makes individuals act and the external factors
that encourage their action. This duality between internal and external
factors that intervenes when studying motivation was initially observed
by some authors of the last century, such as Flanagan (1954) or
Herzberg et al. (1959), whose dichotomy has caused much controversy.
Two Factors Theory concludes that two types of factors influence mo-
tivation: intrinsic factors, which cause satisfaction, and extrinsic fac-
tors, which do not cause satisfaction but can provoke dissatisfaction.
Many authors disagree with the conclusions of Herzberg's theory about
what produces satisfaction or dissatisfaction. It is already being ques-
tioned whether these theories are still valid (Bassett-Jones and
Lloyd, 2005). Leaving aside the controversy, individuals do not give
equal importance to some factors as they do to others. Warr, Cook &
Wall's seminal works Work and Life Attitudes (Warr et al., 1979;
Cook and Wall, 1980) allow the relevance that actors grant to each one
to be identified. Their surveys also provide information on the general
attitude of professionals towards work, which will have a direct influ-
ence on the quality and quantity of the job carried out.
Apart from the individual traits, society has a primary role in
driving and modulating cognitive and social secondary motions
(Maslow, 1943). There is a close relationship between motivation and
socialization processes, understood as socialization, the network of re-
lationships established by the individuals and from which they learn
values, norms, behaviours and roles, acquiring needs and developing
interests aimed at satisfying them. Accordingly Vroom's theory , needs
are conditioned by the environment, the individuals themselves, their
social background and the culture in which they develop
(Vroom, 1958). Moreover, the social pressure, the individual beliefs and
the probability of success that individuals estimate for a certain beha-
viour shape their behavioural intention.
Thus, according to the attitude dimensions mentioned, the ante-
cedent factors proposed in the framework are:
• higher order need strength, daily life satisfaction and self-rated
anxiety, describing the cognitive dimension, and
L. Rodrigo and M. Palacios
• work involvement, intrinsic work motivation, describing the affec-
tive dimension.
Actions that result from a behaviour are also conditioned intrinsic
and extrinsic factors expressly related to the specific position or job that
the actor holds within the organization. Therefore, at the second stage,
the individual has an experience generated by the development and/or
implementation of the project in which those intrinsic and extrinsic
motivational factors intervene together with other aspects, such as the
skills for the development of the assigned task, the opportunities that
the individual has to undertake it and their own organizational capa-
cities to value the result.
These two stages of the framework come to separate the attitudes.
The antecedent stage includes attitudes towards work, not towards a
particular job, but about the role that work plays in professionals’ lives
along with other vital attitudes. The experience stage will measure the
concerns about the tasks, objectives and responsibilities developed in
DSI organizations.
At the end of the process, an adjustment is made so that employees
can assess possible discrepancies between their antecedent needs and
expectations, between personal and organizational values and possible
breaches of the established psychological contract. If there are dis-
crepancies or breach between them, these will influence the job sa-
tisfaction and therefore the actor's motivation (Zhao et al., 2007). This
stage brings together the consequences of the previous events, with
outcomes such as commitment, job satisfaction, perceived intrinsic
characteristics of the job and interpersonal trust. Induced by the dif-
ferent milestones that bring together the different phases, the actor
modulates the form, direction, intensity and duration of their attitudes
(Pinder, 1998) according to the needs faced in each new iteration of the
process.
For the purpose of the analysis, the theoretical process is simplified
in a theoretical framework detailed inFigure 2. Theoretical framework..
3. Research methodology
This section presents the methodology used to carry out the data
Figure 1. Theoretical motivation process
3
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 162 (2021) 120394
collection and the results of the causality analysis using fsQCA.
3.1. Site and subjects
A first step was to generate a database from the NESTA Foundation
database, 2020, designated by the European Commission as the entity
responsible for the registration of organizations, as well as for the ela-
boration of reports that check out the DSI community
(NESTA Foundation database, 2020).
As of February 2020, a total of 2,267 organizations were developing
1,467 DSI projects in Europe. After the United Kingdom, Spain has been
the second most active country in the European ecosystem with 101
projects developed by 182 organizations (Rodrigo et al., 2019).
A web search of the organizations was carried out, identifying the
professionals involved through LinkedIn, a digital professional network.
All of them have been paid for their contribution and agreed to parti-
cipate in the study. A total of 110 participants were contacted and 32
individuals responded to the survey. The time to complete the survey is
around 12 minutes and 10 seconds.
3.2. Objective
The objective is to identify those attitudes classified as antecedent
factors that will have an impact on organizational commitment, re-
gardless of the factors involved in the experience stage. In short, it is
about identifying factors related to personal needs, involvement, daily
satisfaction and the individual's life situation which activate the com-
mitment from the first phases of the relationship with the DSI organi-
sation.
3.3. Scales
As mention before, DSI is a young field of study that lacks specific
QWL attitudes measurement tools. The development of a new tool, in
turn, requires the instrument to undergo iterative processes of adjust-
ment between conceptualization and operationalization.
Resources available were the first limitations found to carry out this
L. Rodrigo and M. Palacios
Figure 2. Theoretical framework
research. As a result the decision was made to find and adapt a robust
scale that would be easy for any respondent to understand as it would
be distributed through the social networks which are the common
communication channel of these communities.
Among the closed questionnaires, one of the most widespread is the
seminal tool designed by Warr et al. (1979). The Web of Science da-
tabase records an index of document citations to January, 2020 from
1084 citations, proving it to be an active measurement tool. The scales
provide a series of measurements of eleven QWL attitudes, constituting
a robust instrument for both diagnostic and research uses in the ex-
amination of work involvement, intrinsic work motivation, higher
order need strength, perceived intrinsic job characteristics, job sa-
tisfaction, life satisfaction, happiness and self-rated anxiety, inter-
personal trust at work, personal need non-fulfilment and organizational
commitment. The combination of the eleven variables that cover this
instrument are incorporated into the proposed theoretical framework.
To adapt the instrument to the Spanish context, the survey was
subjected to a double forward/backward translation process
(English–Spanish; Spanish–English) by two independent translators.
4. fsQCA data analysis
The last goal of this article is to study the effects of those antecedent
factors which are relevant to the quality of working life and to establish
the relationship among them and their degree of organizational com-
mitment. The justification for the method used to carry out the analysis
is based on the following aspects. Firstly, the fsQCA is a comparative
technique that detects the necessary and sufficient combinations of
factors that lead to a specific result, in the case of this article, the
commitment. Secondly, the technique is designed to address small or
medium sample sizes. In this specific case, we start with a small po-
pulation that generates a small sample (N=32), which makes the object
of study too small to address the analysis through quantitative techni-
ques and, as indicated by Castillo (Medina et al., 2017), too large to
develop an in-depth study of each of the case studies. Finally, it is a
technique that is being widely used in innovation studies (Kraus et al.,
2018).
The definitions of the background factors or causal conditions are
given below, extracted from articles that developed the scales (Wall
et al., 1974; Cook and Wall, 1980). Both definitions and the result also
justify the choice of analysis methodology. Their nature is diffuse since
the items of each scale cannot clearly define the degree of each of the
attitudes, not to mention the different shades that the other definitions
can show within the scientific literature.
4
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 162 (2021) 120394
4.1. Outcomes, causal conditions & calibration
The fsQCA analysis starts with the data set preparation and it is
divided into two stages. The first one defines the outcome and the
conditions (see Table 1). The outcome in this particular study is Or-
ganizational Commitment (OC) and it has been defined in the theore-
tical framework proposed, as shown in Figure 2.
■ Organizational Commitment – This is a concept that intervenes in
areas such as professional, religious or political organizations and
utopian social movements (Sheldon, 1971). Three dimensions are
considered:
•Organizational identification – the “pride in the organization; the
internalization of the organization's goals and values”
•Organizational involvement – “the willingness to invest personal
effort as a member of the organization, for the sake of the orga-
nization” and finally
•Organizational loyalty – “the affection for and attachment to the
organization; a sense of belongingness manifesting a wish to stay”.
The antecedent conditions that could have influence over the out-
come considered are the following:
■ Work involvement – The degree to which individuals place their
work as the cardinal point of their lives, the distance to their vital
centre (Ambrose and Kulik, 1999). It is considered as “the degree to
which a person wants to be engaged in work” in terms of work in
general, not a person's concrete job.
■ Intrinsic work motivation – “the degree to which a person wants
to work well in his/her job in order to get intrinsic motivations”. It is
an internal force, a motivation towards “a personal achievement and
task success” that goes beyond extrinsic factors.
On this scale, as on the previous one, professionals are also asked to
think about work in general, beyond the position they held in DSI
organisations. However, in the authors’ proposal, respondents are
asked to think about a particular job. As our interest for this research
was to observe the general attitude towards work in the antecedent
phase, the scale to measure this aspect has been generalized.
■ Life satisfaction – “the degree to which a person reports satisfac-
tion with salient features of his/her life and life-space.” The scale
does not contain references directly relevant to work.
■ Higher order need strength – “the importance which a person
attaches to the attainment of higher order needs.”
L. Rodrigo and M. Palacios Technological Forecasting & Social Change 162 (2021) 120394

Table 1 Table 3
Outcome and conditions: description and codification Analysis of necessary conditions (Commitment)
Type Name Description Codification Presence of the outcome Absence of the outcome
Consistency Coverage Consistency Coverage
Outcome Commitment Organizational Commitment Fuzzy value
Condition Involvement Work Involvement Fuzzy value Involvement 0.79 0.78 0.75 0.60
Condition Motivation Intrinsic Work Motivation Fuzzy value ~ Involvement 0.59 0.75 0.73 0.74
Condition Satisfaction Life Satisfaction Fuzzy value Motivation 0.75 0.74 0.79 0.64
Condition Need Higher Order Need Strength Fuzzy value ~ Motivation 0.64 0.80 0.68 0.68
Condition Anxiety Self-Rated Anxiety Fuzzy value Life Satisfaction 0.80 0.87 0.68 0.60
~ Life Satisfaction 0.63 0.71 0.85 0.77
Need 0.83 0.80 0.77 0.60
~ Need 0.59 0.76 0.75 0.78
Table 2
Anxiety 0.69 0.65 0.87 0.65
Calibration of the outcome and conditions
~ Anxiety 0.63 0.85 0.54 0.59
Thresholds
Maximum Full Crossover Full non-
value membership point (0.6) membership of the outcome (Beynon et al., 2020). Accordingly, a high value of
(0.9) (0.3)
commitment indicates presence and a low value indicates absence.
Commitment 63 >57 52–57 <52 A frequency threshold of 1 was adopted for both presence and ab-
Involvement 49 >36 32–36 <32 sence of success. The number of possible configurations to consider
Motivation 42 >38 33–38 <33 with five conditions is 32.
Satisfaction 105 >86 73–86 <73 In order to consider the analysis of sufficient conditions valid,
Need 42 >40 37–40 <37
Anxiety 42 >38 25–38 <25
consistency cut-off value must be greater than 0.75 (Ragin, 2009). The
consistency cut-off values adopted in these cases were more robust:
0.95 for success and 0.82 for non-success. Once these consistency cri-
■ Self-rated anxiety – “the degree of anxiety about salient features of teria are imposed, some logical remainders are discarded that are not
his/her life and life-space”. likely to be considered sufficient for the occurrence of the result. The
cases leading to the presence of success of Commitment were 21 cases.
The second stage is the calibration of the raw data used. A fine On the other hand, absence of success, measured in terms of low
calibration of the membership, with values from 0 to 1, transforms Commitment, revealed 15 cases. As shown in Table 4, the Quine-
conventional variables into fuzzy conditions and permits the con- McCluskey algorithm provides eleven cases that comply with the
ceptualization, definition and labelling of the data set. There are three adopted cut-offs.
ways suggested by Ragin (2008). The way selected in this case uses This method offers three types solutions: complex, intermediate and
three values (0.3, 0.6, and 0.9) for the calibration (Table 2). The parsimonious. Table 4 presents the results of the intermediate solution,
thresholds are the following: one for total membership (≥ 0.9), another according to the notation proposed by Fiss (2011). The black circles
for crossover point (0.6), and the last one for full non-membership (≤ denote the presence of the outcome while the white ones denote ab-
0.3). sence of it. Large circles indicate a core condition, appearing in both the
intermediate and the parsimonious solution. Small circles, black or
4.2. Research models white, appear only in the intermediate solution, being considered per-
ipheral conditions. Finally, blank spaces represent an absent or irrele-
Following models have been used for both data sets: vant condition.
The directional expectations most suitable to produce the inter-
Model A: Commitment = f (Involvement, Motivation, Satisfaction, mediate solution for the occurrence of the result, according to the ex-
Need, Anxiety) perience of the authors as professionals of one of the organizations of
Model B: ~ Commitment = f (Involvement, Motivation, the Spanish ecosystem, are: Involvement and Motivation. The result
Satisfaction, Need, Anxiety) shows six configurations, from 1 to 6, leading to high commitment and
7 to 11 leading to low commitment. Solution coverage is 0.87 with a
The symbol (~) represents absence of the outcome. solution consistency of 0.87. On the one hand, solution consistency
The study has two parts: an Analysis of Necessary Conditions and an indicates the level at which data subsets are present in the outcome.
Analysis of Sufficient Conditions. According to Schneider et al. (2010), only solutions with a consistency
value greater than 0.75 are acceptable. The paths shown are considered
4.3. Analysis of necessary conditions valid as consistency values are greater than 0.80 which is the most
restrictive criteria proposed by Ragin (2008) and Eng and
This analysis is based on the evaluation of the participation of the Woodside (2012). On the other hand, solution coverage indicates the
conditions when the outcome participates. A necessary condition is that scope of the solution. In general, the values are high for all them. The
in which its consistency is equal to or higher than 0.90. valid configurations for success of the outcome are shown in Table 4:
Table 3 shows that there is not a condition whose consistency meets N°1 (0.57, 0.91), N°2 (0.55, 0.93), N°3 (0.69, 0.95), N°4 (0.39, 0.94),
that value for either presence or absence of the outcome. In the case of N°5 (0.42, 0.96) and N°6 (0.49, 0.98).
the presence of the outcome, a lowering of the threshold should not be The complex solution is very similar to the intermediate solution. It
ruled out for the condition “Need” as well as the condition “Anxiety” in includes five configurations that match the configurations N°1, N°2,
the case of an absence of commitment. N°3, N°5 and N°6 of the intermediate solution.
Finally, the parsimonious solution produces four possible routes,
4.4. Analysis of sufficient conditions which are:

An analysis is made in the following section of the sufficient condi- ~ Involvement * ~ Anxiety (0.49, 0.93)
tions in order to understand the role of subsets of conditions. It finds a ~ Need * Satisfaction (0.55, 0.94)
combination of different conditions to meet the success or the absence Involvement * Motivation (0.71, 0.87)

5
L. Rodrigo and M. Palacios Technological Forecasting & Social Change 162 (2021) 120394

Table 4
Analysis of sufficient conditions
Success Absence of Success
(High Commitment) (Low Commitment)
Configuration No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Involvement ● ● ● ○ ● ● ○ ○
Motivation ● ○ ● ● ○ ● ● ●
Satisfaction ○ ● ○ ● ○ ○ ○
Need ● ○ ● ○ ○ ○ ○ ●
Anxiety ○ ○ ● ● ● ●
Raw coverage 0.57 0.55 0.69 0.39 0.42 0.49 0.61 0.60 0.57 0.62 0.55
Unique coverage 0.00 0.06 0.07 0.02 0.06 0.02 0.03 0.00 0.01 0.03 0.02
Consistency 0.91 0.93 0.95 0.94 0.96 0.98 0.87 0.86 0.86 0.84 0.89
Solution coverage 0.87 0.81
Solution consistency 0.87 0.82

Motivation * Satisfaction (0.60, 0.92)
Both the parsimonious solution coverage (0.90) and its consistency
(0.85) are higher than the previous solutions.
As can be seen, the importance of Involvement and Motivation are
relevant in the paths of High Commitment since they are “core condi-
tions” in N°1 and N°3 configurations. Furthermore, they appear to-
gether with the Need condition in the most relevant configuration,
which is N°3.
Table 4 also includes the configurations for the absence of success in
its intermediate solution which are N°7 (0.61, 0.87), N°8 (0.60, 0.86),
N°9 (0.57, 0.86), N°10 (0.62, 0.84) and N°11 (0.55, 0.89). Intermediate
solution coverage is 0.81 with a solution consistency of 0.82.
In relation to the directional expectations, the absence of involve-
ment and motivation were considered, as well as the presence of a high
index of anxiety. No more expectations were made about the rest.
The complex solution coincides with the intermediate one while the
parsimonious solution produces three possible paths:
~ Need * ~ Satisfaction (0.70, 0.85)
~ Need * Anxiety (0.66, 0.86)
~ Involvement * Anxiety (0.67, 0.84)
The parsimonious solution coverage is higher (0.87) than the pre-
vious solutions while the consistency remains the same (0.81).
The results point to the role of anxiety in Low Commitment results.
It appears in three of the configurations, including the most relevant
configuration which is N°10, together with the absence of Involvement
as a core condition and Motivation as a peripheral one.
The importance of the absence of Satisfaction and of Need is also
noteworthy. This combination of core conditions also appears in three
of the configurations, N°7 and N°8, with Involvement and Motivation as
peripheral conditions, respectively.
5. Conclusions
The article offers an investigation into one of the aspects relevant to
the development of DSI organizations. For this purpose, a framework of
the events that form part of the motivation process has been drawn up,
showing, through a review of scientific theories, the relationship that
exists between motivation and commitment. Finally, antecedent factors
of the commitment that move professionals are analysed through fsQCA
methodology given the traits of the sample.
In relation to the study of necessary conditions, although none of
them exceeds the established consistency, a lowering of the threshold
should not be ruled out for the conditions “Need” and “Anxiety”, given
that both are fuzzy conditions and the high consistency values regis-
tered. Before being ruled out as necessary conditions, it is suggested to
perform a new extended study with a larger sample and check how
consistencies evolve.
Further, the results of the sufficient analysis show those
combinations of antecedent factors considered to have an impact on
commitment. The relevance of the Involvement and Motivation con-
ditions is remarkable, indicating that these are professionals for whom
work is central to their lives, interested in doing good work and in some
of the cases, with a high degree of second order needs, such as learning
and optimizing their skills in the organizations to which they con-
tribute. For the absence of commitment, the role played by the level of
anxiety, together with a lack of involvement, is a relevant combination
that can avoid commitment. It is also important to note that in this case,
the absence of vital satisfaction and second order needs leads to a lack
of commitment. In other words, in those professionals who show defi-
ciencies in non-work related life issues, such as lack of life satisfaction,
the little importance given to second order needs (perhaps because of
the importance to them of first order needs) and a high degree of an-
xiety lead to a lack of commitment. Professionals who do not place
work close to their life centre and who have a high degree of anxiety
will also lack commitment.
The results have practical implications to maintain professionals’
commitment even when some of the extrinsic factors, such as salary,
disappear. It can help to foster a high commitment also on the part of
volunteers and citizens engaged with their projects.
One of the limitations encountered in carrying out data collection is
the difficulty in locating community members, given the restrictions
due to the Data Protection Law. Another limitation is the small size of
this community.
Future research could analyse the intrinsic and extrinsic factors
specific to DSI jobs which may condition commitment, and focus on
another outcome, such as job satisfaction.
Author statement
Laura Rodrigo: Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis,
Investigation, Data Curation, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - Review
& Editing, Visualization
Miguel Palacios: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources,
Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition
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Laura Rodrigo: PhD (c), Master in Organizational Engineering, Business Organization
speciality, from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Her professional career has
mainly been developed in the private sector, working as head of the business area of an
industrial group, Enusa Industrias Avanzadas. Initially linked to the European project
financed by H2020 framework called Stars4All, she is currently working as a researcher at
the ESCP Business School (Madrid Campus) on lines of research related to the areas of:
• Digital Social Innovation
• digital transformation, collaborating with the Leadership Center (CLyT) of the UPM
and,
• artificial intelligence through the Digital Innvation Hub, AIR4S Artificial
Intelligence and Robotics for Sustainability.
Miguel Palacios: Professor in Entrepreneurship and Organizational Behaviour, Executive
Education Academic Dean and Faculty Director of ESCP Europe Madrid Campus. He
teaches entrepreneurship, organizational design and innovation in programs at all levels
and numerous in company assignments. His research areas are entrepreneurship, orga-
nizational design and new business models. He advises companies and startups in busi-
ness model and organizational design. He has been responsible of the social en-
trepreneurship specialization of the Master in Management (MIM).
Msc from Ecole Centrale Paris, BSc/MSc in Electrical Engineering from Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Master in Business Administration from MIT Sloan School
of Management and Ph. D in Business Administration, he worked as a Development
Engineer in the R&D Department and as a Project Manager in Operations Departments of
Alcatel. He also worked as a Management consulting manager at Cluster (now Oliver
Wyman), in the areas of Strategy, Marketing and Start-up development. He has been a
faculty member at ESCP Europe and at UPM where he teaches Marketing, Strategy and
Entrepreneurship, managed the Business Administration Faculty Unit and several inter-
national programs. He funded and managed actuaupm, the business plan competition at
UPM, that has resulted on over 200 start-ups and tens of millions of € in private invest-
ment. From 2012 to 2014 he has taken part in the area of Business Planning in the
European Commission funded project Eureca. Currently he coordinates the participation
of ESCP Europe in the Europe 2020 funded research project Stars4all, where ESCP Europe
is in charge of the sustainability plan and long term business models.