# Mass Collaboration and Learning: Opportunities, Challenges, and Influential Factors
## 4 Analysis of Affecting Factors
### Organizational Structures
#### 4.1.2 Organizational Structure and Mass Collaboration
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{|p{113.8 pt}|p{113.8 pt}|p{113.8 pt}|p{113.8 pt}|p{113.8 pt}|p{113.8 pt}|} \hline \multicolumn{5}{|c|}{**Collaborative Network**} \\ \hline \multicolumn{5}{|c|}{**Long-Term Strategic Network**} & \multicolumn{2}{c|}{**Goal-Oriented Network**} & \multicolumn{2}{c|}{**Ad-Hoc Collaboration**} \\ \hline - & Virtual organizations & - Professional Virtual Breeding Environment (VBE) & - Professional Virtual Community (VEC) & - Grasping opportunity driven network & - Continuous production driven network & - & Flash mob \\ \hline - & Industry cluster & - & Extended enterprise & - & Supply chain \\ - & Industry district & - & Virtual Enterprise & - & Collaborative e-government \\ - & Disaster rescue network & - & Virtual Organization & - & Collaborative smart grid \\ - & Business ecosystem & - & Virtual team & - & Distributed manufacturing \\ - & Collaborative innovation network & & & & \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: Taxonomy of Collaborative Network based on [23]. of used organizational structures in collected papers are depicted in Figure 2. Besides, examples of addressed structures and corresponding references are presented in Table 5.  
From the findings it can also be added that as the level of collaboration is shifting from small and medium size to large scale, and thus the structures should be respectively reconfigured. If a community in mass collaborative projects intends to acquire more knowledge, not only the organizational structure needs to be adequately dynamic, but also members' network position should be well matched with the organizational perspective. Nevertheless, in this context, there are some important issues that remain unaddressed, including:  
* As mass collaboration is a form of decentralized and self-directed action, how and by whom should its structure be defined, designed, developed, and coordinated? * How can all participants be well prepared for a defined task that needs to be accomplished? * How can participants with similar abilities work effectively together on specialized tasks (differentiation by specialization)? * Whether some recommended structures like, Holacracy (the community becomes a hierarchy of self-directed and self-organized teams, governed by a constitution) [52], or Flatter (unlike the traditional hierarchy, a flatter structure opens the lines of communication and collaboration, and there is no job titles, seniority, managers, or exectives) [53] can be suitable alternatives for mass collaborative learning projects or not? In a nutshell, considering background knowledge from the area of collaborative networks, it can be expected that community learning through mass collaboration could be helped if existing models of organizational structures for long-term strategic networks are extended to allow more fluid borders and new roles, incentives, and internal subgroups are defined to focus on learning and knowledge generation. Furthermore, by considering the organizational structures of successful examples of mass collaboration, picking up their most suitable features and characteristics, and integrating them  
Figure 2: Types and percentages of mentioned structures in the collected papers. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline VBE & [24; 25] \\ \hline PVC & [26; 27; 28; 29; 30; 31] \\ \hline Multi-stakeholder & [32; 33; 34] \\ \hline Business ecosystem & [1] \\ \hline Collaborative innovation network & [35; 36; 37] \\ \hline Virtual organization & [5; 38] \\ \hline Virtual team & [1; 39; 40; 41; 42; 43; 44] \\ \hline Mass collaboration & [45; 46; 47] \\ \hline Informal network & [1] \\ \hline Hybrid & [48; 49; 50; 51] \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 5: Examples of addressed structures and corresponding references. in a single framework, it is expected to gather hints for a general organizational structure for mass collaborative learning purposes. In other words, the process combines background knowledge from organizational models of collaborative networks with evidence from promising emerging cases of mass collaboration.