Information Systems · Tilburg University

Poonacha K. Medappa

Assistant Professor (tenured), Information Systems
Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, Tilburg School of Economics and Management

I study how open source software projects and online communities organize and sustain themselves: how they are governed and funded, how firms and volunteer contributors collaborate within them, and how generative AI is reshaping developers’ work and the communities around it. My research combines econometrics with computational methods, to build and test theory from large-scale data on platforms such as GitHub and Stackoverflow.

Curriculum vitae Google Scholar Tilburg research portal
Portrait of Poonacha K. Medappa

Research

My work has appeared in Information Systems Research, Research Policy, Decision Support Systems and the European Journal of Information Systems, and at ICIS, ACM SIGMIS-CPR, SCECR, WISE, WITS, INFORMS and the Academy of Management. I am open to supervising PhD students in these areas.

Topics

Open source softwareIncentives, work structures and governance: licenses, write access, decision rights and organizational ownership.
Generative AI and developersHow tools like GitHub Copilot change productivity, maintenance burden and how teams organize.
Digital platforms and online communitiesDonation- and sponsorship-based funding, knowledge sharing and innovation on platforms.
IS development and project managementAgility, team composition and the survival and creativity of software projects.

Methods

  • Econometrics
  • Causal identification
  • Machine learning for research
  • Data-driven theorization
  • Python · SQL · R · Stata

Grants

  • 2024
    NWO SSH Open Competition XS €50,000
    Understanding the negative impact of AI on open source software development communities. doi:10.61686/HWBDZ39668
  • 2023
    Dutch Government Starter Grant €300,000
    Awarded to early-career faculty to support research and development.

Publications

Journal articles

  1. 2025
  2. 2025
    Impact of categorization autonomy on effective use and adoption intentions
    A. Saghafi, P.K. Medappa, A. Debrliev
    Decision Support Systems 196, 114499 AIS Basket
  3. 2020
    Ideological shifts in open source orchestration: Examining the influence of licence choice and organisational participation on open source project outcomes
    P.K. Medappa, S.C. Srivastava
    European Journal of Information Systems, Special Issue on Orchestration in Contemporary Software Development Ecosystems AIS Basket
  4. 2019

Book chapter

  1. 2017
    From corporate social responsibility to disruptive innovation: Samsung’s Green Memory initiative
    P.K. Medappa, S.C. Srivastava
    In G. Lenssen et al. (Eds.), The Role of Corporate Sustainability in Asian Development, Advances in Business Ethics Research, Vol. 7. Springer.

Papers under review

  1. —
  2. —
    AI-assisted programming may decrease the productivity of experienced developers by increasing maintenance burden
    F. Xu, P.K. Medappa, M.M. Tunç, M. Vroegindeweij, J. Fransoo
    Major revision · Management Science FT50 INFORMS 2024 IS best paper nominee
  3. —
    From source code to theory: Measuring the perceptual attributes of a software artifact for theory development
    P.K. Medappa, S.C. Srivastava, A. Saghafi
    Second-round major revision · European Journal of Information Systems
  4. —
    Towards better rules and play of the game: Trust calculative in digital platforms
    A. Bharadwaj, P.K. Medappa
    Second round (Editorial revision) · Strategic Organization
  5. —
    Impact of AI on organizing: Evidence from GitHub Copilot preview
    S. Devarakonda, P.K. Medappa, M.M. Tunç
    Under review · MIS Quaterly FT50
  6. —
    Creativity in organization-owned open source software development projects: Theorizing the role of decision rights decentralization
    P.K. Medappa, S.C. Srivastava
    Under review · Journal of Operations Management FT50
  7. —
    Transforming Transactive Memory Systems by Human-GenAI Collaboration
    M. Vroegindeweij, P.K. Medappa, C. Ou, M. Tunç
    Under review · MIS Quaterly FT50

Working papers

  1. —
    Impact of defederation on hate and disinformation in online communities: Evidence from Mastodon and the Fediverse
    P.K. Medappa, F. Pethig
  2. —
    Does the AI reviewer alleviate or aggravate the maintenance burden? Evidence from GitHub Copilot Reviewer
    F. Xu, R. Mayya, P.K. Medappa, M.M. Tunç, J.C. Fransoo
    ICIS 2026 · WISE 2026
  3. —
  4. —
    Sorry not sorry? Addressing online threats to organizational reputation
    S.D. Favaron, P.K. Medappa
    SMS 2021
    SMS 2021 Best Proposal Award for Creativity
Refereed conference proceedings (14)
  1. 2025
    GenAI as a coding partner: Productivity gains at the cost of sustainability and maintenance
    F. Xu, P.K. Medappa, M.M. Tunç, M. Vroegindeweij, J. Fransoo
    WITS, Nashville · CIST best student paper nominee
  2. 2024
    How does early involvement of external contributors impact open source software development and maintenance? Evidence from GitHub
    F. Zou, P.K. Medappa, M.M. Tunç
    ICIS, Bangkok
  3. 2024
    The effect of donation-based funding on user innovation in the video game industry
    L. Schopman, P.K. Medappa
    SCECR, Lisbon
  4. 2024
    Does AI technology deployment benefit the owner of the technology? Impact of GitHub Copilot release on Microsoft
    M. Vroegindeweij, P.K. Medappa, M.M. Tunç
    SCECR, Lisbon
  5. 2022
    Where does the money go? Impact of sponsorship-based funding on contribution behaviour in knowledge-sharing platforms
    P.K. Medappa, M. Tunç, X. Li
    WISE, Copenhagen
  6. 2022
    What do you give back? Donation-based funding and effort reallocation in knowledge-sharing ecosystems
    P.K. Medappa, M. Tunç, X. Li
    CIST, Indianapolis
  7. 2022
    Giving back to the community: Cross-platform spillover effects of donation-based funding of open source contributors
    P.K. Medappa, M. Tunç, X. Li
    SCECR, Madrid
  8. 2022
    Overcoming the challenges of measuring creativity of software code
    P.K. Medappa, S.C. Srivastava
    SCECR, Madrid
  9. 2022
    To survive or to innovate? A study of decision rights partitioning and configuration in open source projects
    P.K. Medappa, S.C. Srivastava
    Academy of Management, Seattle
  10. 2021
    Sorry not sorry? Addressing online threats to organizational reputation
    S.D. Favaron, P.K. Medappa
    SMS Annual Conference, Toronto · Best Proposal Award for Creativity in Research
  11. 2020
    Can human judgement be machine sourced? An approach to measure the perceptual dimensions embedded in software
    P.K. Medappa, S.C. Srivastava
    ICIS, India
  12. 2018
    Restrictions in open source: A study of team composition and ownership in open source software development projects
    P.K. Medappa, S.C. Srivastava
    ICIS, San Francisco
  13. 2017
    License choice and the changing structures of work in organization owned open source projects
    P.K. Medappa, S.C. Srivastava
    ACM SIGMIS-CPR, Bangalore · Magid Igbaria Outstanding Paper nominee
  14. 2016
    Does the task structure of open source projects matter? Superposition and value creation
    P.K. Medappa, S.C. Srivastava
    ICIS, Dublin
  15. 2012
    Towards a framework for assessing agility
    P.K. Medappa, S. Bhattacharya
    HICSS, Maui

Open data

$ open opencodenet.org

OpenCodeNet

A crowdsourced, open database of labelled code commits for training and benchmarking models that evaluate software code. More than 3,000 code snippets are labelled on novelty and usefulness, and researchers at Tilburg University, HEC Paris and SKEMA Business School use the data to study the antecedents of innovation in open source projects.

Joint project with A. Saghafi and S.C. Srivastava · 2022

PhD supervision

  • Feiyang Xu, co-supervisor, 2024–present
  • Fan Zou (visiting from Zhejiang University), co-supervisor, 2022–2024
  • Eda Gunel, co-supervisor, 2023–2024

Teaching

Advanced Topics in Information and Supply Chain Management
PhD · Tilburg · 2021–
Machine learning and data-driven theorization in research.
Research Methods, MSc Information Management
MSc · Tilburg · 2020–
Behavioural research with secondary data; econometric and identification methods.
Decision Support Systems
BSc elective · Tilburg · 2019–
Designed and taught; 60 students; evaluation 4.12/5.
Business Intelligence and Business Analytics
MSc · Tilburg · 2019–2022
SQL and Python programming for 150+ students; evaluation 4.2/5.
Data Science and Analytics using Python
PhD elective · HEC Paris · 2018–2019
APIs, web scraping, sentiment analysis and machine learning; evaluation 4.91/5.
Python sessions, Digital Management
MSc · HEC Paris · 2017–2018
Two class groups of about 50 students each.

About

Before academia I spent several years in industry: designing embedded systems at Larsen & Toubro and working as a business analyst in Cognizant’s data warehousing and business intelligence practice. That experience of how software is actually built and used still shapes the questions I ask. I completed my PhD at HEC Paris under Prof. Shirish C. Srivastava and joined Tilburg University in 2019.

Career

  1. HEAD · 2019–presentAssistant Professor (tenured), Tilburg UniversityInformation Management, Department of Management
  2. 2014–2019PhD, HEC ParisInformation Systems and Operations Management · HEC Foundation PhD Fellowship
  3. 2010–2013Business Analyst, Cognizant Technology SolutionsData warehousing and business intelligence, Bangalore
  4. 2008–2010PGDM (MBA), IIM CalcuttaIntern at Alghanim Industries, Kuwait, 2009
  5. 2006–2008Embedded Systems Design Engineer, Larsen & ToubroIndia

Awards and recognition

  • 2024INFORMS Annual Meeting, IS track best paper nominee
  • 2021Winner, Best Proposal Award for Creativity in Research, SMS Competitive Strategy IG
  • 2021Nominee, SMS Research Methods Paper Prize
  • 2019Nominee, HEC Foundation Thesis Award
  • 2017Nominee, Magid Igbaria Outstanding Conference Paper, ACM SIGMIS-CPR

Service

  • Associate Editor, ICIS 2021, 2022, 2023
  • Track Chair, ICEB 2022
  • Co-organizer, EuroIS Workshop 2025
  • Chair, Information Systems recruitment committee, 2024–25
  • Reviewer for MIS Quarterly, ISR, Management Science, JOM, EJIS, JAIS

Outside work: former field hockey player for IIM Calcutta, trained in basic and advanced mountaineering at HMI Darjeeling, and a 2012 Swaniti fellow working on youth participation in public policy in Assam. I speak English, Kannada, Hindi and French.

Contact

Email

p.k.medappa@tilburguniversity.edu

Office

Koopmans Building, K 946
Tilburg University
Warandelaan 2
5037 AB Tilburg, The Netherlands

Elsewhere