Now showing 1 - 10 of 24
  • Publication
    How Companies Can Benefit from Interlinking External Crowds and Internal Employees
    (Kelley School of Business, 2021-03-01)
    Mrass, Volkmar
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    Based on insights from an engineering design project conducted by Airbus and Local Motors, we describe how companies can leverage hybrid working by interlinking external crowds and internal employees, to increase the agility, quality and speed of product development. We identify the benefits and risks of hybrid working and describe the different ways of interlinking external crowds and internal employees. Finally, we provide recommendations for company executives who want to explore the use of hybrid working
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    Crowdworking Platforms in Germany: Business Insights from a Study & Implications for Society
    The competitiveness of organizations and whole economies depends on how successfully they are able to cope with the digital transformation and new technological trends. In the area of digital work, crowdworking platforms emerged as intermediaries that support a new form of service delivery and work organization. Despite their increasing importance, there is only few data about key characteristics of such platforms such as number of employees or revenues. Furthermore, extant data often focusses only on a few platforms, mostly from the US. Based on results from a study about the 32 crowdworking platforms that have their headquarters or a physical location in Germany, we provide data that for the first time allows to draw conclusions for the “total population” of crowdworking platforms in a defined larger region (Germany as Europe’s largest and the world fourth largest economy). These results are valuable for various stakeholders from economy and politics, allowing them to make economic or political decisions on a more informed basis. Furthermore, we develop an evaluation framework that depicts the implications for these groups along the dimensions costs, flexibility, “humanity”, quality, and time: Crowdworking platforms on the one hand provide several opportunities: Individuals gain more flexibility, groups can benefit from additional contributors, organizations have the potential to process work faster and cheaper. On the other hand, this novel form of work organization also includes potential threats for all groups: Low payments and ‘tayloristic’ work, insufficient quality or irritation of internal employees. Based on 12 interviews with company representatives and crowdworkers, we evaluate implications of this novel form of work organization for society.
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    Managing Work Systems for Complex Work via Crowdworking Platforms - How to Orchestrate the Interplay of Crowds
    ( 2019)
    Mrass, Volkmar
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    Companies and other organizations have increasingly ‘discovered’ crowdsourcing as a new form how to organize their work. However, many of the platforms who manage the work system necessary to process that work focus mainly on rather simple work or work of medium complexity. Drawing on work system theory (WST) and insights from literature, in depths-case studies with 14 crowdworking platforms, a written survey among 32 platform providers and four workshops with experts from practice and research, we investigate how these crowdworking platforms can also successfully manage more complex work. Based on our analysis, we present measures to do so, classified along the core WST-elements processes and activities, participants, information, and technologies. One main measure we identified is the close gearing of external and internal crowds, fostering the advantages and mitigating the disadvantages of crowdsourcing. With our research, we aim at providing insights how to further exploit the potential of crowds.
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    Managing Complex Work Systems via Crowdworking Platforms: How Deutsche Bank Explores AI Trends and the Future of Banking with Jovoto
    Crowdsourcing has evolved into a powerful new instrument for companies. In the last years, crowdworking platforms that manage work systems as intermediaries between crowdsourcers and crowd workers have increasingly been used. Nevertheless, they currently often manage rather simple work systems. Although they have the potential for managing more complex ones, there is still little knowledge how this can be done and what measures are necessary to do so. To explore this question in more detail, we investigate three seminal projects that Deutsche Bank completed with the crowdworking platform Jovoto and that aimed at exploring AI trends and developing concepts for the future of banking. We derive measures necessary for the successful management of complex work systems and provide a model as guidance for both companies and crowdworking platform operators. With our findings, we extend current knowledge in the realm of IS, organizational theory, and platform ecosystems.
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    Managing Complex Work Systems via Crowdworking Platforms: How Intel and Hyve Explore Future Technological Innovations
    Crowdsourcing has the potential to change the way how companies and other organizations are working currently. Numerous companies are already exploiting this new form of work organization and are utilising the “wisdom of crowds”. Crowdworking platforms as intermediaries that manage the work system including customer companies and crowd workers play an important role in this context. Nevertheless, they currently mostly manage rather simple work systems that process rather plain work. In this summary for the HICSS 2018 Doctoral Consortium, we depict our current work in progress that aims at investigating how such platforms could also manage more complex work systems – a question that is crucial for the future success of this business model. Using the case of Intel and the crowdworking platform Hyve, we investigate one successful approach to tackle this challenge, elaborate on our method used as well as the theoretical background and communicate our first, preliminary findings.
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    Managing Complex Work Systems via Crowdworking Platforms: The Case of Hamburger Hochbahn and Phantominds
    In the last decade, crowdsourcing has emerged as a new form of work organization. Crowdworking platforms as intermediaries between crowdsourcing companies and crowd workers have gained importance in this process. Currently, many of these platforms manage rather simple work systems. Using the case of the German Hamburger Hochbahn AG and the innovation platform Phantominds, this paper investigates measures necessary for crowdworking platforms to be able to manage also more complex work systems. To derive such measures, we analyze the work system of Hamburger Hochbahn and Phantominds, explore the interplay between the crowd and the platform provider and subsequently provide recommendations for companies that would like to use crowdworking platforms for the processing of work and for platform operators. With this paper, we extend current knowledge in the realms of IS, organizational theory, and platform ecosystems.
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    Towards a taxonomy of digital work
    ( 2017)
    Mrass, Volkmar
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    Despite the increasing importance of digitization for economy and society, there is few structuring of the very heterogenous kinds of digital work. Representatives from business, politics and science need a basis for the development of strategies to encounter the challenges that result from this digitization. We aim at delivering a contribution to that basis by systematically investigating what different types of digital work exist and by developing a taxonomy. As a first important step towards this goal, we investigate in this paper what digital work tools exist since such tools are a major constituent element of digital work. Using a hybrid approach including both a deductive conceptual-to-empirical and an inductive empirical-to-conceptual procedure, we create an artifact that gives business leaders an overview of existing digital work tools as a basis for strategic decisions and at the same time provides researchers with stimuli for future investigations in the dynamic domain of digital work.