Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • 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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  • Publication
    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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  • Publication
    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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  • Publication
    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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  • Publication
    Exploiting the Digitization of Leisure Time: Casual Work and Additional Earnings for Individuals on Crowdworking Platforms
    Besides seminal effects and implications on individual’s lives and their social interactions, the increasing digitization also offers individuals new opportunities for casual work and additional earnings. One ‘instrument’ to exploit such opportunities are crowdworking platforms – electronic platforms that act as intermediaries between organizations who offer work and individuals who process it. These platforms include a paradigmatic change – work is not assigned to individuals anymore, they instead choose themselves what kind of work and when they proceed it. Such work is often done to ‘make some money on the side’, using mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets and exploiting idle time such as waiting time respectively leisure time. This paper examines current working opportunities for individuals via such crowdworking platforms. We show which kind of platforms are especially suitable for such individual casual work and derive possible future implications.
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  • Publication
    Work Organization in Online Platform Ecosystems
    Crowdsourcing as a new paradigm how to proceed (paid and unpaid) work has gained momentum in the last years. Numerous companies and other organizations use “the wisdom of crowds” (Surowiecki 2004) for their goals. In the context of the paid part of crowdsourcing that is processed via online platforms one can name “crowdworking platforms” (Mrass et al. 2017c), the World Bank recently predicted in a study a global increase in market volume from 2.1 billion USD in 2013 and 4.8 billion USD in 2016 up to 25 billion USD in 2020 (see Kuek et al. 2015, p. 20-25). However, these and other data about such platforms and their surrounding “ecosystems” heavily rely on estimations using only some platforms and trying to project their data to a greater scale. To the best of knowledge of the author of these lines for the paper-a-thon format, there is no data available so far that covers a larger (e.g. a country) definable region (and let alone the whole world) and that relies not only on estimations, but also on “real” data from crowdworking platforms representative for the “total population” of platforms from that region. This view was also confirmed by the answer to a respective request made by the author of this paper to the central official statistical authority in Germany (Statistisches Bundesamt/see: www.destatis.de) for that region. Nevertheless, such data would be beneficial for several stakeholders: Economy, since many companies currently wonder if they could and should consider crowdworking platforms for the processing of work (Zogaj 2016). Politics, since a lot of questions regarding minimum wage requirements and the status of crowdworkers arose (see e.g. Benner 2014). And not least science, since research about such platforms with the exception of some US-American crowdworking platforms is scarce and would benefit from more data as a basis for further explorations.
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