New Forms of Employment And IT - Crowdsourcing

Abstract

Crowdsourcing has emerged as new pattern of digitally mediated collaboration. It refers to the outsourcing of certain tasks to an undefined mass of people through an open call. In a crowdsourcing model is always the role of the client; we call crowdsourcer, and the role of undefined contractors, the crowdsourcees or crowdworker. This novel socio-technical arrangement changes the organization of work as well as its general nature and is gaining popularity in recent years. Companies can apply crowdsourcing along their entire value chain and give almost any task to the crowd. These tasks can be roughly divided into three categories (crowdvoting, crowdfunding, crowdcreation) depending on the effort of the crowdworkers. Crowdsourcing differs from existing coordination mechanisms and occurs in an internal and an external form. Whereas external crowdsourcing describes the outsourcing of tasks beyond the company's boundaries through an intermediary, the internal form can be observed by the example of IBM, which uses their own globally distributed workforce as a crowd. While the internal crowdworker as employees retain their participation as well as protection rights and benefit from collective regulations, external crowdsourcing lacks in similar arrangements. Nevertheless, we recognize several motivations of crowdworkers to participate in crowdsourcing initiatives. Besides the monetary compensation, there are other extrinsic and intrinsic motives like social exchange or fun working in the crowd. In general, companies using crowdsourcing benefit from the access to a large pool of knowledge and expertise but also facing risks of losing control or the outflow of internal know-how. Similarly, the individual crowdworkers have advantages in a higher self-determination as well as flexibility and new employment opportunities. However, there are also risks for the crowdworkers, which are based in monotonous work processes, lower rewards or the lack of a legal framework. Hence, there are major challenges in the implementation of crowdsourcing and that is why further research is essential. On the one hand the impact of crowdsourcing on the workforce and changes in work organization should be on the research agenda. On the other hand further research must seek to ensure fair working conditions, because crowdsourcing sustainably changes the nature of work and the availability of labor. It leads to technical, organizational, juristic and social challenges but also opens up chances in new business models and services.