Transforming Work Organization with Internal Crowds: a Process Theory

Internal crowdsourcing showed a substantial increase of use in recent years, since it describes a promising alternative to traditional orchestration of employees in today’s digital era. However, literature falls short in explaining the transformation process that is enacted by such approaches of platform-based work organization. We apply a process ontology on internal crowdsourcing as platform-based mode of work organization, following two organizations employing internal crowdsourcing in a case study approach for over four years. On a macro level, our theory describes the transformation process enacted by internal crowdsourcing as three-phased process. On the micro-level, we illustrate that this transformation process is driven by specific design choices on single elements. In so doing, our process theory contributes to a better understanding of internal crowdsourcing as means for transformation work organization and to STS theory by showing that the emergence and constitution of STS is mainly driven by processes on a micro-level.