Overview of crowdsourcing

Kauranen & Hossain (2015) in their publication based on the review of 346 articles on crowdsourcing gathered the following list of overlapping terms: peer production, user-powered systems, user-generated content, collaborative systems, community systems, peer production, user-powered systems, user-generated content, collaborative systems, community systems, social systems, social search, social media, collective intelligence, wikinomics, crowd wisdom, smart mobs, mass collaboration and human computation (p. 3). This allows making an assumption that crowdsourcing is gaining substantial interest from researchers and scholars, hence, the same assumption might be applicable to Cloud consulting as well.

Among other discussions that are irrelevant for this report, Kauranen & Hossain (2015) provided review on the motivation of crowds to participate in crowdsourcing projects. Those motivations differ based on the nature of the task. Authors identified two types of crowd motivations: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is prevalent in social projects, social journalism, state and community building. Wikipedia is the best example of the project being realized by intrinsically motivated crowds. Extrinsic motivation occurs when people participate in complex projects. Authors state that it is still unclear which theory may describe extrinsic motivation, but they found that people are motivated by mostly financial rewards. However, there is a proviso that performance-contingent awards are more suitable for innovation contests. Nevertheless, theoretical frameworks explaining and bringing understanding of motivations of people to participate in crowdsourcing projects are not enough and multiple aspects are still unclear.

Kauranen & Hossain (2015) found that crowdsourcing is a rather easy and cheap way of fast data gathering that might be crucial for crisis in the company. The largest crowdsourcing platform that authors mention is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which is a platform for microtasking, i.e. it helps to complete a big task through small contribution from each of a large number of people. However, there are certain limitations of the existing microtasking platforms such as accuracy of information, control over crowds, response time and possible unavailability of relevant crowds. Kauranen & Hossain (2015) also emphasize the importance of the user interface of the platform. If the interface is not convenient or because of the bulky way of presenting comments or posts by participants of the project some people do not get much attention from others and tend to leave the project.

Moreover, amount of publications on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regulation in crowdsourcing is very small. IPR are crucial for cloud consulting in terms of applying experts’ publications or usage of certain research results or self-developed tools. There are several books since 2011 written on crowdsourcing.

“Crowdsourcing” by Daren C. Brabham has detailed description of the process. The book provides explanation of the main features of this source of knowledge. Apart from the basic description future forecast of usage of crowdsourcing is presented.

In the history of this process, several definitions have been introduced. In fact, a research by Enrique Estellés-Arolas and Fernando González-Ladrón-de-Guevara in the Journal of Information Science 2012, showed that more than 40 different decisions have been formed for it. After this research they created a final definition:

“Crowdsourcing is a type of participative online activity in which an individual, an institution, a nonprofit organization, or company proposes to a group of individuals of varying knowledge, heterogeneity, and number, via a flexible open call, the voluntary undertaking of a task. The undertaking of the task, of variable complexity and modularity, and in which the crowd should participate bringing their work, money, knowledge, and/or experience, always entails mutual benefit. The user will receive the satisfaction of a given type of need, be it economic, social recognition, self-esteem, or the development of individual skills, while the crowdsourcer will obtain and utilize to their advantage what the user has brought to the venture, whose form will depend on the type of activity undertaken.”

Crowdsourcing is a completely new phenomenon. It appeared through Internet and cannot exist offline. Crowdsourcing is a problem-solving process and allows the organization to increase the number of people who bring ideas through the Internet.

Conceptually, crowdsourcing can be explained through the processes of problem solving and innovation as well as through the group phenomena of collective intelligence and the wisdom of crowds.

The same 2012 year Mosley, E. issued “The Crowdsourced Performance Review: How to Use the Power of Social Recognition to Transform Employee Performance”. The book discusses the value of social recognition and the influence between crowdsourcing and human resource management. Social recognition assumes that the knowledge exchange process is driven by constant acknowledgement of every participants progress. This way crowdsourcing can as well let the participants know about everybody’s contribution into the process. However, crowdsourcing is characterized as a way of working in trustful and positive and thus creative atmosphere.

More and more news articles appear to announce companies introducing new services related to crowdsourcing

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 606