IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/bushor/v58y2015i1p77-85.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How to work a crowd: Developing crowd capital through crowdsourcing

Author

Listed:
  • Prpić, John
  • Shukla, Prashant P.
  • Kietzmann, Jan H.
  • McCarthy, Ian P.

Abstract

Traditionally, the term ‘crowd’ was used almost exclusively in the context of people who self-organized around a common purpose, emotion, or experience. Today, however, firms often refer to crowds in discussions of how collections of individuals can be engaged for organizational purposes. Crowdsourcing—defined here as the use of information technologies to outsource business responsibilities to crowds—can now significantly influence a firm's ability to leverage previously unattainable resources to build competitive advantage. Nonetheless, many managers are hesitant to consider crowdsourcing because they do not understand how its various types can add value to the firm. In response, we explain what crowdsourcing is, the advantages it offers, and how firms can pursue crowdsourcing. We begin by formulating a crowdsourcing typology and show how its four categories—crowd voting, micro-task, idea, and solution crowdsourcing—can help firms develop ‘crowd capital,’ an organizational-level resource harnessed from the crowd. We then present a three-step process model for generating crowd capital. Step one includes important considerations that shape how a crowd is to be constructed. Step two outlines the capabilities firms need to develop to acquire and assimilate resources (e.g., knowledge, labor, funds) from the crowd. Step three outlines key decision areas that executives need to address to effectively engage crowds.

Suggested Citation

  • Prpić, John & Shukla, Prashant P. & Kietzmann, Jan H. & McCarthy, Ian P., 2015. "How to work a crowd: Developing crowd capital through crowdsourcing," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 77-85.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:58:y:2015:i:1:p:77-85
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2014.09.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681314001438
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.bushor.2014.09.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Seth Cooper & Firas Khatib & Adrien Treuille & Janos Barbero & Jeehyung Lee & Michael Beenen & Andrew Leaver-Fay & David Baker & Zoran Popović & Foldit players, 2010. "Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game," Nature, Nature, vol. 466(7307), pages 756-760, August.
    2. Seelos, Christian & Mair, Johanna, 2005. "Social entrepreneurship: Creating new business models to serve the poor," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 241-246.
    3. Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Hyndman, Rob J., 2014. "A gradient boosting approach to the Kaggle load forecasting competition," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 382-394.
    4. repec:reg:rpubli:460 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Karim R. Lakhani & Jill A. Panetta, 2007. "The Principles of Distributed Innovation," Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, MIT Press, vol. 2(3), pages 97-112, July.
    6. Berthon, Pierre R. & Pitt, Leyland F. & McCarthy, Ian & Kates, Steven M., 2007. "When customers get clever: Managerial approaches to dealing with creative consumers," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 39-47.
    7. Shafer, Scott M. & Smith, H. Jeff & Linder, Jane C., 2005. "The power of business models," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 199-207.
    8. Josh Nesbit & Leila Chirayath Janah, 2010. "Directing Relief Efforts and Creating Jobs through Text Messaging," Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, MIT Press, vol. 5(4), pages 69-72, October.
    9. Kietzmann, Jan H. & Hermkens, Kristopher & McCarthy, Ian P. & Silvestre, Bruno S., 2011. "Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 241-251, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Prpić, John, 2017. "How To Work A Crowd: Developing Crowd Capital Through Crowdsourcing," SocArXiv jer9k, Center for Open Science.
    2. Prpić, John, 2017. "Experiments on Crowdsourcing Policy Assessment," SocArXiv qznpk, Center for Open Science.
    3. Mara Del Baldo & Maria-Gabriella Baldarelli, 2017. "Renewing and improving the business model toward sustainability in theory and practice," International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Prpić, John, 2017. "A Framework for Policy Crowdsourcing," SocArXiv pmfdx, Center for Open Science.
    5. Berthon, Pierre R. & Pitt, Leyland F. & Plangger, Kirk & Shapiro, Daniel, 2012. "Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 261-271.
    6. Prpić, John, 2017. "The Fundamentals of Policy Crowdsourcing," SocArXiv wdtvh, Center for Open Science.
    7. Täuscher, Karl, 2017. "Leveraging collective intelligence: How to design and manage crowd-based business models," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 237-245.
    8. Arash Rezazadeh & Ana Carvalho, 2018. "A value-based approach to business model innovation: Defining the elements of the concept," NIPE Working Papers 12/2018, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    9. Robson, Karen & de Beer, Jeremy & McCarthy, Ian P., 2020. "Open branding: Managing the unauthorized use of brand-related intellectual property," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 63(6), pages 773-785.
    10. Marko Peric & Jelena Durkin & Vanja Vitezic, 2017. "The Constructs of a Business Model Redefined: A Half-Century Journey," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(3), pages 21582440177, September.
    11. Robson, Karen & Plangger, Kirk & Kietzmann, Jan H. & McCarthy, Ian & Pitt, Leyland, 2015. "Is it all a game? Understanding the principles of gamification," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(4), pages 411-420.
    12. Antonio Iazzi & Oronzo Trio & Monica Fait & Lea Iaia, 2013. "Social web communication and CRM in the marketing strategies of wine enterprises," The International Journal of Economic Behavior - IJEB, Faculty of Business and Administration, University of Bucharest, vol. 3(1), pages 103-116, December.
    13. Barbara Del Bosco & Maria Cristina Morra & Valerio Veglio, 2017. "Social media and firm performance: The voice of managers in European contexts," MERCATI & COMPETITIVIT?, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2017(4), pages 53-75.
    14. Prpić, John, 2017. "MOOCs and Crowdsourcing: Massive Courses and Massive Resources," SocArXiv uwess, Center for Open Science.
    15. Paniagua, Jordi & Sapena, Juan, 2014. "Business performance and social media: Love or hate?," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 57(6), pages 719-728.
    16. de Beer, Jeremy & McCarthy, Ian P. & Soliman, Adam & Treen, Emily, 2017. "Click here to agree: Managing intellectual property when crowdsourcing solutions," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 207-217.
    17. Konstantin Fursov & Thomas Thurner, 2016. "God Helps Those Who Help Themselves! A Study of User-Innovation in Russia," HSE Working papers WP BRP 59/STI/2016, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    18. Oleg Curbatov, 2013. "The 'Knowledge Marketing': A New Trend In A Management Science World," Post-Print hal-01509370, HAL.
    19. Murphy Patrick J. & Pollack Jeff & Nagy Brian & Rutherford Matthew & Coombes Susan, 2019. "Risk Tolerance, Legitimacy, and Perspective: Navigating Biases in Social Enterprise Evaluations," Entrepreneurship Research Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 9(4), pages 1-19, October.
    20. Ionica Oncioiu & Sorinel Căpuşneanu & Dan Ioan Topor & Ana Maria Ifrim & Ramona Camelia Silvestru & Monica Ioana Toader, 2021. "Improving Business Processes in a Construction Project and Increasing Performance by Using Target Costing," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(1), pages 21582440219, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:58:y:2015:i:1:p:77-85. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.