Analyzing the critical success factors of countries hosting crowdsourcing initiatives

Abstract

Given the imperatives companies have had to live in the early years of the XXI century: economic uncertainty, tight budgets, interconnectivity, optimization of processes and shorter decision periods, crowdsourcing seems to be the answer for this decade’s challenge. This new model is defined by the outsourcing process of a company’s activities and tasks to the crowd through an open call (Howe 2006). However the crowdsourcing process is more complex than having a company with a problem finding the right worker to solve it. (Malone, et al., 2010) In this sense, crowdsourcing has been recently discussed as an emergent organizational paradigm (Villarroel et al, 2011a, 2011b), in the context of a globally interconnected economy. Many factors could explain that in a given country more crowdsourcing initiatives are performed than in others. This thesis focuses on developing a theoretical model exploring how different country-level characteristics explain different levels of crowdsourcing activity. Two key success factors have been identified in nations with a greater amount of crowdsourcing initiatives: (1) the development of the information and communications technology, and (2) the nature and training of the working age population. This topic is of relevance for managers and academics since it is, to the best of our knowledge, the first empirical measurement studying the core country-characteristics driving the workflows of this emergent organizational model. Crowdsourcing platforms could use this insight to decide on their marketing efforts put into a specific country. The results offer them insight whether the country has the necessary critical factors for crowdsourcing to be effective.

Date of Award	Jun 2012
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Juan Andrei Villarroel Fernandéz (Supervisor)