Description

Employees increasingly want to participate in the decision-making processes of their organization. Approaches that facilitate organizational participation, such as internal crowdsourcing platforms, can achieve this. However, although organizations of various backgrounds should be able to reap benefits from such systems, in practice, implementation might fail due to an organizational culture built on hierarchical structures, low experience with employee participation and fixed processes. Taking a design science approach, we explore this relation in a five-month case study of a transformational process at a public organization. We design, implement and evaluate an information system for internal crowdsourcing. Based on the results from user-generated content analysis of the proposals and comments, survey data and several in-depth interviews, we observe an IT culture conflict that significantly affects system adoption and use. Our findings contribute to the discussion on theoretical and practical implications for design and implementation of information systems in organizational contexts.

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Aug 10th, 12:00 AM

Crowdsourcing in a Public Organization: Transformation and Culture

Employees increasingly want to participate in the decision-making processes of their organization. Approaches that facilitate organizational participation, such as internal crowdsourcing platforms, can achieve this. However, although organizations of various backgrounds should be able to reap benefits from such systems, in practice, implementation might fail due to an organizational culture built on hierarchical structures, low experience with employee participation and fixed processes. Taking a design science approach, we explore this relation in a five-month case study of a transformational process at a public organization. We design, implement and evaluate an information system for internal crowdsourcing. Based on the results from user-generated content analysis of the proposals and comments, survey data and several in-depth interviews, we observe an IT culture conflict that significantly affects system adoption and use. Our findings contribute to the discussion on theoretical and practical implications for design and implementation of information systems in organizational contexts.