Paper ID
1937
Paper Type
full
Description
Rapid advances in Information Technology (IT) have enabled organizations to venture beyond their workforce to seek solutions to vital business problems through online crowdsourcing platforms. Such platforms are characterized by geographically dispersed self-organizing teams that compete with one another to evolve the best solutions to challenging issues that confront organizations. Despite the growing popularity of crowdsourcing, there is a paucity of empirical research on: a) how participants on these platforms form teams; and b) how the composition of these teams affects their performance. In this paper, we investigated solvers’ teaming preferences and their impact on performance in an online crowdsourcing competition platform. Specifically, we explored demographics and acquired characteristics as potential predictors of the choice of a teammate. The findings of this study provide insights on the role of homophily and diversity of solver characteristics on team formation and performance in crowdsourcing competitions.
Recommended Citation
Dissanayake, Indika; Nerur, Sridhar; and Zhang, Jie, "Team Formation and Performance in Online Crowdsourcing Competitions: The Role of Homophily and Diversity in Solver Characteristics" (2019). ICIS 2019 Proceedings. 5.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2019/crowds_social/crowds_social/5
Team Formation and Performance in Online Crowdsourcing Competitions: The Role of Homophily and Diversity in Solver Characteristics
Rapid advances in Information Technology (IT) have enabled organizations to venture beyond their workforce to seek solutions to vital business problems through online crowdsourcing platforms. Such platforms are characterized by geographically dispersed self-organizing teams that compete with one another to evolve the best solutions to challenging issues that confront organizations. Despite the growing popularity of crowdsourcing, there is a paucity of empirical research on: a) how participants on these platforms form teams; and b) how the composition of these teams affects their performance. In this paper, we investigated solvers’ teaming preferences and their impact on performance in an online crowdsourcing competition platform. Specifically, we explored demographics and acquired characteristics as potential predictors of the choice of a teammate. The findings of this study provide insights on the role of homophily and diversity of solver characteristics on team formation and performance in crowdsourcing competitions.