For decades, researchers have seen employee empowerment as the means to achieving a more committed workforce that would deliver better outcomes. The prior conceptual and descriptive research focused on structural empowerment, or workplace mechanisms for generating empowerment, and psychological empowerment, the felt empowerment. Responding to calls for intervention studies, this research experimentally tests the effects of structural empowerment changes, through different degrees of decision-making authority and access to customer-relationship information, on psychological empowerment and subsequent work-related outcomes. Using a virtual contact center simulation, crowdsourced workers responded to customer requests. Greater decision authority and access to customer-relationship information resulted in higher levels of psychological empowerment which in turn resulted in task satisfaction and task attractiveness outcomes among the crowdsourced customer service workers.

Submitted by Mayara Nascimento (mayara.nascimento@ufba.br) on 2016-05-31T14:24:19Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertacaoFinal_JailsonBrito.pdf: 8285519 bytes, checksum: 0f944fc931417ea896b401de1fae62c2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Alda Lima da Silva (sivalda@ufba.br) on 2016-06-03T23:19:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertacaoFinal_JailsonBrito.pdf: 8285519 bytes, checksum: 0f944fc931417ea896b401de1fae62c2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-03T23:19:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertacaoFinal_JailsonBrito.pdf: 8285519 bytes, checksum: 0f944fc931417ea896b401de1fae62c2 (MD5) / Sistemas colaborativos são sistemas baseados em computador que apoiam grupos de pessoas em atividades que demandam colaboração. Um meio de colaboração é o crowdsourcing. Comunidades online utilizam crowdsourcingpara diversos fins, através de uma multidão de usuários que colaboram para resolver problemas. Massa crítica, a motivação e o comportamento das pessoas em participar são essenciais para o sucesso do crowdsourcing. O comportamento do participante do crowdsourcing é um tópico importante de pesquisa. É necessário entender a motivação do usuário em participar, e os desenvolvedores precisam incorporar elementos de motivação e projetar mecanismos de incentivo. Um dos desafios do crowdsourcing é como projetar interfaces de usuário que possam atrair e manter um grande número de pessoas participando do crowdsourcing – garantindo como rápido aprendizado usabilidade e confiança na colaboração. Gamificação, o uso de elementos de jogos em contextos que não são jogos, tem sido aplicada para engajar pessoas em comunidades online que demandam colaboração dos participantes. Gamificação aproveita de como os jogos eletrônicos engajam jogadores a resolverem problemas fictícios para engajar os mesmos jogadores a resolver problemas do mundo real. Apesar dos estudos gamificação em sistemas colaborativos estarem crescendo cada vez mais, a maioria das abordagens experimentais de gamificação são ad-hoc. Não existe uma abordagem sistemática para implementar gamificação em sistemas colaborativos. Nesse sentido, essa dissertação tem o objetivo de obter um melhor entendimento sobre como a gamificação pode ser utilizada para projetar a experiência de usuário de atividades de colaboração em sistemas móveis crowdsourcing. Após o estudo do estado da arte da gamificação em sistemas colaborativos, e verificação da carência de abordagens sistemáticas para projetar a gamificação em sistemas colaborativos, investigamos como implementar a gamificação em duas aplicações móveis crowdsourcing que demandam a colaboração entre os usuários. Explicamos aqui nossas descobertas e discutimos as decisões tomadas para implementar gamificação em nossos estudos de caso. Além disso, apresentamos o experimento realizado com as versões originais e gamificadas das interfaces de usuário para avaliar a abordagem utilizada. Ambos estudos de casos resultaram em evidências sobre a utilidade da gamificação para a colaboração. Por fim, propomos uma versão preliminar de uma abordagem sistemática para projetar a experiência de usuário de atividades colaborativas em sistemas crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing and microtasks are a relatively new way to issue units of work to a large group of potential workers. This form of outsourcing to a vast on-demand workforce offers the potential to significantly change the way we work. But how can design impact how both the requester and the workforce interact and benefit from these tasks? This dissertation considers four aspects of microtask design: value, engagement, context, and complexity. Through four distinct, but highly related, investigations these four facets are ex- plored, analysed and synthesised into a considered review of microtask design. First we build a picture of the demographic and financial status of these crowdworkers by surveying the US-based crowdworker labour-force on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. This improved understanding of the value of crowd work, not just to requesters but to workers as well, is crucial to appropriately listing tasks in a commoditised labour market. Second, worker engagement is also a significant factor, not just in quality and cost, but also in uptake and effective completion speed. By introducing a new metric, conversion rate, and contrasting a variety of differing presentational and conceptual features across two demographics, we demonstrate an improved understanding of how tasks engage workers. The increasing use of mobile devices, including among crowdworkers, offers new opportunities to collect additional context about worker behaviour. Enhancing the data gathered by requesters can be used, not only to improve quality, but also to expand the types of tasks which can be effectively crowdsourced. This third contribution highlights enthusiasm by some workers for mobile tasks, and demon- strates how previously small-scale sensor-based data collection can increasingly be carried out by the crowd. Finally, the boundary between microtasks and macrotasks is investigated. Exploring how complex tasks, such as software development, can be successfully crowdsourced offers insight into how task design can influence suitability of these larger tasks on microtask markets.

abstract: Although many examples have demonstrated the great potential of a human crowd as an alternative supplier in creative problem-solving, empirical evidence shows that the performance of a crowd varies greatly even under similar situations. This phenomenon is defined as the performance variation puzzle in crowdsourcing. Cases suggest that crowd development influences crowd performance, but little research in crowdsourcing literature has examined the issue of crowd development. This dissertation studies how crowd development impacts crowd performance in crowdsourcing. It first develops a double-funnel framework on crowd development. Based on structural thinking and four crowd development examples, this conceptual framework elaborates different steps of crowd development in crowdsourcing. By doing so, this dissertation partitions a crowd development process into two sub-processes that map out two empirical studies. The first study examines the relationships between elements of event design and crowd emergence and the mechanisms underlying these relationships. This study takes a strong inference approach and tests whether tournament theory is more applicable than diffusion theory in explaining the relationships between elements of event design and crowd emergence in crowdsourcing. Results show that that neither diffusion theory nor tournament theory fully explains these relationships. This dissertation proposes a contatition (i.e., contagious competition) perspective that incorporates both elements of these two theories to get a full understanding of crowd emergence in crowdsourcing. The second empirical study draws from innovation search literature and tournament theory to address the performance variation puzzle through analyzing crowd attributes. Results show that neither innovation search perspective nor tournament theory fully explains the relationships between crowd attributes and crowd performance. Based on the research findings, this dissertation discovers a competition-search mechanism beneath the variation of crowd performance in crowdsourcing. This dissertation makes a few significant contributions. It maps out an emergent process for the first time in supply chain literature, discovers the mechanisms underlying the performance implication of a crowd-development process, and answers a research call on crowd engagement and utilization. Managerial implications for crowd management are also discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2017

Equity crowdfunding is a financing tool argued to be the future of small business financing. Beside financial benefits it is argued to be several non-financial benefits, one being the ability to use the crowdfunders for knowledge. Knowledge transfer has been widely researched, but little has been done to investigate how knowledge is transferred between firms and crowdfunders in an equity crowdfunding context. This study aim to address this research gap by using Szulanski’s (1996) model for the knowledge transfer process and four influencing factors: knowledge, absorptive capacity, motivation and relationship. This study qualitatively investigates five equity crowdfunded firms by conducting semi- structured interviews and reviewing secondary data. The findings indicate that a majority of the firms consider crowdfunders as a potential source of explicit knowledge regarding consumer insights. Knowledge was found to be transferred via social media, email, surveys and social interaction. The crowdfunders need encouragement in order to share knowledge and social interaction was the most effective way to acquire and transfer knowledge. The large number of crowdfunders creates a weak relationship that is difficult to manage, but it does not impede the transfer of explicit knowledge. The desire to use the crowdfunders as a source of knowledge is high yet limited by time and resources as well as experience and ideas for how to best transfer knowledge from the crowdfunders.

Despite the increasing availability of personal fabrication hardware and services, the true potential of digital fabrication remains unrealized due to lack of computational techniques that can support 3D shape design by nonexperts. This work develops computational methods that address two key aspects of content creation:(1) Function-driven design synthesis, (2) Design assessment. For design synthesis, a generative shape modeling algorithm that facilitates automatic geometry synthesis and user-driven modification for nonexperts is introduced. A critical observation that arises from this study is that the most geometrical specifications are dictated by functional requirements. To support design by high-level functional prescriptions, a physics based shape optimization method for compliant coupling behavior design has been developed. In line with this idea, producing complex 3D surfaces from flat 2D sheets by exploiting the concept of buckling beams has also been explored. Effective design assessment, the second key aspect, becomes critical for problems in which computational solutions do not exist. For these problems, this work proposes crowdsourcing as a way to empower non-experts in esoteric design domains that traditionally require expertise and specialized knowledge.

The objective of my diploma thesis was to find out the right mixture and usage of realized and planned marketing methods and their expected impact on company business. The diploma thesis resulted in a compact summary of the company marketing effort as well as offered suggestions how to improve imperfections in given areas. For the particular analysis of the market competition I have created an overview of procedures and a selection of techniques usable for information aggregation necessary for current situation analyses of the project marketing. Diploma theses results in a compact summary of corporate situation from the marketing point of view in the chosen Salon Umeni project.

This thesis traces the development of the Chinese government’s attempts to solicit corruption reports from citizens via online platforms such as websites and smartphone applications. It argues that this endeavour has proven largely unsuccessful, and what success it has enjoyed is not sustainable. The reason for this failure is that prospective complainants are offered little incentive to report corruption via official channels. Complaints on social media require less effort and are more likely to lead to investigations than complaints delivered straight to the government, though neither channel is particularly effective. The regime’s concern for social stability has led to widespread censorship of corruption discussion on social media, as well as a slew of laws and regulations banning the behaviour. Though it is difficult to predict what the long-term results of these policies will be, it seems likely that the regime’s ability to collect corruption data will remain limited. / Graduate / 2018-07-14

L’objectif de ce travail doctoral est de mieux comprendre la participation des internautes au crowdsourcing d’activités créatives, souvent employé dans le marketing pour générer de nouvelles idées d’innovation et de communication. Après avoir défini et conceptuellement délimité le terme de crowdsourcing, nous proposons une revue de littérature au sujet des participants et de leurs motivations de participation. Nous présentons ensuite les résultats de trois études exploratoires visant à compléter notre compréhension du profil des participants et des facteurs influençant leur participation sur une plateforme de crowdsourcing. La revue de littérature et les résultats de nos études exploratoires nous permettent ensuite de proposer et de tester un modèle théorique, basé sur la Théorie du Comportement Planifié (TCP), grâce à un questionnaire envoyé aux membres de la plateforme eYeka. L’analyse de 1 261 réponses et le croisement avec des données secondaires révèlent que l’intention de participation est prédite par l’attitude envers le brief (qui est elle-même expliquée par l’autonomie perçue) et l’attitude envers la plateforme, mais pas par l’attitude envers la marque initiatrice du concours. La pression des proches est également positivement et significativement liée à l’intention de participation, mais les variables culturelles n’ont pas les effets modérateurs que nous proposons. Finalement, nous trouvons que l’intention de participation prédit positivement la participation effective, et ce lien est modéré par la situation professionnelle de l’internaute. Nous terminons notre travail par une discussion des résultats et des propositions de recherches à envisager dans le futur. / The objective of this thesis is to better understand the participation of internet users in creative crowdsourcing activities, which is often used in marketing to generate new innovation and/or communication ideas. After providing a definition and a conceptual delimitation of the term, we propose a literature review about the participants and their motivations to contribute. We then present the results of three exploratory studies which help us better understanding who these participants are and what influences their participation on a crowdsourcing platform. This literature review and the results of our exploratory studies then allow us to propose a theoretical model based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and to test it with a questionnaire sent to eYeka community members. The analysis of 1,261 responses as well as secondary data reveals that participation intention is predicted by the members’ attitude towards the brief (which is, in turn, best predicted by the task’s perceived autonomy) and the attitude towards the platform, but not by the attitude towards the brand which sponsors of the contest. Peer pressure is another antecedent to be positively and significantly correlated to participation intention, but the hypothesized moderating effect of cultural variables is not verified. Finally, we find that participation intention positively predicts effective participation, and that this relationship is moderated by the professional status of the individual. We end our work with a discussion of our results and by outlining future research proposals for academics to consider.

The aim of this master thesis is to analyze co-creation as a marketing strategy and its use in Czech republic. Diploma thesis is divided into two parts, theoretical and practical. Theoretical part evaluate marketing communication strategies, principles of market research and consumer behavior. Practical part explains co-creation phenomena and evaluate its position in czech marketing strategies. Thesis also contains market research focused on perception of co-creation in public and business sector and medial analysis. Further part describe agency Perfect Crowd and its co-creation projects. Thesis is concluded by reccomendation for the future, based on overall analysis.