The Role of Enterprise Crowdsourcing Systems on Knowledge Application
Abstract
Organizations are using crowdsourcing systems to collect innovative ideas from their employees harnessing their insights of companies’ products, processes, customers, and competitors. While crowd workers in third-party crowdsourcing systems are a diverse and multifaceted population with a range of motives and experience, and yet few researchers have grappled with the facilitators of the employees’ behavior comprising the creative application of their knowledge using enterprise crowdsourcing systems (ECSs). This study develops a theoretical framework to identify ECS's role and to provide the way how ECSs are related to creative behavior via knowledge sharing. The results reveal that ECS increases knowledge sharing and fully or partially effective ECS use through knowledge sharing. This could make knowledge sharing a critical factor to facilitate employees’ creative work by way of an intermediary. The findings of this study can help organization refine their ECS and creative initiatives.