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Abstract
Advances in information technology bring changes to the nature of work by facilitating companies to go beyond the wisdom of their workforce and tap into the “wisdom of the crowd” via online crowdsourcing contests. In these contests, active and motivated individuals collaborate in the form of self-organized teams that compete for rewards. Using a rich data set of 732 teams in 52 contests collected from the crowdsourcing platform, Kaggle.com, from its launch in April 2010 to July 2012, we studied how the allocation of members’ social and intellectual capital within a virtual team affects team performance in online crowdsourcing contests. Our econometric analysis uses a rank-ordered logistic regression model, and suggests that the effect of a member’s social and intellectual capital on team performance varies depending on his or her roles. Though a team leader’s social capital and a team expert’s intellectual capital significantly influence team performance, a team leader’s intellectual capital and a team expert’s social capital do not. Further, we found that the alignment of a member’s social and intellectual capital within a team has a significant influence on team performance. Moreover, the intensity of the competition moderates the impact. When a contest is highly competitive, the social and intellectual capital alignment negatively affects team performance, and when the competitive intensity is low, this alignment positively affects team performance. Our findings provide insights into improving performance in team-based competitions in crowdsourcing communities.
The authors are grateful to seminar participants at the University of Texas at Arlington, University of Florida, University of Texas at Dallas, and conference participants at AMCIS 2014 (Savannah), ICIS 2014 (Auckland), and HICSS 2015 (Kauai) for excellent feedback. They also benefited greatly from discussions with Mahmut Yasar, Radha Mahapatra, Greg Frazier, and Wendy Casper. The authors especially appreciate valuable comments from the editors Rob Kauffman, Eric Clemons, Thomas Weber, and the reviewers of the Special Section. Bin Gu acknowledges the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 71328102].
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Indika Dissanayake
INDIKA DISSANAYAKE is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. She received her Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Texas at Arlington. Her research interests include crowdsourcing, social media, and virtual communities. Her research work has been presented in conferences such as International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Decision Science Institute (DSI), and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).
Jie Zhang
JIE (JENNIFER) ZHANG is an associate professor of information systems at the College of Business Administration, University of Texas at Arlington. She received her Ph.D. in computer information systems from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester. She employs analytical and empirical techniques to examine a number of issues in electronic retail channels, online reputation and feedback systems, software pricing and licensing models, online consumer search and shopping decisions, website designs, social media, and crowdsourcing. Her research appears in Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Economics and Management Strategies, Communications of the ACM, and elsewhere. She serves as associate editor for Decision Support Systems and Electronic Commerce Research.
Bin Gu
BIN GU is an associate professor of information systems at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. His research interests are in crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, online social media, user-generated content, IT business value, and IT governance. His work has appeared in Management Science, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Journal of Retailing, and Decision Support Systems. His research received the 2014 and 2012 Emerald Management Reviews Citations of Excellence Awards, the 2014 Americas Conference on Information Systems Best Research-in-Progress Award, and the 2008 Information Systems Research Best Published Paper Award. He serves as senior editor for MIS Quarterly and as associate editor for Information Systems Research.
