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.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge sharing
• crowdsourcing systems
• knowledge application
• creativity

Highlights

• Knowledge sharing increases both effective crowdsourcing use and perceived support for creativity.

• Effective crowdsourcing system use increases creative knowledge application.

• Perceived support for creativity enhances creative knowledge application using enterprise crowdsourcing systems.

• Perceived support for creativity mediates the effective crowdsourcing use on creative knowledge application.

Notes

¹ To address common method bias in our measures, we employed two statistical and procedural methodologies using Harman’s single-factor test and the Marker technique in confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Result showed there was no a significant common method bias.