Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing can be viewed as a further development of outsourcing. With outsourcing, entrepreneurs choose specialized subcontractors to accomplish certain parts of the development or production process. In contrast, "crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call" [Jeff Howe, 2008,http://www.crowdsourcing.com]. According to Jeff Howe's definition, the main differences to outsourcing are, that the entrepreneur does not know who accomplishes her task and that the workers form not an organized group like a firm but are members of a large anonymous crowd accessible via crowdsourcing platforms. In traditional work organization, the employer delegates work to the workers, but in the crowdsourcing approach, the worker chooses which tasks she wants to work for. Crowdsourcing offers the possibility to get work done very quickly by accessing a large and relatively cheap workforce, but in order to use the full potential of crowdsourcing, we currently develop techniques to detect untrustworthy employers and workers. Further, the relation between the quality of the work and the given incentives is investigated in the FIA group.