Effective Crowdsourcing: Insights from Conceptual, Managerial, and Consumer Perspectives
(2026)
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- Abstract
- Crowdsourcing allows companies to outsource creative tasks to a large and undefined crowd through an open call online. As crowdsourcing has become increasingly prevalent across various contexts, it is essential to understand how to effectively manage crowdsourcing from conceptual, managerial, and consumer perspectives. The thesis therefore provides a comprehensive outline of crowdsourcing along three dimensions. First, we conduct an integrative literature review to refine crowdsourcing definitions from the existing literature across multiple disciplines. Our review reveals that crowdsourcing is primarily defined from an innovation management and a relationship management orientation. These distinct crowdsourcing definitions are related to different research streams in terms of antecedents (A), decisions (D), and outcomes (O). After describing the characteristics of each perspective, we identify a research agenda within this ADO framework. Second, we conducted in-depth interviews with crowdsourcing managers, complemented with secondary data to empirically examine the existence of different crowdsourcing goals. We reveal how decision-making regarding design elements during the crowdsourcing process aligns with the predefined crowdsourcing goals to achieve expected and related outcomes. Third, from a consumer perspective, we examine the role of evaluator type in shaping fairness perceptions using two experimental studies. Grounded in the fairness theory, we identify eight evaluator-related elements that affect consumers' counterfactual thinking about the crowdsourcing outcome and find evidence for the mediating effect of the evaluator's credibility. This thesis thereby contributes to the crowdsourcing literature by advancing the understanding of crowdsourcing definitions, the design of crowdsourcing elements, and consumers' psychological mechanism underlying fairness perceptions. Our findings offer actionable managerial implications for designing effective, equitable, sustainable crowdsourcing initiatives, and for strengthening the relationship between the organizing brand and participating consumers.
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Shuai, M. (2026). Effective Crowdsourcing: Insights from Conceptual, Managerial, and Consumer Perspectives.