Theoretical and Methodical Aspects of Crowdsourcing: Effectiveness and Its Measuring

Abstract

In our times, a growing interest of organizations, including also the public ones, in crowdsourcing, can be observed. It enables to acquire knowledge located in virtual communities. However, despite many benefits, crowdsourcing initiatives very often fail. Therefore, a need for their evaluation is recognized. Nonetheless, in the subject literature, a shortfall of criteria and methods of evaluating crowdsourcing may be observed. The existing proposals do not ensure a comprehensive picture of crowdsourcing, and they do not take into account its multidimensionality. The article is intended for a presentation of the ways of evaluating crowdsourcing and an original proposal of a list of indicators, which may be used for evaluating crowdsourcing in public organizations. The article presents the original proposal of activities, by which it is possible to assess the degree of implementation of the adopted tasks and determine the level of obtained crowdsourcing results. The conducted research allowed to recognize that it is possible to measure crowdsourcing results using quantitative and qualitative indicators. A prerequisite for selecting the appropriate means is first of all to indicate the purposes for which crowdsourcing should be used.