Crowd Dynamics and Crowd Capital in Small Teams: Insights from three crowdsourcing exercises in higher education

In this work we aim to study “crowd” dynamics in small teams. To this end, we use the typology of crowds discussed in Viscusi and Tucci [2015] as an interpretive framework, arguing that other characteristics are relevant to identify crowds than the number of participants; thus, the latter is a sufficient, but not necessary condition for crowdsourcing. Consequently, the framework distinguishes different types of crowd dynamics according to their growth tendency and degree of seriality. Density, equality, and goal orientation contribute to further distinguishing the distribution of agents within and between the different types, namely between communities, open crowds (multitudes [Virno 2004] e.g., Twitter users), closed crowds (controlled by intermediaries, such as, e.g., Innocentive that restrict growth and provide self-established boundaries), groups as crowd crystals, potentially leading to any of the others. Another goal of this study is to provide the setting necessary for experiments in business domains aimed at investigating how crowd characteristics may lower or increase “crowd capital,” here defined as the total number of crowd units having a demonstrated effectiveness in idea generation or task achievement [Tucci et al. 2016]. This definition adopts a more outcome-oriented perspective compared to other definitions emerging from this research stream, which aims at conceptualizing crowd capital as a new form of capital of an organization with regard to intellectual, social or economic capital [Lenart-Gansiniec 2016]. In particular, the definition focuses on the internal resources of an organization rather than its inner context such as “structure, corporate culture, and political context within the firm through which ideas for change have to proceed” [Pettigrew 1987, p.657]. Thus, our definition complements the conceptualization by Prpić & Shukla [2013, p.35035] which considers crowd capital “an organizational level capability that is defined by the structure, content, and process of an organization’s engagement with the Crowd” or organizational resources acquired through crowdsourcing for building competitive advantage [Prpić et al. 2015]. Finally, the perspective we propose on crowd capital is also linked to research on how mesolevel structures support effective coordination in temporary groups [Valentine and Edmondson 2014] as well as on frameworks for dynamically assembling and managing paid experts from the crowd through flash teams as sequence of modular tasks that draw on paid experts from the crowd [Retelny et al. 2014].