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Crowd Dynamics and Crowd Capital: Insights from Five Years of contests in Higher Education

Abstract

This article aims to study “crowd” dynamics in small teams on the basis of the work presented in Tucci et al. [2016; 2017] and discussed below. Another goal of the study is to provide the setting for experiments in business domains to investigate 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]. In particular, the definition focuses on the internal resources of an organization rather than its inner context as “structure, corporate culture, and political context within the firm through which ideas for change have to proceed”[Pettigrew 1987, p.657]. The above definition of crowd capital adopts a more outcome-oriented perspective compared to other definitions emerging from this research stream [Lenart-Gansiniec 2016], complementing the early conceptualization by Prpić et al.,[Prpić and Shukla 2013; Prpić et al. 2015]. Finally, the article aims to contribute to the research on coordination in temporary groups [Valentine and Edmondson 2014] as well as on how to dynamically assemble and manage paid experts from the crowd through flash teams [Retelny et al. 2014]. The paper is structured as follows. First, the theoretical background of the research is discussed. Then, the four studies are outlined. We conclude with a discussion of the main results and final remarks.

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Related concepts (16)
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digital platforms to attract and divide work between participants to achieve a cumulative result. Crowdsourcing is not limited to online activity, however, and there are various historical examples of crowdsourcing. The word crowdsourcing is a portmanteau of "crowd" and "outsourcing".
Crowd psychology
Crowd psychology (also mob psychology) is a branch of social psychology that deals with the ways in which the psychology of a crowd is different from the psychology of the individual persons who are the crowd. The field of crowd psychology enquires into the behaviors and thought processes of both the individual members of the crowd and the crowd as a collective social entity. The behavior of a crowd is much influenced by deindividuation, a person's loss of responsibility, and the person's impression of the universality of behavior, both of which conditions increase in magnitude with size of the crowd.
Group dynamics
Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group (intragroup dynamics), or between social groups (intergroup dynamics). The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision-making behaviour, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective therapy techniques, and following the emergence and popularity of new ideas and technologies.
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Related publications (3)

Crowd Dynamics in Internal Crowdsourcing: Insights From Challenges in Management Higher Education

Christopher Tucci, Gianluigi Viscusi

This article aims to study crowd dynamics in small teams. In particular we are specifically interested to internal crowdsourcing as a venue for innovation and new ideas production, questioning the difference with regard to other cooperative models based, e ...
2019

Crowd Dynamics in Small Teams in Higher Education

Christopher Tucci, Gianluigi Viscusi

This article aims to empirically study “crowd” dynamics in small teams and complement the work presented in Tucci et al. [2016], and Tucci and Viscusi [2017]. As in previous papers, we use as theoretical lens the framework and related typology of “crowd” d ...
2018

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

Christopher Tucci, Gianluigi Viscusi

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 ...
2017