The Emergence of Transactions on Crowdsourcing Platforms: A Cognitive Frame Perspective
by
Ning Su
Associate Professor
General Management, Strategy & Information Systems
Ivey Business School
Western University, Canada
Friday, November 22
10:30 – 12:00 pm | Speakman 200
Abstact:
Crowdsourcing has been rapidly emerging as an important model of organizing in today’s global labor market. Leveraging digital platforms as intermediary, crowdsourcing facilitates market transactions by matching solution seekers’ needs with service suppliers’ skills. This matchmaking process, however, can be complex and challenging in the presence of a multitude and variety of seekers and suppliers with diverse background and knowledge structures. Based on an in-depth qualitative case study of one of the world’s largest crowdsourcing platforms for knowledge-intensive services, especially creative services, and drawing on the concept of cognitive frame, this research unpacks how market transactions emerge on crowdsourcing platforms. The result conceptualizes crowdsourcing as a process of framing contests between potential exchange partners. By designing a portfolio of mechanisms, the digital platform facilitates the representation, negotiation and acceptance of exchange frames between potential partners. Overall, the study develops and elaborates a socially constructed view of market transactions on crowdsourcing platforms.