AIS Electronic Library (AISeL) - ICIS 2014 Proceedings: Virtual Team Performance in Crowdsourcing Contests: A Social Network Perspective

260-051, Owen G. Glenn Building

Start Date

12-15-2014

Description

Recent advances in information technology bring significant changes
to the nature of work by allowing companies to tap “wisdom of the crowd”
beyond their own workforce. In particular, organizations increasingly
seek solutions to their business problems using online crowdsourcing
contests that are open to the public. Motivated by this new phenomenon,
this research investigates how the social network structure of a virtual
team impacts its performance in the context of online crowdsourcing
contests. Specifically, we empirically assess the impacts of member
centrality, skill levels, and the alignment of these two measures within
a virtual team on team performances. Our analysis suggests that the
centrality and skill levels of members of different roles are related to
team performance. We further show that the alignment of member
centrality and skill may be positively or negatively related to team
performance, depending on competition intensity and the time pressure of
the project.