Analyzing Governance Mechanisms for Crowdsourcing Information Systems: a Multiple Case Analysis

Crowdsourcing has gained much attention in practice over the last years. Numerous companies have drawn on this concept for performing different tasks and value creation activities. Nevertheless, despite its popularity, there is still comparatively little well-founded knowledge on crowdsourcing, particularly with regard to the governance of crowdsourcing initiatives. Although proper governance is considered as the key to success by several researchers, little is known about governance mechanisms and their use in crowdsourcing initiatives. We address this issue by conducting a multiple case analysis in the scope of which we examine the governance mechanisms implemented in three different crowdsourcing information systems (i.e., crowd rating, crowd processing and crowd solving). For each system, we outline what kinds of governance mechanisms are used and how these are implemented. An initial comparison shows that relatively more mechanisms are used in crowd solving systems compared to crowd rating as well as crowd processing systems.