Abstract
Crowdwork is a novel form of digitally mediated work arrangement that is managed and organized through online labor platforms. This paper focuses on the governance of platforms that facilitate creative work—that is, complex work tasks that require high-level skill and creative workers. Crowdwork platform governance faces numerous challenges as a result of technology mediation, scalable and distributed workers, and temporary work arrangements. Creative crowdwork platforms, such as Topcoder, typically require additional governance structures to manage complex tasks. However, we know relatively little about creative crowdwork platform governance, as most existing studies focus on routine work platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. Accordingly, this paper explores how incumbent and insurgent creative crowdwork platforms are governed under centralized and decentralized modes. We conducted a comparative case study based on the analysis of two different cases: Topcoder, a successful commercial platform with a largely centralized governance structure, and CanYa, an emerging innovative platform based on blockchain technology with more decentralized governance. We identified and classified different governance elements related to work control and work coordination. In addition, we explored the characteristics of creative crowdwork platform governance with different degrees of centralization.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | ECIS 2019 Proceedings |
Number of pages | 16 |
Place of Publication | Atlanta, GA |
Publisher | Association for Information Systems. AIS Electronic Library (AISeL) |
Publication date | 2019 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781733632508 |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Event | The 27th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) 2019: Information Systems for a Sharing Society - Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden Duration: 8 Jun 2019 → 14 Jun 2019 Conference number: 27 http://ecis2019.eu/ |
Conference
Conference | The 27th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) 2019 |
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Number | 27 |
Location | Stockholm University |
Country | Sweden |
City | Stockholm |
Period | 08/06/2019 → 14/06/2019 |
Internet address |
Series | Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems |
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ISSN | 0000-0034 |
Keywords
- Crowdwork governance
- Creative crowdwork
- Centralized platforms
- Decentralized platforms
- Blockchain
- Tokenomics