Crowdsourcing for Evaluation

Background on Crowdsourcing

Jeff Howe coined the term “crowdsourcing” in 2006. He describes crowdsourcing as the act of a firm taking a function that was once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined network of people in the form of an open call. The general idea is to introduce new skill sets or exploit a larger work force to achieve a specific goal.

The idea of soliciting customer input is hardly new and technological improvements have made it possible to recruit larger numbers of people to do more complex tasks, at drastically reduced cost. Crowds bring great amount of data that could result in greater accuracy and understanding. Surowiecki discribes the competencies of crowds as “large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant.” However, in order for a crowd to be smart, certain criteria have to be met:

Diversity is essential, as different people will bring different information to the table. This can be achieved by increasing the number of participants. Firms can reach across hierarchical and/or functional barriers to increase diversity, allowing employees to contribute with local information not available to top management.

Accurate summarization of information is also an important criterion to be met. Assertions and approximations made by the participants have to be compiled accurately. This averaging of all individual responses can be seen as the crowd’s collective verdict and as quoted from james surowiecko, “With most things, the average is mediocrity. With decision making, it’s often excellence.”

Independence is the third criterion, such that no one should dictate the answers and one’s opinions should not be determined by the opinions of others. Some interactions should be permited, so that adding to or deleting from other participants’ contributions can create value.

Crowdsourcing within the Organization

The deliberation around the efficiency of annual performance reviews has increased in recent...