Crowdsourcing as a technology for making managerial decisions

The term "crowdsourcing" was first introduced in 2006 by the writer Jeff Howie and represents the transfer of some production functions to persons without the conclusion of a labor contract. This makes it possible to apply the potential of a significant number of people in the interests of business and to substantially solve the emerging problems of making managerial decisions.

The main difference between crowdsourcing and outsourcing is that when outsourcing, the company redistributes the work between the involved professionals for money, and in crowdsourcing the costs are minimized, by using the skills of amateur professionals to solve a particular business problem for free.

Crowdsourcing is a user-centered innovation, a technology for making managerial decisions, in which manufacturers rely heavily on the experience and professionalism of users. It can be argued that crowdsourcing technology was created with the expectation of free exchange of consumers by their ideas with the company.

Currently, the idea of using crowdsourcing is quite popular, no matter what levels of management decisions we have not considered. As an example, you can name a website with content filled by the visitors themselves. Examples of such resources are social network and news services, Wikipedia, numerous forums, OpenStreetMap and other resources on which visitors create their own information product.

So, in Procter & Gamble, the administration publishes problems on its innocentive.com resource, which are realized within the corporation, offering great monetary rewards for successful decisions. More than 160,000 volunteers are sending their proposals.

In Threadless, a company for the production of T-shirts in Chicago, the technology of taking managerial decisions by the method of crowdsourcing is being implemented in the design development process. Form of participation here is the holding of online contests. As a technology for making managerial decisions, the use of crowdsourcing can be implemented, for example, when technical means, in particular a computer, can not perform the task. In this case, it is given for execution for a small reward to a large number of the most ordinary people. Here, for example, this type of work, such as the decoding of dictaphone records.

In foreign universities, the technology of making managerial decisions is widespread through the creation of sites with a systematically updated database and the rating of students, with the placement of events in which students could participate. The students themselves are engaged in developing and filling the base with such organization of activity by using the concept of crowdsourcing.

In terms of business activities, the use of crowdsourcing in the field of training and work with the reserve of company personnel is gaining momentum. Practical research in this direction is presented in the works of many domestic and foreign scientists, in particular, N.P. Belyatsky, B.L. Bazarova, G.G. Zaitseva, S.I. Samygina, A.I. Turchinov and others. Creation of a reserve of personnel, including a prospective reserve, the process is quite long, labor-intensive, requiring careful preparation and competent organization for any company. The implementation of its method of crowdsourcing gives a number of advantages for employers, direct participants and developers of the project. For employers, it is an opportunity to search for highly qualified, initiative prospective employees for employment or inclusion in a prospective reserve; For job seekers - an incentive for improving knowledge, personal growth for the purpose of further profitable employment, for the project team - the possibility of practical implementation of their ideas, approbation of the application of IT technologies in the field of management in practice.