Workshop Overview
Businesses are increasingly accomplishing work through innovative sourcing models that leverage the crowd. Organizational crowdwork, as a form of outsourcing or a new way of distributing work across functional and departmental teams within an organization, is inherently disruptive. It challenges work organization, and calls for new approaches to work design, for example, managing coordination between the crowd and traditional organizational structures.
This CSCW workshop will bring together researchers in social computing, organizational science, and workplace research, as well as industry experts to examine the implications of crowdwork on the future of organizational work. To what extent does crowdwork take account of the real nature and inherent complexity of organizational work? What threats and opportunities does crowdwork create for both organizations and the crowd? What functions should the next generation of crowdwork systems embody to enhance their efficiency, viability and acceptability?
The workshop will include paper presentations, a poster session, a moderated discussion session, and a breakout exercise with the goal of contributing a research agenda toward a better fitting of crowdwork into organizations.
Workshop Themes
The major themes of the workshop include:
- How do existing models of crowdwork account for the real nature and inherent complexity of organizational work?
Understanding the specifics of the social engagements and situated actions of work, as well as the question of how particular kinds of visibility and invisibility help make sense of work, has been the core of CSCW research. What forms of work representations exist in current models of crowdwork, and to what extent does crowdwork enhance or obscure the visibility of work? How might CSCW think differently about the question of visibility of work in the era of crowdwork?
- What threats and opportunities does crowdwork create for both organizations and the crowd?
In some ways, models of crowdwork challenge the very nature of "organizations" and "employment." With crowdwork, small organizations or even individuals gain the ability to source larger amounts of work than were ever possible before. Given adequate capital, small entities can potentially harness a massive global workforce just when they need it, eliminating the need to retain such a workforce and the layers of management needed to coordinate it. On the flip side, under crowdwork models, workers increasingly become free agents. As free agents, crowd workers may have greater control over which pieces of work they perform than under traditional employee roles, but they may secure shorter term commitments from crowd employers. And in many cases, crowdwork is done on a volunteer-basis, appealing to casual workers' sense of civic duty or sense of fun. What will be the impacts of crowdwork on the structure of organizations, on the daily routines of crowd workers and on the roles of traditional employees? What ethical issues arise with organizational crowdwork?
- What functions should the next generation of crowdwork systems embody?
This will explore how CSCW studies, concepts and sensibilities can be extended or applied toward the design of sustainable platforms, frameworks and systems for organizational crowdwork. What models and protocols should guide the design of next generation crowdwork systems? For example, how can crowdwork systems be designed to enable an organization, on the one hand, to leverage the crowd to enhance its innovative capability, while safeguarding its competitive advantage, and on the other hand, empower the crowd to grow their competencies and achieve professional satisfaction? How could digital reputation models be designed to provide, on demand, information about work producers and requesters, while respecting privacy? How could effective work matching mechanisms be designed in a way that supports seamless integration between crowdwork models and traditional organizational work processes? What functions and services should the systems provide to enhance their efficiency, viability and acceptability?
Submission
Interested participants are requested to submit a 2 to 4 page position paper discussing any topic focusing on, but not limited, to the workshop themes. Acceptable submission must include the following:
- A position paper formatted in the ACM SIGCHI conference format. The paper should include the name, contact information, affiliation of authors, and must be limited to 2 to 4 pages, including figures and references. All submissions must be in English.
- A short biography of each author’s background, their interest (or any personal stake) in organizational crowdwork, and their motivations for participating in the workshop.
Interested participants are requested to submit a 2 to 4 page position paper in the ACM SIGCHI Paper format. Submissions should be sent by email to mcefkin@us.ibm.com by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Friday, November 15th, 2013 Sunday, December 1st 2013. Submissions will be acknowledged via email
Organizers
Melissa Cefkin, IBM Research – Almaden
Obinna Anya, IBM Research – Almaden
Steve Dill, IBM Research – Almaden
Bob Moore, IBM Research – Almaden
Osarieme Omokaro, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Susan Stucky, IBM Research – Almaden
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Participation
Call for participation now open. Interested participants should submit a 2-4 page position paper in the ACM SIGCHI Paper format to mcefkin@us.ibm.com
Important Dates
- Paper Submission Deadline:
November 15, 2013
December 01, 2013
- Notification of Acceptance:
December 10, 2013
- Registration Deadline:
December 31, 2013
- Submission of Revised Paper:
January 24, 2014
- Workshop Date:
February 16, 2014
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