Ivo Blohm

University of St.Gallen · Institute of Information Management

Telemedicine services may improve the quality of life of individuals while also reducing the costs of service provisioning. They represent an important but yet understudied type of complex services that integrates many stakeholders acting in service value networks. These complex services typically comprise a combination of IT services and highly pe...

Information technology (IT) has created new patterns of digitally-mediated collaboration that allow open sourcing of ideas for new products and services. These novel sociotechnical arrangements afford finely-grained manipulation of how tasks can be represented and have changed the way organizations ideate. In this paper, we investigate differences...

While many firms in recent years have started to offer public Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), firms struggle with shaping digital platform strategies that align API design with aspired business goals and the demands of external developers. We address the lack of theory that explains the performance impacts of three API archetypes (profes...

Crowd work reflects a new form of gainful employment on the Internet. We study how the nature of the tasks being performed and financial compensation jointly shape work perceptions of crowd workers in order to better understand the changing modes and patterns of digital work. Surveying individuals on 23 German crowd working platforms, this work is...

Investors increasingly use machine learning (ML) algorithms to support their early stage investment decisions. However, it remains unclear if algorithms can make better investment decisions and if so, why. Building on behavioral decision theory, our study compares the investment returns of an algorithm with those of 255 business angels (BAs) invest...

The centrality of information systems (IS) customization to match companies' needs with software systems available in the market has been researched extensively. The distinctive characteristics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems compared to other types of IS suggest that customization needs a new conceptualization in this context. We draw on e...

Algorithmic forecasts outperform human forecasts by 10% on average. State-of-the-art machine learning (ML) algorithms have further expanded this discrepancy. Because a variety of other activities rely on them, sales forecasting is critical to a company's profitability. However, individuals are hesitant to use ML forecasts. To overcome this algorith...

Agile work organization has experienced a significant increase in acceptance in recent years. However, literature falls short in explaining the transformation process that results from the implementation of agile work organization as a means of achieving increased adaptability, rate of speed and flexibility. We apply a process ontology to agile wor...

Many organizations struggle to measure, control, and manage agility in a manner of continuous improvement. Therefore, we draw on Design Science Research to develop and test a tool for Continuously Assessing and Improving Agile Practices (CAIAP). CAIAP helps agile practitioners to monitor the alignment of “as is” agile practices on individual, team...

The Swiss Journal of Business Research and Practice invited submissions related to the question of how the digitalization may shape the future of work. The rapid development of innovative digital technologies and the associated digital transformation have changed the way in which we live, communicate, and work. Digital platforms and the increasing...

The role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in the organization has received a lot of attention in recent years. While traditionally most CIOs had faced the difficulty of stepping out of the shadow of being coined as a "Utility & Infrastructure Director", they have been found to establish themselves as a driving force in defining and shaping th...

The increasing availability of data and advances in data processing and analysis methods have led to a flourishing of data science and business analytics. This not only constitutes new research efforts in information systems research (e.g. artificial intelligence (AI), processing of unstructured data, decision support systems, or visualization), bu...

Internal crowdsourcing showed a substantial increase of use in recent years, since it describes a promising alternative to traditional orchestration of employees in today's digital era. However, literature falls short in explaining the transformation process that is enacted by such approaches of platform-based work organization. We apply a process...

Can an algorithm outperform the average angel investor? And if it can, does that also mean it will make less biased investments? Researchers put these questions to the test: They built an investing algorithm and put it head to head with 255 angel investors in a simulation, asking it to select the most promising investment opportunities among 623 de...

The ongoing discussion of the Agile Work Organization (AO) in research and practice permeates a multitude of research areas. However, no clear conceptualization of the AO has been provided. In this paper, we conduct a Systematic Literature Review to investigate what constitutes and defines the AO. The SLR reveals three dimensions in the research fi...

Crowdsourced tasks are very diverse – and so are platform types. They fall into four categories, each demanding different governance mechanisms. The main goal of microtasking crowdsourcing platforms is the scalable and time-efficient batch processing of highly repetitive tasks. Crowdsourcing platforms for information pooling aggregate contributions...

In crowdsourcing, reviewing and evaluating textual data is a latent challenge. While text mining and machine learning represent promising technologies to solve this problem, it is still unclear how information systems based on these technologies (i.e., intelligent decision support systems) should be designed. In this study, we address this gap and...

During the last years, crowdfunding gained attention as alternative source of funding for a variety of projects. More and more creative, artistic and entrepreneurial projects search funding through the crowd. However, crowdfunding markets are often considered inefficient and shaped by information asymmetries. Although first project characteristics...

Crowdsourcing represents a powerful approach for organizations to collect data from large networks of people. While research already made great strides to develop the technological foundations for processing crowdsourced data, little is known about decision-making patterns that emerge when decision-makers have access to such large amounts of data o...

While the crowdsourcer’s job is to encourage valuable contributions and sustained commitment in a cost-effective manner, it seems as if the primary attention of management and research is still centered on the evaluation of contributions rather than the crowd. As many crowdsourcers lack the resources to successfully execute such projects, crowdsour...

Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel hilft Organisationen ihre Mitarbeiter mittels Crowdsourcing in einem digitalen Umfeld zu reorganisieren, um Agilität, Produktivität und Effektivität der Geschäftsprozesse zu erhöhen. Internes Crowdsourcing, in welchem die kollektive Arbeitskraft, Kreativität und Intelligenz der Mitarbeiter effektiver genutzt wird, ste...

Internal crowd work has emerged as a new form of digital gainful employment that changes the nature of work. However, the possible effects of internal crowd work on the individual level have been largely neglected. In this paper, we therefore present our research in progress which is concerned with the effects of work characteristics in internal cr...

Research indicates that interactions on social media can reveal remarkably valid predictions about future events. In this study, we show that online legitimacy as a measure of social appreciation based on Twitter content can be used to accurately predict new venture survival. Specifically, we analyze more than 187,000 tweets from 253 new ventures'...

Crowdsourcing ermöglicht Unternehmen, die Intelligenz, Problemlösungsfähigkeit und Kreativität großer, weltweit verteilter Menschengruppen zu nutzen. Viele Organisationen nutzen diese Möglichkeiten seit längerem. Insbesondere aufgrund der zunehmenden Vernetzung und Digitalisierung hat sich ein breit gefächertes, ausdifferenziertes Crowdsourcing-Ang...

Crowd work has emerged as new pattern of digitally mediated collaboration. In this paper, we focus on the determinants and effects of crowd workers’ job satisfaction – a perspective that has been largely neglected by current crowdsourcing research. We report results from a survey of 161 crowd workers participating in crowdsourced software testing....

To profit from crowdsourcing, organizations can engage in four different approaches: microtasking, information pooling, broadcast search, and open collaboration. This article presents 21 governance mechanisms that can help organizations manage their crowdsourcing platforms. It investigates the effectiveness of these governance mechanisms in 19 case...

With an increasing amount of arising crowdsourcing initiatives, insights are needed on how to successfully drive initial and sustained platform-activity, as a form of value co-creation between crowdsourcer and crowdsourcees. Therefore, the engagement concept, known as a micro-foundation of value co-creation, serves to holistically understand crowds...

Crowdsourcing represents a powerful approach for organizations to engage in distant search and mobilize knowledge distributed amongst a diverse network of people. While organizations generally succeed in generating large amounts of knowledge, they frequently fail to identify useful ideas that have the potential to solve problems or serve as innovat...

In recent years, many firms have published public Application Programing Interfaces (APIs). However, firms struggle with how to successfully implement API-enabled service innovation. APIs are either boundary resources through which platform strategies are enacted or they represent distribution channels for software, data, or infrastructure. We use...

Digitalization gives rise to dynamic forces shaping future working structures. In practice, companies are increasingly interested in using their own employees as an internal crowd. Drawing on socio-technical systems (STS) perspective, organizations must understand how they can embed an internal crowdsourcing system effectively in order to exploit i...

Although peer assessment is a widely used didactical method in higher education, little is known about a) how many peer assessors are required to receive a stable assessment on a peer's solution and b) how valid this assessment is compared to an expert assessment. To fill these gaps, we conducted a peer assessment in a large-scale lecture. Overall,...

The Internet has affected and partially radically changed the business models of traditional industries. Crowdfunding as a new concept of funding over the Internet by a large crowd has especially gained maturity. Crowdfunding offerings range from funding charitable projects or innovative gadgets to a funding alternative for start-ups or small busin...

Zusammenfassung Crowdsourcing ermöglicht Unternehmen, die Intelligenz, Problemlösungsfähigkeit und Kreativität großer, weltweit verteilter Menschengruppen zu nutzen. Viele Organisationen nutzen diese Möglichkeiten seit längerem. Insbesondere aufgrund der zunehmenden Vernetzung und Digitalisierung hat sich ein breit gefächertes, ausdifferenziertes C...

Crowdsourcing represents a powerful approach that seeks to harness the collective knowledge or creativity of a large and independent network of people for organizations. While the approach drastically facilitates the sourcing and aggregating of information, it represents a latent challenge for organizations to process and evaluate the vast amount o...

Crowd work has emerged as a new form of digital gainful employment that changes the nature of work. However, an increasing number of people perform certain tasks in the crowd and start to identi-fy with this work. In this paper, we outline our research in progress which is concerned with the ef-fects of work characteristics in crowd work that have...

In recent years, many firms have launched public Application Programing Interfaces (APIs). Through APIs, digital business strategies are enacted. Firms, however, struggle with how to successfully design APIs. In this report, we address this issue by identifying API strategy archetypes and describe typical scenarios for their application. Based on d...

The rapid development of new IT-enabled business models, a fast-growing hardware market, and that market's segmentation are making software testing more complex. So, manual testing is becoming less applicable--economically and practicably. One approach to overcome these issues is crowdtesting--using crowdsourcing to perform testing. To profit from...

Crowdfunding gained momentum over the last few years. In contrast to traditional forms of funding, the service provision of crowdfunding platforms is performed within service systems. These comprise a complex combination of IT and non-IT services, different stakeholders, and diverging contexts and purposes. The design and operation of such service...

Crowdsourcing represents an innovative approach that allows companies to engage a diverse network of people over the internet and use their collective creativity, expertise, or workforce for completing tasks that have previously been performed by dedicated employees or contractors. However, the process of reviewing and filtering the large amount of...

The Internet has affected and partially radically changed the business models of traditional industries. Crowdfunding as a new concept of funding over the Internet by a large crowd has especially gained maturity. Crowdfunding offerings range from funding charitable projects or innovative gadgets to a funding alternative for start-ups or small busin...

Nowadays, traditional testing approaches become less feasible – both economically and practicably-for several reasons, such as an increasingly dynamic environment, shorter product lifecycles, cost pressure, as well as a fast growing and increasingly segmented hardware market. With the surge towards new modes of value creation, crowdsourced software...

Enabled by Internet-based technologies, users are increasingly participating and collaborating in idea generation in online innovation communities. However, with the limited understanding of the phenomenon, few studies have investigated what determines the quality of ideas. This study aims at addressing the knowledge gap. We find that idea experime...

A largely neglected aspect in crowdsourcing research is the " Crowdsourcing Experience " , which every crowdsourcee is necessarily exposed to throughout the IT-mediated crowdsourcing journey, potentially stimulating engagement. In the context of value co-creation participant's engagement, defined as a psychological state that fosters directly and i...

Virtual idea communities (VIC) are a relatively new phenomenon in business. These communities, in which distributed groups of individual customers focus on voluntarily sharing and elaborating innovation ideas, are used by firms to integrate customers into the ideation for new product development rooted in Chesbrough’s (2003) open innovation paradig...

Crowdsourcing has drawn much attention from researchers in the past. Thus, there are already attempts to conceptualize and classify the phenomenon. All of the existing work has their merits; however they lack an overviewing perspective or meta-characteristic. They are conceptual in nature, lack theoretical grounding, and – most importantly – are no...

Crowd Work is a phenomenon of the digital economy as well as of the modern IT era. It provides a great potential for changing the way in which businesses create value. For instance, the gold producer Goldcorp1 made its geographical databases available to the public and offered a prize to anyone who could tell them where to find gold. The results of...

In recent years, companies have been getting access to larger pools of workers, and the phenomenon of crowdsourcing has emerged as a new pattern of digitally mediated collaboration. In parallel, an ongoing digitalisation has been accelerating the division of labour through hyperspecialisation and giving rise to new forms of work, for example crowd...

The phenomenon of crowdsourcing has emerged as a new pattern of digitally mediated collaboration. This novel socio-technical arrangement changes the organization of work as well as its general nature and takes place in information systems (IS) in which humans face many threats to their dignity. For this reason, the importance of ethical issues with...

Crowdsourcing describes a novel mode of value creation in which organizations broadcast tasks that have been previously performed in-house to a large magnitude of Internet users that perform these tasks. Although the concept has gained maturity and has proven to be an alternative way of problem-solving, an organizational cost-benefit perspective ha...

Crowdsourcing has emerged as new form of digital work organization. This novel socio-technical ar-rangement changes the organization of work as well as its general nature. In this paper, we focus on the crowdworkers – a perspective that has been largely neglected by crowdsourcing research. We re-port results from crowdworker-interviews on two diffe...

Organizations usually strive for innovation to achieve economic growth. Thereby, incremental innovation of e.g., existing products is often the most attractive way because it is plannable to a certain extent and often reveals short-term success. However, many markets change due to new competitive structures caused by the rise of digital services, w...

In the past few years, Sharing Economy (SE) has become increasingly popular mainly for consumer research. Past research focused on describing the phenomenon itself and its disrupting influences on current economic mechanisms. However, information systems (IS) research and scientific literature in general still lack a common understanding of SE and...

Digitalization and the Internet changed our life. Many phenomena are responsible for this change. A relatively new one is crowdsourcing. Companies such as Amazon or Procter and Gambles use crowdsourcing successfully. The change will continue and we need to fully understand this subject to use the potential offered by this new phenomenon. This liter...