PhD Defence: Working Together Alone in the Online Crowd


Feeling proud of your contribution to a project and feeling respected are just as important in an online situation as they are offline, on the real work floor. In his PhD dissertation entitled ‘<link doctoral-programme phd-in-management phd-projects detail>Working Together Alone in the Online Crowd’, Mark Boons reveals that a digital ‘pat on the back’ is a powerful motivating tool for websites that are dependent on user engagement, like crowdsourcing and social media platforms.

While user engagement in online settings had previously been thought to be influenced by feelings of belonging and identification with that group, Mark Boons’ research shows that it is mostly feelings of pride, respect and recognition that influence user engagement.

Even though users often don’t know each other in real life and have never met in person, the social, group-based effects still apply to online settings. In the offline world, employees often need the feeling of belonging to the organisation they work for in order to be motivated to work. But online users are primarily motivated by the digital feedback that allows them to feel proud and respected as members of the online group.

In a crowdsourcing setting – where businesses can tap into the knowledge and skills of outsiders and reward those who contribute the best ideas – large monetary rewards are often seen as the best tool to trigger high levels of user engagement and thus high-quality ideas. But a low-cost digital ‘pat on the back’, in the form of feedback on individual contributions or on the achievements of the group as a whole, shows a strong positive effect on participants’ engagement.

Boons’ PhD dissertation ‘Working together alone in the online crowd; the effects of social motivations and individual knowledge backgrounds on participants and performance of members of online crowdsourcing platforms offers compelling evidence that social motivations can and do play a role in affecting member engagement on online crowdsourcing platforms, which is crucially important in understanding why some online platforms are successful and others fail.

In his research, Boons also investigated the apparently paradoxical relationship between knowledge and performance in the crowdsourcing of creative problem-solving tasks. By analysing more than 6,000 contributions to 120 creative problem-solving challenges on an online crowdsourcing platform, he shows that the performance of participants in these tasks is at its best when participants possess knowledge related to the context of the challenge, as well as unrelated knowledge. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate as to whether the effects of possessing domain-relevant knowledge on an individual’s performance on creative problem-solving are positive or negative. Boons argues that this effect is in fact contingent on an individual’s level of unrelated knowledge.

Boons defended his dissertation in the Senate Hall at Erasmus University Rotterdam on Friday 14 March 2014. His promoter was <link people harry-barkema>Harry Barkema, Professor of Innovation Management, and his co-promoter was <link people daan-stam>Dr Daan Stam. Other members of the Doctoral Committee were Dr Peter van Baalen (UvA), Dr Wendy van Ginkel, Prof Marleen Huysman (VU), Dr Brian Butler (University of Maryland), and Prof. Jan van den Ende, Professor Eric van Heck and Dr Christoph Fuchs (all of Erasmus Universiy Rotterdam).

About Mark Boons

Mark Boons (the Netherlands, 1980) obtained a bachelor degree in Information Management and a bachelor degree in Business Administration from Tilburg University, after which he completed the Research Master in Business: Organisation & Strategy track at Tilburg University cum laude in 2007. In 2007, Mark started as a PhD candidate in the department of Management of Technology and Innovation at Erasmus University. Mark’s general research interests include online platforms, social motivations, and creative problem-solving. He has presented his work at several international conferences, such as the meetings of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Academy of Management. Currently, Mark works as an assistant professor of Business Information Management in the department of Technology and Operations Management at Erasmus University.

Abstract of Working Together Alone in the Online Crowd

The main goal of Boons’ dissertation is to improve our understanding of the role of members’ social motivations and knowledge backgrounds in driving members’ participatory behaviours and their task performance on crowdsourcing platforms. Based on two studies, a longitudinal field experiment and a longitudinal, multi-method field study, he states that the possibility to interact with other members is an important driver of the development of group-based feelings of respect in this social environment and that on online crowdsourcing platforms feelings of pride and respect, and not identification, affect the level and duration of member activity and positive word-of-mouth behaviours. Feelings of pride and respect are each affected by different forms of status information, which further confirms the importance of actively managing the communication of social identity information on online crowdsourcing platforms. These studies offer compelling evidence that social motivations play a role in affecting member engagement on online crowdsourcing platforms, which is crucially important in understanding why some online and crowdsourcing platforms have success and others fail.

In a third study, Boons investigates the knowledge-performance paradox in crowdsourcing creative problem-solving tasks. By analysing more than 6,000 contributions to 120 creative problem-solving challenges on an online crowdsourcing platform, he shows that the performance of participants of creative problem-solving tasks on online crowdsourcing platforms is best when they possess knowledge that is related to the challenge context as well as knowledge that is unrelated to the challenge context. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on whether the effects of possessing domain-relevant knowledge on an individual’s performance on creative problem-solving are positive or negative. Boons argues that this effect is in fact contingent on an individual’s level of unrelated knowledge.

Photos: Chris Gorzeman / Capital Images