%0 Journal Article
%T Conceptualisation of “Crowdsourcing” Term in Management Sciences
%A Lenart-Gansiniec, Regina
%J International Journal of Contemporary Management
%V 2017
%R 10.4467/24498939IJCM.17.014.7527
%N Issue 16(2)
%P 151-175
%K crowdsourcing, conceptualisation, premises.
%@ 2449-8920
%D 2018
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/international-journal-of-contemporary-management/article/conceptualisation-of-crowdsourcing-term-in-management-sciences
%X 
	Background. Crowdsourcing is a relatively new concept, nonetheless it has been raising more and more interest with researchers. This is a result of its potential since it enables improving business processes, creating open innovations, building of competitive advantage, access to experience, information, crowd skills and work, problem solving, crisis management, expanding the organisation’s existing activity and offer, creating the organisation’s image, improving communication with the surroundings, optimising costs of the organisation’s activity. However, although the subject of crowdsourcing constitutes one of the currently emerging directions of research on the basis of management sciences, one observes a peculiar exploration difficulty. It may result from incoherence in conceptualisation or explication of this term.

	Research aims. The aim of this article is an attempt, basing on the existing research efforts, to conceptualise crowdsourcing based on management sciences. In the article a proposal of conceptualising the notion of crowdsourcing was presented including its levels. 

	Methodology. For the needs of specifying, evaluation, and identification of the existing state of knowledge on crowdsourcing, a systematic literature review was conducted. It enabled getting familiar with the results of similar research, its selection and critical analysis and based on that it was used for expanding the earlier findings of other researchers. The biggest, full text databases i.e Ebsco, Elsevier/Springer, Emerald, Proquest, Scopus, and ISI Web of Science, which include the majority of journals on strategic management were analysed. In order to establish the state of knowledge and existing findings a review of databases in Poland: BazEkon and CEON was also conducted. 54 elaborations of English language databases and 41 from Polish language databases from the period of 2006–2017 were analysed. 

	Key findings. A review of the scientific output revealed incoherence in the conceptualisation of the term of crowdsourcing. The approaches proposed in the existing literature are inadequate and do not allow for full understanding of crowdsourcing.