Global Management and the digital Divide - Essay Example

With the onset of globalization, companies are preferring crowdsourcing as a way to innovate and outsource. Starting from big companies such as Kraft Foods to sole proprietorships, organizations are accessing software platforms to gather ideas and labour from an unidentified group of people who can collectively finish a task. Crowdsourcing produces excellent results more quickly and at a relatively lower cost than in-house substitutes (CIO update, 2012). It is used in context of a variety of activities such as product development, advertising and promotion, and marketing research (Fuller, Hutter and Fries, 2012).

A complimentary definition of crowdourcing has been given by Gupta and Sharma (2013) who explained that crowdsourcing is an amalgamation of two terms “crowd” and “outsourcing”. It is the act of outsourcing tasks, which are performed by contractor or a staff, to an undefined large group of people or crowd. A large number of separate individuals make a small contribution that helps to accomplish the large outcome (Kaganer, et al., 2013). Crowdsourcing is also associated with a certain degree of risk.

Organizations face numerous intellectual property and confidentiality risks while carrying out a crowdsourced project. This is particularly because crowdsourcing draws from the common public. The statistical actuality is that a crowdsourced project simply could receive submissions that contain infringing material. In addition to the contravening risks are the augmented contractual compulsions and insurance coverage issues (Lieberstein, Tucker and Yankovsky, 2012). On the other hand there is digital divide which refers to the gap between households, individuals and businesses and geographic areas at dissimilar socio-economic stages with a view to both their chances to access information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their use of the Internet for a broad assortment of activities (Tavani, 2003).

The following sections will involve an in depth explanation of how crowd sourcing works. In addition to that, issues such as digital inclusion, globalisation implications, employment issues, the scope for innovation and entrepreneurial activity and the ability to access finance will be discussed. A brief discussion will also be presented regarding a crowd sourcing project that can be developed followed by a synopsis of the overall finding. 2. Concept of crowdsourcing The concept of crowdsourcing is based on the idea of dividing certain tedious tasks among a large number of individuals or obtaining other services such as getting solutions to different queries or issues through crowd-voting or fundraising by making petition to a large number of people for financial contribution.

In the modern business world, the process of globalization is facilitating the process of crowdsourcing (Gassmann, Daiber and Enkel, 2011). Since with globalization, existing gaps between companies or communities are reducing virtually, gaining the attention of a large crowd is gradually becoming more feasible, than it was five decades ago. Rapid advancement of technology is responsible for such developments. It leads to invention of better methods of communication and makes process of knowledge transfer faster.

This leads to faster business development (Zupic, 2013). The most remarkable benefit of outsourcing is that it allows the