Informal hierarchy and crowdsourcing team performance: The mediating effect of idea quantity and the moderating effect of team familiarity

Abstract

As an informal hierarchy system is widely adopted in crowdsourcing contest communities, hierarchical differentiation has become ubiquitous in crowdsourcing teams. Recent literature suggests that hierarchy can undermine team performance by discouraging low-status members from voicing their potentially valuable insights. In light of this negative effect, we draw on the framework of Motivated Information Processing in Groups (MIP-G) to investigate the mechanism underlying the hierarchy-team performance link as well as how to alleviate the detrimental effect of hierarchy. Based on analyses of archival data collected from an online crowdsourcing contest community, we find that informal hierarchy negatively affects crowdsourcing team performance and idea quantity serves as the mechanism. Furthermore, we show that this negative effect can be attenuated by two types of team familiarity: familiarity established by prior shared working experience and familiarity with hierarchical working relationships. Taken together, we contribute to the literature on crowdsourcing teams, hierarchy, and MIP-G framework.