Crowdsourcing—A New Paradigm of Organizational Learning of Public Organizations

Abstract

Increasingly, it is postulated in the literature that crowdsourcing may be important for organizational learning. However, research in this area has only been conducted in the environment of mature and innovative Scandinavian organizations. Researchers omit public organizations in their deliberations. The aim of this article is to empirically identify the importance of crowdsourcing for the organizational learning of municipal offices, and thus to identify crowdsourcing as a new organizational learning paradigm. The considerations carried out to this aim are important because organizational learning is a prerequisite for running contemporary policies and ensuring sustainable development of public organizations. Studies subordinated to the implementation of the goals set were carried out using the analysis of a typical case study. Four municipal offices operating in Poland implementing four types of crowdsourcing according to the division made by J. Howe were chosen for the research object in a purposeful manner. It is worth noting that the results obtained not only confirm, but also complement the postulates in the subject area of knowledge. The implementation of research allows to recognize crowdsourcing as a new and fast developing paradigm of organizational learning.