Saving Our Oceans: Scaling the Impact of Robust Action Through Crowdsourcing

• Date: 01 March 2020
• Author: Philipp Tuertscher,Marleen Huysman,Amanda J. Porter
• Published date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12515

© 2019 The Authors. Journ al of Management Stud ies published by Societ y for the Advancement of Mana gment

Studies and Joh n Wiley & Sons Ltd

Saving Our Oceans: Scaling the Impact of Robust

Action Through Crowdsourcing

Amanda J. Porter, Philipp Tuertscher and

Marleen Huysman

Vrije Universiteit

ABST RACT One approach for tackli ng grand challenges that is g aining traction in recent

management literatur e is robust action: by allowing divers e stakeholders to engage with novel

ideas, initiat ives can cultivate successful idea s that yield greater impact. However, a potential

pitfall of robust act ion is the length of time it takes to generate momentum. Crowd sourcing, we

argue, is a valuable to ol that can scale the generation of impact from robust ac tion. We studied

an award-win ning environmental susta inability crowdsourcing in itiative and found th at robust

action principles were indeed s uccessful in attracti ng a diverse stakeholder network to generate

novel ideas and develop these into sust ainable solutions. Yet we also observed t hat the mo-

mentum and novelty generated was at r isk of getting lost as the actors and t heir roles changed

frequently throughout the proces s. We show the vital import ance of robust action principles for

connecting ideas a nd actors across crowdsourcing phases. T hese observations a llow us to make

a contribution to extant t heory by explaining the micr o-dynamics of scali ng robust action’s

impact over t ime.

Keywo rds: crowdsourcing, gr and challenges, robust action, scal ing impact

INTRODUCTION

On 1 January 2016, 193 member countries of the United Nations adopted a universal

agenda aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing societal chal lenges. The

‘Sustainable Development Goals’ outline 17 ambitious targets for transform ing the

world by 2030. From eradicating poverty to combating climate change, over the next

15 years these goals aim to st imulate actions that are critica l for humanity, shifting the

Journal of Man agement Studi es 57:2 March 2020

doi:10. 1111/jo ms. 12515

This is an op en access article under t he terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri butio n-NonCo mmerc ial

License, which p ermits use, distr ibution and reproduction in any mediu m, provided the origina l work is

properly cited and is not us ed for commercial purposes.

Address for re prints: Ama nda J. Porter, KIN Center for Digita l Innovation, Vrije Universiteit, De B oelelaan

1081, NL 1105 HV Amsterdam, The Net herlands (a.j.porter@vu.nl ).

Saving Our Oceans 247

© 2019 The Authors. Journ al of Management Stud ies published by Societ y for the Advancement of Mana gment

Studies and Joh n Wiley & Sons Ltd

world to a more sustainable and resilient path (United Nations, 2015). While scholars

and practitioners resoundingly ag ree that tackling such challenges requires novel solu-

tions that combine the knowledge and resources of diverse a ctors (Ferraro et al., 2015;

Gehman et al., 2016; George et al., 2016; United Nations, 2017a), the means by which

to reach such solutions has remained a puzzle. The increase d weakening of nation states

(Scherer and Palazzo, 2011) and the failure of central ized initiatives to effect real change

(Etzion et al., 2017) have led many to argue that tackli ng grand challenges requires

fundamentally new approaches to manage and organize the efforts of the d iverse stake-

holders involved (Howard-Grenvil le et al., 2014; OECD, 2019).

One very promising approach gaining traction in recent management and organi-

zation literatures is that of robust action. Ferraro and colleagues introduced the robust

action approach to grand challenges to address a persistent problem that other orga-

nizing approaches have yet to solve: how can local solutions of individual actors scale

up to generate larger impact (Etzion et al., 2017; Ferraro et al., 2015)? Robust action

offers an effective means for scaling initiatives and their impact by creating the conditions

that enable diverse stakeholders to generate novelty and sustain engagement over time.

Ferraro and colleagues propose that organizations employ three robust action principles

to achieve these conditions: 1) provide a structure that supports constructive interac-

tions between stakeholders over time – ‘participatory architectures’ 2) maintain the di-

verse perspectives of the involved stakeholders – ‘multivocal inscriptions’ and 3) support

these stakeholders in taking action to develop solutions that are flexible and adaptive to

the changing circumstances – ‘distributed experimentation’ (Etzion et al., 2017; Ferraro

et al., 2015). Combining these three robust action principles, individual organizations

can develop novel solutions that will attract the engagement of additional stakeholders.

These additional stakeholders will bring along new knowledge and resources that orga-

nizations can use to pursue successively larger wins over time.

Certain developments, such as the emergence of wind power in Denmark or the

growth of microcredit, provide some initial evidence that robust action principles can

cultivate successful local experiments that yield greater impact (Etzion, 2018). However,

a potential pitfall of robust action is the amount of time it takes for these principles to

generate momentum (Etzion et al., 2017). For example, to realize the impact of wind

power, it took several decades for experimentation to spread slowly across many groups

of actors who eventually brought their resources to grow solutions for new markets

(Garud and Karnøe, 2003). Given the urgency to address threats to the earth’s sustain-

ability (Whiteman et al., 2013), it is clearly in the interest of organizations to find ways

to scale positive impact faster.

Crowdsourcing, we argue, is a valuable tool for this task; not only does it include the

widespread involvement of actors (Boons et al., 2015; Dahlander and Piezunka, 2014)

who collaboratively share and combine ideas to generate novel solutions (Boudreau and

Lakhani, 2015; Malhotra and Majchrzak, 2014), it also helps organizations get ideas at

a much faster rate than what is possible in traditional organizational settings involving

only people inside the firm (Lifschitz-Assaf, 2018; West and Bogers, 2014). It is, there-

fore, no surprise that organizations have recently begun to experiment with crowdsourc-

ing to stimulate collaborative problem-solving on a range of societal issues like public

health (Brabham, 2008; Brabham et al., 2014; Neumann, 2012). Organizations such as

248 A. J. Porter et al.

© 2019 The Authors. Journ al of Management Stud ies published by Societ y for the Advancement of Mana gment

Studies and Joh n Wiley & Sons Ltd

Unilever and General Electric now boast successful crowdsourcing programs aimed at

accelerating the development of environmentally sustainable solutions (GE Innovation

Lab, 2016; Unilever, 2015). But there is little empirical work explaining if, and how,

crowdsourcing can effectively contribute to scaling robust action.

Our contribution in this paper is to show how organizations can scale the impact

of robust action through crowdsourcing. Collecting longitudinal data, we analyse an

award-winning crowdsourcing initiative called Save Our Oceans (SOO)1

that tackled

environmental sustainability challenges in the maritime industry. We found that SOO

participants used robust action principles during each phase of the crowdsourcing pro-

cess, which was successful for generating novel ideas, attracting the participation of di-

verse stakeholder groups, and building a network of resources to further develop novel

ideas into sustainable solutions. Yet we also observed that the momentum and novelty

generated was at risk of getting lost as actors and their roles changed frequently through-

out the process. We show the vital importance of robust action principles for connecting

ideas and actors across crowdsourcing phases.

A primary insight of our study is that to scale the positive impact of robust action

faster, organizations need to 1) generate the engagement of new groups of actors without

losing momentum and 2) sustain the novelty generated by one group of actors for use by

additional actors. Organizations can achieve this through participatory architectures and

multivocal inscriptions that create a context for action and anchor present experimenta-

tion with novel ideas and solutions to past and future activity. These observations allow

us to make a contribution to extant theory by explaining the micro-dynamics of scaling

robust action’s impact over time. Our study also contributes to the growing literature on

crowdsourcing for tackling ill-structured problems (Brunswicker et al., 2017; Majchrzak

and Malhotra, 2016; Taeihagh, 2017) by showing how robust action can be used in these

settings to facilitate greater co-creation between participants in the crowd and relevant

stakeholders who will implement the solutions.

To develop these points, this paper is organized as follows: First, we introduce robust action

principles and how they can be used to tackle grand societal challenges. Second, we consider

crowdsourcing as a tool for scaling the impact of robust action and explain the research

context and methods we used to study this empirically. Our findings consist of a longitu-

dinal description of how the SOO crowdsourcing initiative was adapted for robust action.

We then analyse how robust action principles were critical for generating novel ideas and

sustaining the engagement of diverse actors who helped develop these ideas into industry

relevant solutions. We also analyse how connecting ideas and actors across crowdsourcing

phases was vital to safeguard against the loss of momentum and novelty. Finally, we discuss

how the insights from our study contribute to extant theory on robust action approaches to

grand challenges and crowdsourcing initiatives for tackling ill-structured problems.

TACKLING GR AND CHALL ENGES THROUGH ROBUST ACTION

Grand challenges, such as cl imate change and poverty, are large unresolved problems

that have widespread impact on society. Such problems ‘resist’ easy fi xes due to their

complex, uncertain, and eva luative nature (Ferraro et al., 2015). Involving interactions

and associations between actors t hat are nonlinear in nature, interdependencies are the