Crowd-Resourcing in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Resource Transformation Perspective

Driven by recent calls for more research that examines forms of crowdsourcing used to address social challenges, in this article, we contribute to the broader literature on open innovation and crowdsourcing by investigating how crowdsourcing platforms enable the transformation of crowd-based resources. We have focused on initiatives with broader social purposes, rather than those that are for-profit and single firm-driven, where the resulting resources are usually solely controlled by a specific organization. By analyzing 19 crowd-based initiatives with a similar context—responding to the coronavirus disease pandemic—we studied a variety of initiatives and identified three distinct types of crowdsourcing platforms that enable resource transformation: resource pooling;resource cocreation;and resource enabling beyond the platform boundaries. We depict how access to and control of resources vary across initiatives. We have framed our contribution as crowd-resourcing, providing a reference model for the design of platforms based on the type of involvement and expected degree of resource transformation. IEEE

Accounting, valuing and investing in health care: dealing with outdated accounting models

Purpose: Despite major progress made in improving the health and well-being of millions of people, more efforts are needed for investment in 21st century health care. However, public hospital waiting lists continue to grow. At the same time, there has been increased investment in e-health and digital interventions to enhance population health and reduce hospital admissions. The purpose of this study is to highlight the accounting challenges associated with measuring, investing and accounting for value in this setting. The authors argue that this requires more nuanced performance metrics that effect a shift from a technical practice to one that embraces social and moral values. Design/methodology/approach: This research is based on field interviews held with clinicians, accountants and administrators in public hospitals throughout Australia and Europe. The field research and multidisciplinary narratives offer insights and issues relating to value and valuing and managing digital health investment decisions for the post-COVID-19 “value-based health-care” future of accounting in the hospital setting. Findings: The authors find that the complex activity-based hospital funding models operate as a black box, with limited clinician understanding and hybridised accounting expertise for informed social, moral and ethical decision-making. While there is malleability of the health economics-derived activity-based hospital funding models, value contestation and conflict are evident in the operationalisation of these models in practice. Activity-based funding (ABF) mechanisms reward patient throughput volumes in hospitals but at the same time stymie investment in digital health. Although classified as strategic investments, there is a limit to strategic planning. Research limitations/implications: Accounting in public hospitals has become increasingly visible and contested during the pandemic-driven health-care crisis. Further research is required to examine the hybridising accounting expertise as it is increasingly implicated in the incremental changes to ABF in the emergence of value-based health care and associated digital health investment strategies. Despite operationalising these health economic models in practice, accountants are currently being blamed for dysfunctional health-care decisions. Further education for practicing accountants is required to effect operational change. This includes education on the significant moral and ethical dilemmas that result from accounting for patient mix choices in public hospital service provision. Originality/value: This research involved a multidisciplinary team from accounting, digital health, information systems, value-based health care and clinical expertise. Unique insights on the move to digital health care are provided. This study contributes to policy development and the limited value-based health-care literature in accounting. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Open Covid-19: Organizing an extreme crowdsourcing campaign to tackle grand challenges

This article presents an extreme crowdsourcing case to tackle grand challenges such as Covid-19. Researchers became more interested in crowds' involvement to deal with grand challenges and scholars reported the use of crowdsourcing in producing innovative solutions to solve these challenges. Driven by recent calls for more research to examine forms of socially motivated interaction options in order to support crowds in dealing with these ill-defined problems, this research conducts a qualitative study of how an extreme crowdsourcing program - Open Covid-19 launched by Just One Giant Lab to develop and test low-cost solutions to tackle the pandemic - was organized. By examining conditions for coordination and knowledge exchange in the Open Covid-19 case, we present an open structure where the challenges of predictability and common understanding have to be managed continuously and the participants themselves gradually build accountability;multidisciplinary knowledge integration is achieved by exchanging efforts and skills, and extreme transparency contributes positively in building a collective project memory. These findings are theoretically important because they clarify how extreme crowdsourcing can be organized to deal with grand challenges.