Catering to the crowd: An HRM perspective on crowd worker engagement

Organizations are increasingly turning to crowd-based forms of employment to supplement their workforce. However, little is known of the factors that drive crowd workers to fully engage in work tasks. Moreover, we lack understanding of how traditional HRM practices may adapt to promote and capitalize on an engaged crowd workforce. To address these gaps, we draw upon engagement theory to identify and examine characteristics of both crowd work and crowd workers that have implications for worker engagement, offering propositions regarding the nature of these relationships. In addition, we build upon perspectives of human capital investment by examining the HRM practices of recruitment, selection, training and development, and retention, making specific prescriptions for HRM theory and practice regarding the promotion of an engaged and sustainable crowd workforce. We conclude with implications for theory, practice, and future research.