Crowd working : effective workforce management to supplement hospital nursing staff : a research agenda

Schmelzer, Sarah; Berger, Sina; Klumb, Petra; Musy, Sarah; Simon, Michael; Liberatore, Florian

Publication type:	Conference paper
Type of review:	Peer review (abstract)
Title:	Crowd working : effective workforce management to supplement hospital nursing staff : a research agenda
Authors:	Schmelzer, Sarah Berger, Sina Klumb, Petra Musy, Sarah Simon, Michael Liberatore, Florian
et. al:	No
Conference details:	21st EURAM Annual Conference, Montréal, Canada (online), 16-18 June 2021
Issue Date:	2021
Language:	English
Subjects:	Crowd working; Digitalization; Temporary nurses; Hospital management
Subject (DDC):	331: Labor economics 610.73: Nursing
Abstract:	Background: With greater digitalization, new forms of employment are also emerging in health care, such as crowd working, the temporary outsourcing of tasks to a group of qualified freelance professionals via an internet platform. This includes shift-based temporary work arrangements for nurses that resemble typical crowd working patterns in other sectors. Qualified nurses offer their availability on online platforms and can be booked by hospitals for individual shifts. While this type of work arrangement challenges traditional hospital management systems, it offers opportunities for more flexible personnel planning. State of research and research gap: The use of temporary nursing staff in hospitals has been the subject of several research studies. The research field of crowd working, however, focuses mainly on micro-tasks or creative/complex tasks in other sectors, both of which is not comparable with crowd working arrangements in a shift-based work environment involving highly skilled professionals in healthcare organizations. Aim: Development of a research agenda about the challenges of engaging temporary nurses through crowd working platforms and potential consequences for hospital administrations. Based on an overview of the existing literature in related research fields, a research agenda was developed as a starting point for future research on the use and management of external temporary nurses (“nurse crowd workers” or “crowd working nurses”). Results: Flexible workforce planning using crowd working by nurses calls for new strategies in nurse resource planning, shift assignment, and team interaction. The effect of crowd working by nurses on effective healthcare provision in ad-hoc teams and the related impact on hospital outcomes (quality, costs) were identified as main fields of research. Conclusions: (1) The study of crowd working by nurses is a research objective that calls for interdisciplinary research from sector-specific disciplines such as healthcare management/services research and nursing research, but also from other disciplines such as organization science and human resource management. (2) Future research on crowd working by nurses must follow a strong classification system of the different types of work arrangements to allow meaningful synthesis of results in meta-analyses. (3) The embedded features on operating online platforms for the placement of crowd working nurses are continually evolving. Therefore, theory building research on crowd working by nurses should keep up with developments.
URI:	https://digitalcollection.zhaw.ch/handle/11475/24238
Fulltext version:	Published version
License (according to publishing contract):	Licence according to publishing contract
Departement:	School of Management and Law
Organisational Unit:	Winterthur Institute of Health Economics (WIG)
Appears in collections:	Publikationen School of Management and Law

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Schmelzer, S., Berger, S., Klumb, P., Musy, S., Simon, M., & Liberatore, F. (2021). Crowd working : effective workforce management to supplement hospital nursing staff : a research agenda. 21st EURAM Annual Conference, Montréal, Canada (Online), 16-18 June 2021.

Schmelzer, S. et al. (2021) ‘Crowd working : effective workforce management to supplement hospital nursing staff : a research agenda’, in 21st EURAM Annual Conference, Montréal, Canada (online), 16-18 June 2021.

S. Schmelzer, S. Berger, P. Klumb, S. Musy, M. Simon, and F. Liberatore, “Crowd working : effective workforce management to supplement hospital nursing staff : a research agenda,” in 21st EURAM Annual Conference, Montréal, Canada (online), 16-18 June 2021, 2021.

SCHMELZER, Sarah, Sina BERGER, Petra KLUMB, Sarah MUSY, Michael SIMON und Florian LIBERATORE, 2021. Crowd working : effective workforce management to supplement hospital nursing staff : a research agenda. In: 21st EURAM Annual Conference, Montréal, Canada (online), 16-18 June 2021. Conference paper. 2021

Schmelzer, Sarah, Sina Berger, Petra Klumb, Sarah Musy, Michael Simon, and Florian Liberatore. 2021. “Crowd Working : Effective Workforce Management to Supplement Hospital Nursing Staff : A Research Agenda.” Conference paper. In 21st EURAM Annual Conference, Montréal, Canada (Online), 16-18 June 2021.

Schmelzer, Sarah, et al. “Crowd Working : Effective Workforce Management to Supplement Hospital Nursing Staff : A Research Agenda.” 21st EURAM Annual Conference, Montréal, Canada (Online), 16-18 June 2021, 2021.