The IfSTO would like to cordially invite you to the upcoming research talk by

Professor Linus Dahlander (European School of Management and Technology Berlin)

Topic: Benevolent Rejections: The Effect of Rejections on Engagement and Effectiveness in Crowdsourcing

Abstract (short):
Organizations often reach out to external contributors to solicit suggestions on possible ways to innovate. Soliciting suggestions from external contributors can foster organizations’ innovativeness, but it may also frustrate contributors—most of whose suggestions will not be selected for implementation. We thus ask how organizations can handle those contributors whose suggestions are not selected. Using data on how 70,196 organizations handle 962,570 new external contributors, we find that it is beneficial for future engagement and effectiveness for organizations to respond to those suggestions that they do not select by explicitly rejecting them, rather than providing no response. This effect is weaker when an organization has a higher tendency to use rejections and stronger when contributors have put more effort into the first suggestion. In our post hoc analyses and robustness checks, we show that these findings are robust when accounting for unobserved individual heterogeneity, illustrate how the content of the rejection matters, and show how contributors adjust the content of future suggestions following a first rejection. We also elaborate on the scope conditions under which our theory holds and discuss the implications of our study for the literatures on search and innovation

Time: Thursday, 12 May 2016 from 12:00 (noon) until 1:30 pm

Location: Vienna University of Economics and Business, Seminarroom TC.4.04, Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna (please check for updates on: <link ifsto seminar-series>www.wu.ac.at/ifsto/seminar-series/)

If you are interested in attending the presentation, for planning purposes kindly confirm your interest to Elisabeth Brunner (elisabeth.brunner@wu.ac.at) until 9. May 2016.

The speaker series is hosted jointly by the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization (Christopher Lettl) and the Strategic Management Subject Area at the University of Vienna (Markus Reitzig). The series addresses topics at the interface of strategic management, innovation, technology, and organization design. Aim of the series is the facilitation of research dialogue within our department, boundary spanning to other WU departments, and the facilitation of networking with renowned scholars in the field. See http://www.wu.ac.at/ifsto/speaker-series/ for details on future talks (speakers, dates). The series is associated with the RESEARCH PROGRAM ON OPEN INNOVATION of the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization.

We are greatly looking forward to seeing you!