Profiling crowdsourcing practices trend among SMEs in Malaysia

Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the important 'engines of growth' for developed and developing countries. They are the main share of total enterprises and contributes significantly to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment and export. Nevertheless, SMEs remain unachieved the expected success due to grapple with the failure risk, survival downturns and uncertainty environment. To overcome these challenges, the SMEs have to explore the best business strategies i.e crowdsourcing practices for their organisation to boost business performance. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate and profiling crowdsourcing practices among Malaysian SME's that possibly could be one of the organisational business strategies to complement resources scarcity and improve business performance. This study also exploring the crowdsourcing practices scenario in Malaysia, crowdsourcing business activities, crowdsourcing platforms and its effect towards business performance. The study employs quantitative approach. The findings revealed that, the crowdsourcing trends showed that SMEs not only crowdsource non-core business activities but they also tend to crowdsource some of core business or complex business activities such as new product development, marketing research and innovation activities to increase organisational capability to overcome internal resources constrains. The study also highlights both practical, theoretical implications, limitation and future study.