Growth in Social Network Connectedness among Different Roles in Organizational Crowdfunding

Abstract

When employees participate in organizational crowdfunding, they seek partial funding from their existing social networks. Among proposers of projects, teams with larger social networks tend to be more successful in reaching their funding goals. However, little is known about the consequences of participation on employees' social networks, during and after the crowdfunding campaign. In a study of activity logs and social networks from a very large scale organizational crowdfunding campaign, we found that people in different crowdfunding roles experienced different degrees of growth in their social networks, during and after the crowdfunding campaign, as compared with baseline nonparticipants. These findings contribute to previous work on the strongly social nature of crowdfunding. Organizations can use these results to increase the density of their internal social networks. Employees can use these results to strategize their participation in workplace social networks and in organizational innovation.