SKEMA Business School, U. Côte d’Azur (GREDEG), France
Organizations increasingly rely on idea contests to solve challenges by asking for potential solutions from their members. Individuals’ contributions to the contest can be either direct, by posting original ideas, or indirect, by commenting on extant ideas of other contest participants. So far, research knows little about the drivers of members’ indirect contributions. We propose a theoretical framework that explains individuals’ indirect contributing behavior as a function of two motivators: Efficacy considerations and reputational gains. Muting the latter by granting individuals’ anonymity, we propose that contest holders can influence the number and types of indirect contributions provided by organizational members. We test our hypotheses by running a field experiment whereby individuals participate in an idea contest on a digital platform. We find that anonymity increases the number of comments posted. At the same time anonymous comments are shorter, less constructive, and less likely to be incorporated by original posters in their revised ideas.
