CROWDSOURCING: A STRATEGY FOR FIRM PERFORMANCE IN THE PLASTIC MANUFACTURING SECTOR IN SOUTHEAST NIGERIA

The heavy reliance of manufacturing firms in the south-eastern part of Nigeria on their team of experts in Research and Development (R & D), to come up with new ideas and innovation, and the neglect of the input of customers in this process necessitated this study to examine the nexus between crowdsourcing and firm performance in the plastic manufacturing sector in southeast Nigeria. The work was anchored on the Human Capital Theory. The study adopted a survey research design as the most suited for the work. Two states were selected judgmentally, because of the concentration of plastic manufacturing firms in those States. Eighteen plastic manufacturing firms were selected randomly, with a population strength of 328. The sample size was 176, arrived at using Krejcie and Morgan formula. Questionnaire was the instrument for data collection, and it was subjected to content validity and reliability tests using correlation method, which returned a coefficient of 0.879. The data collected were analyzed using regression analysis through the ordinary least square method, at a 5% level of significance. Findings revealed that a positive relationship exists between the variables (r = .973). A 95% change in new product development was accounted for by changes in open collaboration in the plastic manufacturing sector in Southeast Nigeria (R2 = .947, F = 2802.884, p-value < 0.05). The study, therefore, concluded that involving customers in the process of new product creation is key to its acceptability by the public. As a result, it was recommended that the managers and owners of plastic manufacturing companies need to find a way to get the customers involved in their idea generation and new product creation for a sustained creditable performance. Keywords: Crowdsourcing, Firm Performance, Plastic Manufacturing Sector, Open Collaboration and New Product Development.

Addressing the environmental and health impacts of microplastics requires open collaboration between diverse sectors

Public concern over the environmental and public health impacts of the emerging contaminant class “microplastics” has recently prompted government agencies to consider mitigation efforts. Microplastics do not easily fit within traditional risk-based regulatory frameworks because their persistence and extreme diversity (of size, shape, and chemical properties associated with sorbed chemicals) result in high levels of uncertainty in hazard and exposure estimates. Due to these serious complexities, addressing microplastics’ impacts requires open collaboration between scientists, regulators, and policymakers. Here we describe ongoing international mitigation efforts, with California as a case study, and draw lessons from a similarly diverse and environmentally persistent class of emerging contaminants (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) that is already disrupting traditional regulatory paradigms, discuss strategies to address challenges associated with developing health-protective regulations and policies related to microplastics, and suggest ways to maximize impacts of research.

The Comparative Legislators Database

Knowledge about political representatives' behavior is crucial for a deeper understanding of politics and policy-making processes. Yet resources on legislative elites are scattered, often specialized, limited in scope or not always accessible. This article introduces the Comparative Legislators Database (CLD), which joins micro-data collection efforts on open-collaboration platforms and other sources, and integrates with renowned political science datasets. The CLD includes political, sociodemographic, career, online presence, public attention, and visual information for over 45,000 contemporary and historical politicians from ten countries. The authors provide a straightforward and open-source interface to the database through an R package, offering targeted, fast and analysis-ready access in formats familiar to social scientists and standardized across time and space. The data is verified against human-coded datasets, and its use for investigating legislator prominence and turnover is illustrated. The CLD contributes to a central hub for versatile information about legislators and their behavior, supporting individual-level comparative research over long periods.

Positive Innovation Networks

In this contribution, we introduce the concept of Positive Innovation Networks (PINs) as a framework to understand processes of co-creation and open collaboration involved in digital social innovation. Drawing on positive psychology, an emerging field focused on the empirical investigation of optimal human functioning, we deconstruct two assets that PINs can leverage to achieve transformative social change: networked flow and positive psychological capital. Networked flow is an optimal group experience that can unlock the creative potential of a PIN by maximizing the “we-intention” of its members. Positive psychological capital refers to the capacity of a PIN’s core team to accrue and spread hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism. We show how these positive psychological resources can be measured and developed for improving PIN performance. Finally, we summarize the key traits of PINs and illustrate them through a case study.