Maximilian Rapp
email: maximilian.rapp@hyve.net

Markus Rhomberg
email: markus.rhomberg@zu.de

Giordano Koch
email: giordano.koch@hyve.net

Ken White
email: ken.white@mason.wm.edu

A New Path for the Public Sector: How to Design a Co-created Strategy in Higher Education

Keywords: Open Government, eGovernment, eParticipation, Co-Creation, Open Education

des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction & Theoretical Background

Ever since the philosophy of Open Innovation emerged, firms dwelled upon the question which tasks in value creation would be suited for the active integration of consumers (Co-Creation) [START_REF] Füller | Consumer empowerment through Internet-based co-creation[END_REF]. In contrast, the strategic use of co-creation -in times of web 2.0-within the public sector needed more time to flourish, even though the active participation of citizens -in an offline format-has a way longer tradition [START_REF] King | The question of participation: Toward Authentic Public Participation in Public Administration[END_REF]. The research often refers to the Obama administration with its White Gov-initiative [START_REF] Nam | Citizens' attitudes toward Open Government and Government. 2.0[END_REF], when similar to a snowball effect, eParticipation spread overseas to Europe and led to pilot, and later on long-term citizen sourcing projects, like participatory budgets, online consultations, city dialogues or collaborative strategy discussions. Best practices like in Ontario to use an online discussion platform to re-structure their voting system, or in Bavaria, where the Christian Social Union searched collaboratively for concepts for its new party program [START_REF] Rapp | Beteiligung an Open Government fördern[END_REF] nearly blossomed out of thin air in the years after.

These paths lead the way for various researchers to explore potentials and challenges public organizations are facing when using innovative co-creation methods to actively engage citizens [START_REF] Lee | Open Innovation in the Public Sector of Leading Countries[END_REF]. Nam for instance, focused on the differentiation and definition of Open Government and Open Government 2.0 as well as citizens´ attitudes toward their integration [START_REF] Nam | Citizens' attitudes toward Open Government and Government. 2.0[END_REF]. He found out that the use of existing e-Government services does not significantly influence citizens´ attitudes toward Open Government, while those who value the use of e-Government have a more positive attitude regarding Open Government and Government 2.0. Interesting findings have been identified by Schlozman et al., who state that the use of the new medium to foster citizens' engagement has mainly turned out to be a weapon of the strong [START_REF] Schlozman | Weapon of the Strong? Participatory Inequality and the Internet[END_REF]. Hereby they refer to the use of Open Government possibilities majorly by those, who are already interested and engaged in socio-political processes. According to Walters et al. there are five purposes to integrate public opinions: 1) the search for definitions, alternatives or criteria; 2) educating the public about an issue or alternatives; 3) measuring public opinion; 4) persuading the public; and 5) legitimize government decisions [START_REF] Walters | Putting more public in policy analysis[END_REF]. In contrast, King et al. identified three barriers to the effective participation: 1) the nature of life in contemporary society, 2) administrative processes and 3) techniques for participation [START_REF] King | The question of participation: Toward Authentic Public Participation in Public Administration[END_REF]. In 1981 Kweit & Kweit analyzed the reasons for participation success and structured those in three characteristics: 1) the structures of participation mechanism and organizations; 2) the target organization, its resource base and member attitude and 3) the environment such as stability, form of government or community size. These research insights show us in other words that especially following guidelines are important regarding the integration of the public: 1) Why integrating the public, 2) how and, 3) with what expectations? [START_REF] Kweit | Implementing Citizen Participation in a Bureaucratic Society: A contingency approach[END_REF] The basis for a more open political approach, as mentioned above, was not laid through modern technologies and ICTs, but has already been addressed by democratic thinkers since the Antique. Back then people were defined as "idiots" [START_REF] Massing | Demokratietheorien: von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart[END_REF], when not participating in everyday politics. While Aristoteles´ zôon politikón can be seen as the individuals´ obligation to interact and participate with the society to be fulfilled and create a strong and vital polis, Barber points out that representative democracy through politicians without participatory elements, where citizens can engage actively, are strongly dangerous for innovative societies and should thus be pursued actively [START_REF] Massing | Demokratietheorien: von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart[END_REF]. In the same vein Corrado and Fireston concluded that online discussions will create a "conversational democracy" in which both the citizen as well as the political leaders will meet in a new (online) and existing (offline) way [START_REF] Corrado | Elections in Cyberspace: Towards a new era in American Politics[END_REF]. As Wright and Street summarized in their article on Democracy, deliberation and design "will promote the development of more democratic forms of government where citizens will be able to develop a more meaningful voice in their government" [START_REF] Wright | Democracy, deliberation and design: the case of online discussion forums[END_REF]. When looking further into the argumentation of a public administration perspective, the most obvious shift within the general development lays in the object of analysis. Whereas traditional research has mainly focused on the administration itself, many recent perspectives on public service provision focused on the relationship between citizen and gov-ernment referring to the basic idea that government officials need to provide public services support [START_REF] Boivard | Developing New Forms of Partnership With the 'Market' in the Procurement of Public Services[END_REF].

Even though the literature on the use of co-creation and open innovation in the public sector is growing rapidly, it covers mainly the primary institutions like political parties, governments, politicians, administrations or unions and their need or approach to execute co-creation initiatives. In this paper we aim to broaden this approach on another field of the public service, namely higher education. We are interested, if openness and the method of co-creation can also be applied on this sector. Interestingly, the discussion about co-creation within higher education (open education) in general has led to major findings about the question if higher education should be free of tuition, but just a few insights about using those methods at universities have been delivered [START_REF] Padilla-Meléndez | Open innovation in universities: What motivates researchers to engage in knowledge transfer exchanges[END_REF][START_REF] Kux | Universities and Open Innovation: a New Research Paradigm[END_REF]. Hereby we want to identify critical success factors and answer the research question on how to concept, design and execute a bottom-up co-creation project within higher education. Within the field of higher education we seek to focus on universities. However, universities have no hands-on products to co-create, so, the integration of public opinions and ideas for strategies or programs seem to be most likely. However, the lack of literature surprises, as you might think the step from opening up companies to consumers or governments to citizens, is logically followed by universities, which are opening up to students or external experts.

2

Empirical Approach

To answer our research question and to bridge the gap between the rich and already existing body of literature and cases from the open innovation research community and the upcoming paradigm in the educational sector, we introduce a five objective framework, which was originally developed by Li and Bernoff to analyze the outcome of co-creation and crowdsourcing projects [START_REF] Li | Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies[END_REF]. We will now use this framework to better understand and analyze a co-creation project in the public sector, specifically for strategies within higher education. Due to the fact that many open strategies are struggling in the implementation phases, we will introduce a sixth dimension labeled "living", which will focus on the actual implementation and realization success of a co-creation campaign.

Dimension

Open Innovation objectives within higher education Energizing Energizing aims to actively embrace students, academics, alumni and experts to engage in the given setup and to motivate sustainably in order to share their experience and knowledge.

Listening

Listening can be described as a key dimension as it aims to opening up the internal administrative barriers to integrate the voices from external experts and target groups sustainably.

Talking

Talking can be described as an external communication chan-nel, which aims to promote the public initiative in order to generate more awareness for the respective project.

Supporting Supporting seems to be the hard ground work of open public collaboration initiatives as its objective is to actively give feedback to shared ideas and to motivate the target group throughout the live phase of the co-creation initiative.

Embracing

The goal of embracing is to guarantee that an open public initiative is backed up by the majority of stakeholders and responsible persons within the institution.

Living

Living can be described as a term that stands for the strong will to implement the results of the initiative, which were discussed and evaluated together with the crowd.

Fig.1.: Objectives for Open Innovation Formats within Higher Education

 Energizing: The first dimension focuses on the recruitment, activation and motivation of the relevant target group to participate in the open call for ideas. Within this approach for universities, not just students and faculty staff should have the possibility to contribute, but also academics, experts or innovators around the globe to gather as much insights and knowhow as possible. Energizing and addressing these target groups is especially important as they have to be seen as a diverse and locally disperse crowd. An activation and motivation strategy will help to identify the most relevant target groups, which will be more engaged due to their knowledge and experience, but also their topic or task related responsibility.

 Listening: Generally, this dimension describes the use of an open innovation platform to involve the outside of the organization or administration to "listen" to a larger peer group of users/consumers (external academics, students) or own employees (teaching staff). As students and the teaching staff are dealing with the processes and content of a university on an everyday basis, they should have an influence on what they are learning or teaching at least have a possible feedback channel for proposing improvements or changes. Therefore, "listening" can be described as a key dimension as it aims and describes the steps how to open up the internal administrative barriers to sustainably integrate the voices from internal as well as external.

 Talking: Although the main objective should focus on the generation of qualitative output, the communication and marketing dimension of such an initiative has to be seen as key factor. This dimension can be subdivided in communication efforts aiming on community growth, on output development, or on more general, not directly related communication efforts. So, "talking" might in other words be described as an external communication channel, which aims to promote the public initiative in order to generate more awareness and traffic on the platform as well as addressing the defined target group.

 Supporting: Open Innovation processes are based on the idea of peer-to-peer feedback. This implicates the participative and collaborative aspect since platform participants may support each other. Within the public sector setting such an approach within higher education can be a viable means to get in touch with other academics, students or likeminded users, connect with experts or the faculty staff and get feedback from them. Especially during the planning, implementation, and realization phases of an open innovation campaign relevant peer-to-peer feedback is considered very helpful. Moreover, a continuous and professional management and guidance of the initiative helps to identify relevant multipliers and motivate contributors to give them a positive feedback. Therefore, "supporting" seems to be the hard ground work as its objective is to actively give feedback to shared ideas and to motivate the target group throughout the initiative.

 Embracing: The final dimension introduced by Li and Bernoff focuses on embracing relevant stakeholders. We know that the successful implementation of ideas and concepts, submitted within such a campaign, often fail due to the lack of motivated and engaged people within the organization. However, this implicates that the systematic integration of relevant experts and especially multipliers may be a success factor. By using a more open process these people can be identified, invited, motivated, and specially treated (embraced) to profit from their central and influencing role. Consequently, through the dimension of "embracing" the project owner tries to guarantee that an open public initiative is backed up by the majority of stakeholders and responsible persons within the institution.

 Living: Since public driven strategies usually in general, but especially with a more open approach, can be evaluated and reviewed by the public itself, a new dimension of transparency is achieved. However, the chance to be integrated leads inevitable to certain expectations of those, who contributed and spend time to help. If nothing happens with ideas and concepts or if there is no certain feedback to the engagement, negative rebound effects can arise. So, open approaches may also serve as a valuable mechanism to report, discuss and evaluate the consequences of the actual purpose.

Even through an open strategy mechanisms no ground breaking input has been generated, the transparent communication of what is going to happen with the concepts and the initiative itself, is strikingly important.

Based on the foundation provided by literature on open innovation, crowdsourcing and co-creation and especially on the introduced framework of open innovation objectives for higher education, we executed a crowdsourcing project for the Mason A. School of Business at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA. The initiative targeted the reorganization and development of the MBA. In this scope stakeholders of the program, e.g. students, managers, alumni were addressed to co-create a more consumer-focused and improved Master in Business Administration.

Since we were not able to draw on already existing research from other open strategy projects within the public sector, we applied a rather explanatory and thus qualitative research approach focusing on one single case. To get a better understanding of the effects between more open participatory approaches and the functions of governmental organizations, we chose a methodology that combined participatory and qualitative research approaches. "Participatory Action Research Approach" (PAR) refers to a research process that makes scientists become active participants and participants become scientists in the project that needs to be analyzed [START_REF] Checkland | Action Research: Its Nature and Validity[END_REF]. By creating a clear structure for planning, implementation, execution as well as systematic learning loops, it can be ensured that a new phenomenon in all its complexity is analyzed in a concrete use case. Therefore PAR is an approach primarily used for research questions that have only been analyzed very little, where scientists actually have to actively immerse themselves in the project. Consequently, the participatory project was conducted in close arrangement with the leaders of the College of William & Mary, the implementing consultancy and the research team. The research team was part of the entire project, as an observing and actively supporting instance.

Empirical Case: Creating Tomorrow´s MBA

In 2015, the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at the College of William and Mary decided to collaboratively design the future of their MBA. The nucleus of this decision has been the international experience of influential enterprises and organizations, which use co-creation in order to find new trends, innovate their products or improve their services. While different researches have shown that the use of crowdsourcing and methods like innovation contests can be successfully applied in industry and the governmental sector, not many higher education institutions have tested this approach in field and especially for their own use. The major difference was the focus on a strategy, as companies usually co-create new services or products. Therefore, the target group differed tremendously from classical co-creation approaches. In order to integrate different stakeholders, but not necessarily from the covered home turf USA, a community as a virtual table for discussion was initiated. This community was approved by the William & Mary CI and enabled interested experts to register (with e-mail, professional background, username) and afterwards submit ideas, comment on others or evaluate contributions. The user-friendly ideation platform www.tomorrowsmba.mason.wm.edu was equipped with various social media shares to spread the word of mouth. Up in front the project team existing of the faculty and a professional innovation consultancy decided to frame the community within an eight-week idea contest to trigger gamification on the community. After the submission phase (end date December 23 rd 2015) an independent jury of influential business professionals decided upon the winning ideas. The whole process was transparently displayed on the community as well as further information about the current MBA program. During the community activation phase MBA students, the teaching staff, business professionals, academics, alumni and experts around the globe were able to share their ideas on how the future of the MBA and business administration could like on the open access platform. During the ideation phase 200 ideas from over 5.000 unique visitors from more than 80 different countries worldwide were submitted. 307 of them registered actively and shared various information about their profes-sional background as well as their contact details. Moreover, 265 comments on shared ideas and 537 evaluations have been made by the community. As described, the research team observed the co-creation process during the livephase in order to understand how faculty staff, experts and students might cope with the platform and especially what key success factors could be identified. The conclusions help to improve the set up and design of co-creation initiatives in higher education. In order to provide a structured project analysis we will use the initially introduced framework to present as well as reflect our insights.

Energizing

Energizing the target group to participate and to help a public institution to generate ideas is crucial. To do so the right set-up and framework has to be found:  Activation strategies: Typically citizens and experts can be motivated intrinsically or extrinsically. However, we have learned that unlike to open innovation initiatives in the industry, public sector eParticipation should mainly offer intrinsic motivation, because citizens want to influence politics sustainably. We therefore used a gamification approach by framing the project as an idea contest, where participants compete to other members of the platform community. Furthermore, we focused by the prizes for the winning ideas on non-cash incentives. The reason for this is the demand of participants to have an influence on an important strategy, but also the chance to show their experience and push profiling. The winner was eternalized in the university with a visible badge as well as an invitation as an interviewee in the successful business podcast of the school (Leadership & Business). Moreover, due to an active community management, we aimed on establishing a strong social grid between all community members, motivating feedback, additional materials, constructive comments, and evaluation. Technical functionalities like e-mail notifications etc. supported re-activation of rather passive platform participants. Social networking functionalities, like the usage of personal profiles with a picture and message boards enriched the communication between the target groups.

 Community management: In line with research on open innovation projects, we identified a pro-active community management as a further crucial factor to really energize the growing community. The research team participated as community managers on the platform performing the following tasks: monitoring (e.g. content screening & reporting), technical support activities, conflict management, activation (e.g. welcome messages, feedback, sharing and evaluating ideas) and triggering active participation. Thereby, we were immediately able to find solutions to task-related or technical problems and, even more important, establish a well guided and interrelated network structure. The latter addresses especially the fact that different community roles must be addressed and differently motivated to be "energized".

Listening

One of the strongest arguments for conducting public sector strategy development processes more openly aims on the potential to profit from external knowledge but obviously also from the experiences of all related students. Hence, finding the most appropriate ways of establishing an efficient and effective process of "listening" seems crucial. Generally, this dimension focuses on the abilities to profit from external inputs of the project initiator or the strategy owner. Traditionally, public administrations are used to consult internal experts, when developing new political strategies. During this project we have learned that this dimension subsumes different potential starting points, which should be reflected in the following:  Capacity Building: Before starting the online phase of the community the faculty of the university came together in order to discuss the crucial topics of the MBA program and to reflect already failed ideas. This guidance was then mirrored to the community in the scope of different categories on the platform. Here, the target group was able to contribute ideas to the provided guidelines, namely 1) Courses, Focus & Skills, 2) Formats, 3) Scholarship & Financing, 4) Lifelong Learning & Community and 5) Marketing & Branding (overall concepts with all dimensions were possible as well as submitting ideas affecting multiple categories). In each category the faculty came up with initial ideas within a workshop to give the community a certain orientation point. However, listening starts already during the planning and conception phase of a public sector open strategy project. Integrating the faculty and the member of the university board has to be seen as a key success factor as important stakeholders within the organization might issue a "not invented here problem". So, to trigger an early enough capacity building process, we conducted lectures and workshops aiming on approach related (open innovation, open strategy, citizen participation) as well as project related (recruiting, tasks, roles etc.) topics.

Fig.3.: Submitted ideas per category

 Engagement on the platform: the second aspect focuses on the actual engagement on the open strategy platform. We observed that those experts from the public administration who participated actively on the platform, where more likely to positively participate und constructively use the platform output within the following strategy formulation phase.

Talking

The dimension of "talking" in public sector might seem to be tremendously interesting, as "getting the word out" is one of the big challenges when initiating a cocreation project. Finding the right target group, communicating the content and actually "market" the own purposes can be highlighted as key success factor.

 Recruiting activities: In order to identify and activate relevant target groups, we learned that an online focused activation and recruiting strategy, accompanied by project related offline events, like workshops and conferences seems totally sufficient. Due to budget restrictions, we did not use traditional media like newspaper ads to promote the co-creation strategy project. Besides the very successful approach of identifying topic related bloggers, forums, and online journalists as virtual multipliers, we also shared the content in influential social media groups as well as in existing channels like linkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Interestingly, one of the most influential blogs on MBAs (Poets & Quants) wrote an article about the initiative and selected it in the aftermath as one of the most innovative campaign in higher education in 2015. Furthermore, the College of William & Mary used existing alumni newsletter, institutional social media channels and networks. On the other hand we initiated various events and information campaign to gather ideas in the offline world. As most promising approaches the execution of personal interviews with leading experts in this field (here professors and top managers) as well as Meet-Ups with students can be identified. The latter was based on roundtable discussions in universities like the LMU or TU in Munich or the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. However, the acceptance among external stakeholders and students lead to a broad interest also in classical media like newspaper, which reported about the campaign and automatically shared the word of mouth (f.e. Virginia Gazette). Even the info stands on different universities and selected guest lectures (f.e. University of Lübeck) led to a broad engagement all over the world, seeing that 78 different nations were registered as users on the platform.

Supporting

The dimension of "supporting" focuses less on a citizen/administration relationship, but rather on a horizontal interconnection of different platform participants. The open strategy process showed how relevant and important qualitative feedback is in order to improve concepts, rework ideas and connect input from different participants with each other.  Focusing on the dimension "supporting" we found out that the welcoming and motivation of participants, by leaving messages on their personal pin-walls established a trustable and transparent setting, which leads to a constructive, creative, and feedback orientated community.

 Expert engagement: The integration of internal experts is not just inevitable for capacity building, but also for the feedback management. Ideas from various stakeholders on the community should be feed backed to activate the discussion and to share the insights from the institutions. A collaborative dialogue is the intentioned consequence. Consequently, without the permanent feedback of other platform participants and the support of the experts, many ideas would not have been qualitative enough to influence the strategy (in average every idea has been feed backed four times -either evaluated or commented; 200 ideas/848 interactions on the platform in general).

Embracing

As stated before, a co-creation process by integrating the opinion and ideas from external -but also from extended internal-target groups, needs an open mind set within the institution. By conducting capacity workshops in the first place, you create a decent working atmosphere with a common goal. In the long run, this process has to be intensified, especially with the faculty in the university, as their task is to bring the final strategy to life. Even though the whole co-creation format is a bottom-up approach due to the participation of a broad basis, the institution itself should integrate the head of the university/program to have to reputation to push the process through the internal stage-gate.

 Systematic further capacity building: To integrate the internal stakeholders from ideation to implementation, it helps to have responsible and constant project owners throughout the process. This team needs to focus on pushing the underlying idea of an open strategy format, integrating topic related experts from the faculty and ensure a sustainable project progress.

Living

The dimension "living" addresses the needs of an open strategy approach with respect to the sustainable development and implementation of a co-creation strategy for the higher education. From projects in the public sector we know that a lack of implementation might lead to further distrust and disappointment within the target groups [START_REF] Fishkin | When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation[END_REF].

 Transparent communication: Right from the start of the online platform, the project owners have to clarify the rules and terms & conditions on when input from the co-creation process might be implemented in the strategy. Here it is inevitable to not raise false hopes and to explain the essential credo of the institution. Hence, the participants knew from the start what will happen to their ideas and what goals the initiator address in the process. As a consequence, no negative rebound effects have been measured or frustrated posts on the co-creation platform were registered.

 Output formulation and implementation: the final aspect emphasizes the importance of finding an appropriate mode of summarizing the content from the platform and analyzing as well as condensing the most important insights. One key take away from this study is to integrate the above mentioned experts from the faculty also as "consultants" in the post-platform realization and implementation phase. Furthermore, for the evaluation and further elaboration of the ideas, an independent jury of influential professionals (f.e. CEO of Canadian Tire) was consolidated to select the best ideas for the idea contest. So, the selection of best ideas (selected from the faculty and then the jury) is currently (2016) in progress to be implemented in the strategy, which will be communicated in 2016/2017.

Conclusion & Further Research

The "Tomorrow´s MBA" co-creation strategy development process was a unique approach, systematically accompanied by research and practical partners in the public sector. The initiative aimed at integrating external stakeholders like business professionals or students as well as the internal organization (faculty). Consequently, the insights generated in this study are not generalizable. Further research might exactly jump in here and try to compare our results to the experience in other public sectors to find key differences. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the implementation strategy, compared to other sectors, might be interesting to address. However, while linking our research to already existing open strategy research in the public sector, we conclude that the approach was a powerful tool to co-create an important strategy in higher education. Summarizing the insights gained from open government literature, we were able to further elaborate and extent the five dimension framework, originally introduced by Li and Bernoff. Overall, the study was able to show that an open co-creation strategy approach is also applicable within a public sector setting, specifically in higher education. Hence, our discussions and insights contribute more or less a manual on how to design and execute a co-creation initiative within the public sector, more precise within the public sector and open education research community.

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2.: Background of the registered community members


Thomas Wagenknecht
email: wagenknecht@fzi.de

René Filpe
email: filpe@fzi.de

Christof Weinhardt
email: weinhardt@kit.edu

Towards a Research Framework of Computer-supported Organizational Participation

Keywords: Organizational Participation, eParticipation, Group Decision Support Systems, Expert Interviews

Employees demand high responsibility and empowerment, while keeping their work communal and flexible. Initiatives that foster organizational participation can contribute to the fulfilment of such work conditions. Research in sociology and psychology demonstrated positive effects on job satisfaction as well as productivity. However, although adoption of social software is widely spread in firms, research on the determinants of computer-supported organizational participation is scarce. We conduct 20 guided expert interviews to propose a research framework for computer-supported organizational participation. We describe the elements to consider when designing processes that aim to be beneficial for both the employer as well as the employees. Building on the expert interviews, our process model includes a topic horizon and a collaboration phase, which creates proposals that have to be decided on in order to produce results. We show how employee competence and leadership commitment are as important as the workload and supporting features as well as an option for anonymous communication. We propose a set of features and discuss implications for researchers and practitioners.

Introduction

Many companies offer their staff social software such as employee portals and Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) to support information exchange and collaboration [START_REF] Leonardi | Enterprise social media. Definition, history, and prospects for the study of social technologies in organizations[END_REF]. Yet, in a network society, more and more areas of our lives become democratized [START_REF] Castells | The rise of the network society. The information age: Economy, society, and culture 2nd Edition[END_REF]. This democratization has reached the workplace as today's employees demand high responsibility and empowerment as well as communal and flexible work environments [START_REF] Tumasjan | Employer brand building for start-ups. which job attributes do employees value most[END_REF]. Initiatives that foster employee participation can nurture these demands. Organizational participation (OP) and its positive effects on job satisfaction and productivity have been well studied [START_REF] Wegge | Promoting work motivation in organizations[END_REF][START_REF]The Oxford handbook of participation in organizations[END_REF]. However, little attention has been paid to the exploration of how these processes can be incorporated by and designed with social software. Yet, considering the eParticipation practices in eGovernment on one hand [START_REF] Panopoulou | Success factors in designing eParticipation initiatives[END_REF][START_REF] Tambouris | Understanding eParticipation state of play in Europe[END_REF], and the progressively strong grip that social software holds over current work practices on the other, computer-supported organizational participation (CSOP) becomes increasingly relevant [START_REF] Majumdar | Managers' perceptions of social software use in the workplace. Identifying the benefits of social software and emerging patterns of its use[END_REF]. Nonetheless, research on CSOP is scarce. This is especially problematic as it is not clear which parts of existing social software for participatione.g. from the political sphere [START_REF] Panopoulou | Success factors in designing eParticipation initiatives[END_REF] can be applied in the corporate contexts. Hence, the main purpose of this paper is to further our understanding of the design of eParticipation in firms. We conduct 20 guided interviews with experts from a variety of industries, including services as well as manufacturing, in order to derive a model that describes the relevant determinants of CSOP. The results provide a basis for a framework that informs future research on the main areas where studies are needed. We derive a set of CSOP use cases and draw implications for practitioners.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows. In Section 2, we illustrate the theoretical background on organizational participation, eParticipation and group decision support systems. Section 3 presents our study design, including our data set and the structure of the expert interviews. We report the results in Section 4 and propose a framework of CSOP in Section 5. Section 6 draws a conclusion.

Theoretical Background and Related Work

We begin by introducing the fundamental theories behind OP from sociology and psychology, and highlight some of its positive as well as negative effects. Thereafter, we introduce information systems literature to establish the connection to eParticipation and group decision support systems (GDSS).

Fundamentals of Participation

Typically, there are four basic theoretical lines of thinking that shape OP: democratic, socialist, human growth and development as well as those focusing on productivity and efficiency [START_REF] Greenberg | The consequences of worker participation: A clarification of the theoretical literature[END_REF][START_REF] Dachler | Conceptual dimensions and boundaries of participation in organizations. A critical evaluation[END_REF]. The democratic view emphasizes participation in a form that includes as many employees and stakeholders as possible. The socialist assumption departs from the notion of participation as increasing workers' control of the production process, while simultaneously educating them to the point that they can replace their managers [START_REF] Vranicki | Socialism and the problem of alienation[END_REF]. Furthermore, human growth and development theories extend the latter aspect by highlighting self-development and self-fulfillment. Finally, theories on productivity regard participation as having the goal of increasing employee satisfaction and commitment as well as a generally increasing productivity and efficiency by means of better decision quality [START_REF] Dachler | Conceptual dimensions and boundaries of participation in organizations. A critical evaluation[END_REF]. Empowerment is a management style that incorporates many of these aspects. Kanter [START_REF] Kanter | Men and Women of the Corporation[END_REF] suggests that empowerment is a form of ability to mobilize resources. She argues that individuals gain power by having access to information, support and resources as well as space to foster their soft and hard skills. Empowerment is understood as a process that allows employees to gain and retain power to act autonomously [START_REF] Wilkinson | Empowerment: theory and practice[END_REF].

Typically, research in organizational and work psychology categorizes OP along eight steps, which moves from a low to a high degree of employee decision-making authority. The steps include employee information, consultation (employees can have their say), co-determination (employees have to be involved in the discussion) and control [START_REF] Wegge | Promoting work motivation in organizations[END_REF][START_REF]The Oxford handbook of participation in organizations[END_REF][START_REF] Dachler | Conceptual dimensions and boundaries of participation in organizations. A critical evaluation[END_REF]. The latter can range from voting on selected issues, to having a veto right, shared leadership or even final decision-making authority. Dachler and Wilpert [START_REF] Dachler | Conceptual dimensions and boundaries of participation in organizations. A critical evaluation[END_REF] also stress the complexity, topic and the point in time that participative elements are used in the decision-making process as important factors for OP.

Effects of Participation

Participation is often implemented with regards to its positive effects in terms of employee motivation, satisfaction and performance [START_REF] Wegge | Promoting work motivation in organizations[END_REF][START_REF] Wilkinson | Empowerment: theory and practice[END_REF][START_REF] Miller | Participation, satisfaction, and productivity. A meta-analytic review[END_REF]. For instance, in a metaanalysis, Miller and Monge [START_REF] Miller | Participation, satisfaction, and productivity. A meta-analytic review[END_REF] find that participative leadership contributes to more sustainable and effective learning and personal development. Moreover, employees increase intrinsic motivation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and feelings of self-efficacy [START_REF] Spreitzer | Psychological empowerment in the workplace. Dimensions, measurement, and validation[END_REF][START_REF] Humborstad | When industrial democracy and empowerment go hand-in-hand. A co-power approach[END_REF]. This in turn can help companies to increase effectiveness [START_REF] Kanter | Men and Women of the Corporation[END_REF][START_REF] Wilkinson | Empowerment: theory and practice[END_REF][START_REF] Harrison | Special topic. Democracy in and around organizations. Is organizational democracy worth the effort[END_REF]. However, OP is not without risks. For instance, decision quality could actually be decreased if lower-level employees are not knowledgeable enough to take appropriate decisions [START_REF] Harrison | Special topic. Democracy in and around organizations. Is organizational democracy worth the effort[END_REF]. Moreover, participative processes could prolong decision-making as they take more time than usual top-down decisions. Besides time, employers could also fear that they lose power and authority. Among the common explanations for the reluctance of senior managers to implement employee empowerment practices are two psychological factors established by Pfeffer et al. [START_REF] Pfeffer | Faith in supervision and the selfenhancement bias. Two psychological reasons why managers don't empower workers[END_REF]. First, the researchers demonstrated that people have a tendency to believe in the supervision effect. Controlling for the quality, they suggest that observers assume a work product to be better the greater the degree of supervision. Moreover, Pfeffer et al. [START_REF] Pfeffer | Faith in supervision and the selfenhancement bias. Two psychological reasons why managers don't empower workers[END_REF] were able to show in an experiment that the more participants were involved in the supervision of the creation of a product, the more favorably participants evaluated it. This selfenhancement effect is well documented as people regularly evaluate their work to be above that of their peers [START_REF] Brown | Evaluations of self and others. Self-enhancement biases in social judgments[END_REF].

Interestingly, there is no need for managers to fear losing control completely when introducing OP. Markey et al. [START_REF] Markey | Influence at work and the desire for more influence[END_REF] found that workers who felt appreciated by their senior management did not desire more influence. However, those who were under the impression that they did not learn new things and did not receive sufficient information on important decisions, changes and future plans indicated that they want to have more influence.

eParticipation and Group Decision Support Systems

If there is limited ground for reluctance against OP, why has OP not spread further despite the benefits? One reason might be that many firms face difficulties with its realization [START_REF] Scholl | Wissensgewinnung durch Führung. Die Vermeidung von Informationspathologien durch Kompetenzen für Mitarbeiter (Empowerment)[END_REF]. For instance, Arnold et al. [START_REF] Arnold | The empowering leadership questionnaire: The construction and validation of a new scale for measuring leader behaviors[END_REF] point out that it is crucial for employers to constantly support and inform employees during participative processes to demonstrate that their input is taken seriously. GDSS offer support in the computermediated generation, presentation and synthesis of proposals [START_REF] Desanctis | A foundation for the study of group decision support systems[END_REF]. They are also popular tools to lower dysfunctional effects in the decision-making of groups, like boards, units or teams [START_REF] Postmes | Social processes and group decision making. Anonymity in group decision support systems[END_REF][START_REF] Briggs | 1001 unanswered research questions in GSS[END_REF]. Such dysfunctions include social effects that usually occur in group decision-making such as conformity pressure, groupthink or limited information apprehension [START_REF] Wilkinson | Empowerment: theory and practice[END_REF][START_REF] Stroebe | Why groups are less effective than their members. On productivity losses in idea-generating groups[END_REF]. Political parties, government agencies and non-governmental groups alike are already using GDSS to enable eParticipation processes for citizens [START_REF] Panopoulou | Success factors in designing eParticipation initiatives[END_REF][START_REF] Tambouris | Understanding eParticipation state of play in Europe[END_REF]. These software tools often facilitate information sharing, collaboration and collective action (such as voting) [START_REF] Spagnoletti | A design theory for digital platforms supporting online communities: a multiple case study[END_REF]. We understand CSOP as social software that technologically enables participative elements specifically in firms. Extant research already proposed success factors for eParticipation in eGoverment intiatives [START_REF] Panopoulou | Success factors in designing eParticipation initiatives[END_REF]. However, factors from the political sphere might not yield the same results in the corporate field [START_REF] Bayley | Designing a participatory process for stakeholder involvement in a societal decision[END_REF]. For instance, as enterprises are slowly beginning to implement OP through means of GDSS, one approach is to use ESNs [START_REF] Richter | Success Measurement of Enterprise Social Networks[END_REF]. However, ESNs can be understood as "social media used for communication and interaction within the workplace" [START_REF] Leonardi | Enterprise social media. Definition, history, and prospects for the study of social technologies in organizations[END_REF]. Thus, these information systems are by no means automatically fully equipped to serve as facilitators for CSOP, suggesting that further research is needed.

All in all, current research proposes that OP offers many benefits to both employees as well as employers. However, they need to be considered against their risks, which can be partially mitigated through the use of GDSS. Although ESNs are fairly widespread, research on eParticipation tools for the specific context of OP is very scarce. Thus, we seek to close this gap by proposing a research framework that incorporates the components and requirements for GDSS to enable participation in firms. We choose to interview experts in diverse organizations in order to elicit possible challenges and opportunities in implementing CSOP. This will yield a framework with testable propositions that is able to guide future research as well as practical implementations.

Study Design

We aim to capture tacit knowledge from experts in organizations based on guided expert interviews [START_REF] Weston | Analyzing interview data. The development and evolution of a coding system[END_REF]. We consider this as the most promising and insightful method to develop a framework with verifiable propositions and hypotheses for future research. For instance, a general survey might be too broad and a field study in a single firm too case-specific. Therefore, we focus on expert interviews with executives with more than five years of work experience in the HR and/or IT department. These experts can be considered decision makers when it comes to implementing CSOP. We interviewed a total of 20 participants that all had extensive experience with organizational participation in practice. Two thirds of the experts were working in the services and information and communication technologies industry. Production industry was home to five experts. Only one of the companies had less than 100 employees. In two thirds of the companies, there was a more or less active workers council.

Based on the theoretical background presented in Section 2, we developed an interview guide. Our interviews began by introducing the concepts of OP. We then asked for the level of workers' representation (i.e. trade unions, workers council) and examined the corporate culture by asking about the corporate hierarchy and formal decision-making processes. Thereafter, we explored the usage of collaborative software tools such as ESNs. Following this part, we interviewed the experts on their experience with OP processes and asked for challenges and opportunities of a possible computer-supported implementation.

Interviews lasted, on average, 45 minutes. We recorded them both in writing and audio. Three research assistants transcribed the interviews following the approach of Weston et al. [START_REF] Weston | Analyzing interview data. The development and evolution of a coding system[END_REF]. Inter-coder reliability was ensured by repeated crosschecks. Three research assistants resolved discrepancies with the help of an independent third party. Transcriptions were then processed using MAXQDA 12.1.3 [START_REF] Corbin | Basics of qualitative research[END_REF]. We created a codebook with 98 codes. Codebooks were crosschecked to increase validity. We took an iterative and dynamic approach, developing the codebook further as we went on to derive codes in vivo during the analysis of the interviews. We coded snippets, phrases and paragraphs and cross-checked the final coding.

Based on the theoretical background and the expert interviews, we develop a nascent framework, which will be described in detail as follows.

Results

Table 1 shows the use cases for which experts carried out OP. Most commonly, employees were simply informed about firm developments. Furthermore, we observed a form of what we call "coffee kitchen participation", which includes employee voting on decisions that are not business-relevant such as the color of the canteen walls, where to go for a Christmas party or the type of coffee to be bought. Moreover, the interviewees stated that participative processes in their companies asked for the staff's well-being and for idea generation (i.e. suggestions for improvements of products, procedures and work conditions). In addition, experts said that employees were invited to set the agenda of board meetings and corporate events, propose mission statements and work on strategy plans or corporate policies. All of the use cases happened both with and without the support of IT tools. Also, most use cases were located at a corporate-wide level, but one that was exclusive to the unit level. In most cases our interviewees told us about, employees were only able to decide on "light-weight" issues. The creation of mission statements or strategies was rare. More often, OP was happening in form of suggestion schemes, surveys on well-being and by means of coffee kitchen participation.

X X X Coffee Kitchen Participation X X - Employee well-being X X X Idea Generation X X X Agenda Setting X - X Mission Statements X - X Strategy & Corporate Policy X - X
The vast majority of the experts made positive experiences with OP. They reported affirmative reactions from their employees, who appreciated the effort as promoting equal opportunities. As expected, the interviewees said that participation lead to increased job satisfaction. Some experts also told us that they experienced a change in the corporate culture with more feedback and trust as a sign for a willingness for organizational transformation. Moreover, OP reportedly led to an increase in decision quality and more (product and process-optimizing) ideas. Many interviewees also said that OP was positively received by the companies' leadership. Some were frankly surprised by the high quality of the results and the overall effects. However, in the past experience with OP many experts reported critical problems too. A major issue was the low rate of response among employees, which the interviewees traced back to four reasons. First, some employees were unable to identify themselves and their job with the chosen topics. Thus, they had no interest in participating and did not feel involved. Second, many companies simply were not ready for OP as their corporate culture lacked the formal and informal framework (e.g. employees did not dare to express their opinion or were unable to do so because of hierarchical structures). Third, the experts acknowledged that an OP process needs some marketing to attract users. An interviewee explained it the following way: "When you put up something for discussion, you can be happy if there is some degree of participation at all. We call it the empty dancefloor: There always needs to be someone who starts dancing first, so that other people follow". Fourth, companies used software tools to organize the participative process, which were often perceived as insufficient because of their high complexity in terms of both the time it took to learn the functions as well as the resources employees had to put into the process besides their normal job tasks. An expert stated: "There are usually employees who say, they feel simply overloaded with the tasks they already have. They perceive the introduction of new software tools as an additional burden". Moreover, interviewees reported that some employees did not trust the (technical) systems due to a lack of anonymity. Some experts also reported that reticent employees were discriminated by the process as they did not get equal opportunities to have their say. Furthermore, employees that were less tech-savvy were disadvantaged too. Due to these four main reasons described above, low employee participation diminished a processes' representative status in the eyes of the experts.

In general, our experts recognized that OP in their companies was often structured inefficiently. For instance, discussions were sometimes perceived as off-topic and not constructive. This happened when there was a lack of priority and when responsibilities were unclear. Experts regularly reported of a lack of commitment by the leadership because it was not clear how the senior management would deal with results or simply did not show much interest. Many experts also think that the leadership could effectively block decisions or derail the participative process, so that employees lose interest and trust in the whole process. Another problem occurred especially in the field of idea generation. In a few cases, results were so disappointing that the experts assumed that employees did not have sufficient expertise to propose and discuss certain ideas. Instead the experts stressed that they faced a high workload in evaluating and eventually dismissing ideas.

A small number of experts reported that their firms used dedicated software tools for OP. Yet, most experts said that they were relying on offline measures, their Intranet or ESNs. Thus, when introduced to an online GDSS specifically designed for CSOP, most experts had to depend on hypothetical knowledge. In general, most suggested that such a system is especially appropriate for firms with more than one location and a larger number of (spatially dispersed) employees. They expect employees to have positive reactions for CSOP. In particular, experts expect more constructive discussions as a result of mutual rating of proposals and filtering of bad ideas. This in turn would lead to higher acceptance and approval from the leadership. Many interviewees also think that such software tools can support employees regardless of their position and social status. Some experts also predict increased transparency of the decision-making process. They envision dedicated software to make the whole process clearer, which could increase the efficiency of CSOP. Moreover, some experts recognized that GDSS might be more motivating through means of rankings and gamified elements. Experts were divided over the questions of anonymity and moderation. For instance, some assume that employees would only use it to write complaints or might even use the forum as a way to compromise and attack their superiors. As one expert stated: "With anonymity we made the experience that a very small part of the participants who dislike everyone and everything can have a big negative impact on the discussion overall". Contrarily, other experts emphasized the need for anonymity as it would be the only way to comply with legal requirements and, more importantly, enable open discussions on sensitive issues. In their view, anonymous comments would protect employees from repressions of their superiors. Notably, we found the same controversy among experts in terms of the need for moderators.

In conclusion, we captured tacit knowledge on CSOP from a variety of experts. We found that firms rarely use dedicated software for OP, although the experts envision that CSOP could diminish negative effects of offline processes while emphasizing the positive sides. GDSS seemed promising especially because of their ability to make the structure of the overall process more transparent and accessible, as well as more engaging. However, the interviewees also stressed that GDSS might be misused by some employees. Thus, based on these results we can derive the determinants for a CSOP framework.

Framework

The expert interviews offer a critical analysis of existing practices in OP. Based on these results, we describe a framework that describes the determinants of CSOP in a way so that it will improve both the efficiency and equality of employers and employees; leading to a win-win situation for both. We aim to describe valid constructs for firms with spatially and timely dispersed teams and more than 50 employees. Figure 1 shows our framework of CSOP. We describe it in more detail as follows.

Fig. 1. Framework of Computer-supported Organizational Participation

Topic Horizon. In order to fulfil its purpose, CSOP needs a process that allows employees and employers to discuss a range of ideas and topics. We call this the topic horizon, which defines the issues that can be discussed in detail throughout the participation process. These issues can along all use cases discovered in Table 1 from seemingly trivial topics, such as the color of the cafeteria, to mission statements and strategic decisions. The topic horizon also sets the boundaries of who can propose what type of issue. The topic horizon is defined by both the employees' competence as well as the leadership's commitment. The first means both competence as a function of the expertise of the employees (Do they have enough knowledge and skills to work on a certain topic?) as well as what rights and obligations are granted to them (What can employees decide on?). Topics should be chosen in such a way, so that they are relevant to employees in order to ensure identification. On the other hand, commitment asks for how much the leadership is actually involved in the whole participation process (How much do they engage?) and what they plan to do with the results (Are results binding or just a form of consultation?). Both characteristics set the boundaries of the topic horizon. These characteristics significantly impact the topics that can then be proposed in the collaboration phase.

Collaboration. After agreeing on a topic horizon, members of the participation process can propose issues they want to discuss in more detail. At the moment of the inception of the first proposals, the participation process enters into a phase of collaboration that develops these proposals further. Depending on the goals of a certain process, this can include commenting, editing and ratingeither by regular users or (internal as well as external) moderators. The means of collaboration dictate the workload that is imposed on both employees (How much effort is asked for to propose and work on an idea?) and employers (What degree of oversight is needed?). In addition, collaboration also includes support for the members of a participation process. For instance, in cases where the topic horizon exceeds the employees' expertise (but not the relevance), firms could implement supporting collaboration tools or structures that ensure the required level of information apprehension. Anonymity is another important characteristic of the collaboration phase. In some countries, anonymous discussion might be legally advised. Moreover, anonymous communication seems generally useful when employees discuss sensitive issues, because users can express their opinion more honestly and do not have to fear repression from their superiors [START_REF] Postmes | Social processes and group decision making. Anonymity in group decision support systems[END_REF]. We propose a few features and remarks on implementation below. Finally, the collaboration phase ends by presenting the final proposals.

Results. These proposals are subject to decision-making (i.e. voting) and, hence, become results. The results have a (more or less disruptive) impact on the employees, the employers and the firm's market. While the results and their form are heavily dependent on the form of the topic horizon and the collaboration phase, they also define future participation processes. For instance, if the results produce disruptive product ideas, both employees and employers will be more inclined to start another participation process. They might even widen the topic horizon by committing more strongly and granting more competencies. However, if the feedback is negative, another round of participation might have a narrower topic horizon. In the end, the members of the CSOP process decide on the proposals in the form that they have been developed into during the collaboration phase. Thereafter, the outcomes enter a feedback loop, which determines the conditions of whether another round of the participation process will be initiated.

Feedback. Furthermore, the process as a whole is dependent on the rate of response and level of participation. Naturally, if more members take part in the discussion, the leadership will be inclined to commit more strongly to the results. However, if a certain threshold cannot be reached, there is less of an incentive because the process has a limited representative status. Likewise, if many members enter a discussion, it becomes more engaging. Yet, these effects are interdependent and a type of chickenand-egg problem. Additionally, the way the process is designed en bloc determines its degree of transparency for every construct. Transparency is a basis for trust in the whole process. If the leadership communicates clearly how the CSOP process is set out, employees know what to do and what to expect. This makes decision-making more easy to understand and will spark participation. A transparent process will also ensure that employees feel appreciated [START_REF] Markey | Influence at work and the desire for more influence[END_REF].

The success of CSOP is highly dependent on the goals and the appropriate selection of the tools and features necessary to fulfil these goals. First, a successful CSOP procedure is dependent on the corporate culture. Some companies might be able to adapt CSOP more easily due to their flat hierarchies and open discussion culture, while others might take longer because of a more formalized way of communication. Second, the experts interviewed stressed several times that some employees will be easily engaged in a participative process. However, others might feel overwhelmed. Thus, participation should be voluntary and competition between employees should be kept at compatible levels. Nonetheless, if employees spent much time on participation, they could also ask for some rewards. Third, participation is by no means a surefire success. One expert said: "Marketing is essential to ensure acceptance of the tool." Hence, we advise to implement (onand offline) marketing measures before, during and after the participation process. These might include trainings and workshops. Furthermore, the implementation should consider how a participation process can be integrated in the existing enterprise IT infrastructure.

A myriad of features can be used to pronounce the positive and mitigate the negative effects of CSOP postulated by the experts. These include idea filtering techniques [START_REF] Klein | High-Speed Idea Filtering with the Bag of Lemons[END_REF], delegated voting [START_REF] Behrens | The Principles of LiquidFeedback[END_REF], gamified approaches [START_REF] Hamari | Does gamification work. A literature review of empirical studies on gamification[END_REF] or could make use of text mining tools, such as term extraction and topic modeling [START_REF] Blei | Topic models[END_REF].

Discussion, Limitations and Conclusion

We proposed a nascent framework of CSOP. Based on 20 guided expert interviews, we derived a set of use cases for CSOP. Thereafter, we propose a model that incorporates a topic horizon, a collaboration phase and results as its basic constructs. These are highly dependent on their respective characteristics. First, the topic horizon is determined by the employee's competenceboth in terms of expertise as well as the relevance of the topics to them. Additionally, the commitment by the leadership is crucial as it defines which stakeholders are involved and in what way results will be dealt with. According to these boundaries set for the topic horizon, CSOP enters into a collaboration phase. Depending on how the workload is shared among employees and employers and what measures for support are chosen, as well as whether anonymous communication is enabled, collaboration entails certain forms of proposal editing, commenting and developing. In result, these proposals are decided on and will reveal a more or less disruptive impact for the employees, the leadership and the firm's market. CSOP is heavily reliant on the features that are chosen for the design of the process. We also suggest that the whole process is profoundly depending on the rate of response by the employees, which determines the representative status of the whole CSOP initiative. Moreover, the transparency of the process defines how well the decision-making process can be understood and accessed by employees and employers. However, these two latter constructs are interdependent with the aforementioned constructs. The design of CSOP is very context-specific. Hence, practitioners should also consider a thorough assessment of a firm's corporate culture and the diversity of their employees as well as marketing measures.

In line with extant research, our framework incorporates the three forms of online communitiesinformation sharing, collaboration and collective action [START_REF] Spagnoletti | A design theory for digital platforms supporting online communities: a multiple case study[END_REF]. It mirrors some of the common success factors identified for public eParticipation [START_REF] Panopoulou | Success factors in designing eParticipation initiatives[END_REF], while we emphasize workload and support as well as anonymity more strongly. Fu-ture research could compare our model to other public eParticipation frameworks in more detail, which was beyond the scope of this study. Despite our best efforts to diversify our set of experts, future research could consider surveying a broader (and more international) set of employers and employees. All in all, our framework can only be the first step of research in progress, where the model needs to be tested in practice.

Table 1 .

 1 Use Cases for Organizational Participation

	Use Case	Using IT-Tools	Unit Level	Corporate Level
	Information

Acknowledgement

This study is part of the research project "Participation as a Service" (PaaS), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. We are grateful for the support of our interviewed experts, our research partners at HRpepper GmbH & Co. KGaA, partou eG and Liquid Democracy e.V., as well as three anonymous reviewers.


Niki Nikolakakou
email: nikolaka@mail.ntua.gr

Efthimios Bothos

Gregoris Mentzas
email: gmentzas@mail.ntua.gr

A Web-Based Information Market to Support Policy Decision Making

Keywords: Policy Modelling, Information Markets, Predictions of policy indices

ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

Reliable and timely information about current economic and environmental conditions is crucial for policy makers to take decisions and for steering agents' expectations formation about the state of the economy [START_REF] Agostino | Survey-based nowcasting of US growth: a real-time forecast comparison over more than 40 years[END_REF]. Nowadays several institutions in industrialized countries collect data regarding expectations on the outcome of future events and periodically (monthly, quarterly etc.) release aggregated indices. Many policy makers and modellers take recourse to survey evidence to measure current conditions in the economy; policy related reports frequently point to survey evidence when describing the current macroeconomic situation. For example, the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) and the Purchasing Manager Indices (PMI) have gained great attention as they are regularly mentioned in monetary policy communications [START_REF] Bańbura | A look into the factor model black box: publication lags and the role of hard and soft data in forecasting GDP[END_REF]. Other approaches rely on data of higher frequencies, including financial series and monthly data on real economic activity. The first category is often labelled as 'soft' data, while the latter as 'hard' indicators of real activity that measure certain components directly (e.g. industrial production as evidence of the GDP). Soft data are available promptly, while real activity data are published with a significant delay. On the other hand, the hard data contain more precise signals for indices [START_REF] Bańbura | A look into the factor model black box: publication lags and the role of hard and soft data in forecasting GDP[END_REF]. Related work (see e.g. [START_REF] Manski | Measuring expectations[END_REF]) shows that these indices closely follow the economic situation as described by variables, like GDP, inflation or interest rates, and even anticipate turning points in the economic cycle.

While the usefulness of monitoring expectations, opinions and sentiments of economic agents is undoubted, one can argue that existing indices are based on a selected number of surveys and a low monitoring frequency resulting in a partial view of more complex dynamics. For example, the first (advance) data release of GDP growth for the current quarter is released about six weeks after the end of the quarter [START_REF] Giacomini | Economic theory and forecasting: lessons from the literature[END_REF]. In order to gauge the continuously evolving state of the real economy alternative sources of information need to be employed. Moreover, survey based methodologies are often not incentive compatible and therefore can be of low precision in revealing the 'real' preferences and expectations of experts and the population at large [START_REF] Kranz | Combining Prediction Markets and Surveys: An Experimental Study[END_REF].

In this paper we present a web based tool based on the concept of Information Markets that can be used to aggregate expectations on policy indices and provide accurate and timely information to policy makers and policy modellers. The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of Information Markets, Section 3 describes the design elements of our tool while Section 4 presents a walkthrough usage scenario. In Section 5 we provide insights on the current status of our work and we conclude Section 6 with our final remarks and next steps.

Overview of Information Markets

Information Markets (IMs) rest on the concept of bringing a group of participants together via the Internet and allowing them to trade shares of virtual contracts which yield payments based on the outcome of unknown future events [START_REF] Spann | Internet-based virtual stock markets for business forecasting[END_REF]. Contract prices provide a reasonable estimate of what the participants (traders) in aggregate believe to be the probability of the future events, and as such, markets are able to generate forecasts. IMs are designed and run for the primary purpose of mining and aggregating scattered among traders information and subsequently use of this information in market values in order to make predictions about specific future events [START_REF] Berg | Prediction markets as decision support systems[END_REF]. There are various theories supporting the information and expectations' aggregation efficiency of IMs and markets in general. According to the subjective theory of probability [START_REF] Finetti | Logical foundations and measurement of subjective probability[END_REF], probability is a rate at which an individual is willing to bet on the occurrence of an event. As it is natural for humans to consider probabilities and bets, an Information Market can provide a space where participants can reveal their probabilities of future events by thinking in terms of wagering their money to alternate future states of the world. Moreover, the efficient markets' hypothesis states that when a market reaches equilibrium, it reflects all available information about future events into market prices [START_REF] Malkiel | Efficient capital markets: A review of theory and empirical work[END_REF]. The efficient market hypothesis requires that participants have rational expectations, that on average the population is correct (even if no single participant is) and whenever new relevant information appears, the participants update their expectations appropriately. An implication of the efficient market hypothesis is that share prices reflect their true expected value, therefore markets provide accurate forecasts of their underlying commodities and securities. Last but not least, recent research shows the connections between cost function based IMs and online learning [START_REF] Abernethy | Efficient market making via convex optimization, and a connection to online learning[END_REF]. IMs are considered an example of collective intelligence and they are characterized by their accuracy, easy deployment, and ability to dynamically incorporate new information available to traders by continuously adjusting an event's price [START_REF] Snowberg | Prediction markets for economic forecasting (No. w18222[END_REF]. However despite the benefits expected, the public sector seems rather reluctant to introduce IMs in order to improve public decision making. In [START_REF] Hanson | Decision Markets for Policy Advice[END_REF] information markets are proposed as a new tool that will revolutionize governance, while in [START_REF] Ledyard | Design of information markets for policy analysis[END_REF] a framework and the main characteristics an information market should fulfil in order to perform well in situations relevant for policy decision making are described. Recently, the use of information markets has been suggested as a tool which can foster the participation of citizens in European public policy [START_REF] Millard | European eParticipation Report[END_REF] or support macro-economic forecasts for governments [START_REF] Teschner | A prediction market for macro-economic variables[END_REF].

The PolicyOracle Information Market

PolicyOracle is an Information Market which provides the mechanisms to aggregate participants' expectations and provide forecasts of economic, environmental and energy indicators in order to support policy making. It relies on play money as the resource for buying or selling contracts, which means that participants receive a number of points that can be used for trading upon their registration. This design was adopted as previous research has shown that the accuracy of play money Information Markets is similar to those that use real money, while the use of real money even for research purposes has to consider legal issues. Furthermore, PolicyOracle resembles a virtual stock market which means that a number of market design elements were considered, including: the market mechanism which affects how transactions are processed, the type of contracts that determine what expectations are aggregated and the participants who perform transactions and set the market prices.

Market Mechanism

The market mechanism determines how the buy and sell orders that participants place are cleared. Similarly to the first version of the Information Market tool, PolicyOracle uses a mechanism based on an Automated Market Maker (AMM). This means that all transactions are processed by the AMM which is practically a function that determines the cost or gain of buy and sell transactions respectively. In more details, when a participant places a buy or sell order for a particular contract, the system validates the order and it is always ready to process it, acting as an "always there" buyer and seller. The AMM price function in PolicyOracle follows the work of [START_REF] Hanson | Logarithmic Market Scoring Rules for Modular Combinatorial Information Aggregation[END_REF] and simulates real life supply and demand conditions. If we let si be the net amount of shares a given contract that has been sold, then the price of contract i is given by formula (1) where b represents a scaling factor that controls the market's depth and determines the rate of price changes when traders buy or sell shares from the AMM (low values of b cause greater price fluctuations and higher volatility) and c represents the maximum price of an outcome.

(

) 1
(2)

In order to facilitate trading and make users feel comfortable with contract prices, we selected a span of prices between 0 and 100. So, we set c=100 and the Pi prices sum to 100. Another aspect that needs to be considered before running a market refers to the value of the constant b. As mentioned above, the elasticity constant b controls how much prices change after a transaction. Setting b requires special attention as a low value can lead to great price fluctuations after a transaction while a high value can cause low price movements which will not reflect the aggregate opinions of the participants adequately. We follow the approach described in [START_REF] Berg | Hanson's automated market maker[END_REF] and calculate a variable price of b, based on the total amount of money K which is available in the market and the desired target upper price Pupper of a contract which is given if all of the money is invested in that contract. The value of b is given by formula [START_REF] Bańbura | A look into the factor model black box: publication lags and the role of hard and soft data in forecasting GDP[END_REF] where N represents the possible mutually exclusive contracts in the market and we set Pupper=99. In order to keep the market elasticity constant, we adjust and re-calculate the b value each time a new trader registers in our platform (at this time new money is introduced into the market as the trader receives an initial amount of 20000 points) as well as when a question is resolved and contracts are rewarded (when a contract is rewarded new money is introduced into the market as winners receive money).

Contracts

Contracts represent the mutually exclusive possible outcomes of policy questions and are the tradable assets of the market. For example the question "Will the inflation in Europe rise in 2016" may have two answers, "YES" or "NO" and thus two contracts. Contracts expire when the event they refer to is realized and provide a payoff value. We follow the "winner-takes-all" payoff rule which means that a contract is worth 100 points if the outcome of the event the contract represents is realized, and 0 points otherwise.

In order to be able to aggregate information on a variety of policy indices, we have designed three types of questions: binary, multiple choice and multiple interval. Binary questions have two contracts one referring to a positive answer, the YES contract, and another referring to the negative answer, the NO contract. Market participants invest on the YES answer (contract) of the question if they believe that the GDP will be higher than 13.920B euros, else on the NO answer (contract). This kind of questions are suitable for aggregating expectations on the trends of policy variables.

Multiple choice and multiple interval questions can have two or more answers and consequently two or more contracts. An indicative example of such a questions is "What will the official quarterly GDP growth rate for Q1 2015 in Spain be?". The possible answers depend on the values the policy maker or modeller wishes to set and receive feedback. In our example there can be 10 answers each corresponding to certain range as follows: '<-0.9%', '-0.9 --0.5%', '-0.4 -0.1%', '0.0 -0.4%', '0.5 -0.9%', '1.0 -1.4%', '1.5 -1.9%', '2.0 -2.4%', '2.5 -2.9%', '>2.9%'.

In all cases described above, contract prices range between 0 and 100 and reflect the likelihood of the event, that the answer which the contract represents, to be realized.

Participants

Participants access the system through a web interface and we have defined three user roles who have access to different functionalities: administrators, traders and visitors. Administrators set up the questions and the answers. They are the policy makers and policy modellers who want to have the aggregated expectations of experts and interested stakeholders. Traders express their expectations by signing up and selecting the contracts which they want to trade. Visitors monitor the likelihood of the events defined in the market. The following table summarizes how different stakeholder groups can use PolicyOracle. PolicyOracle allows them to express expectations on policy variables or monitor the results.

Academia (Universities and research organizations)

PolicyOracle allows them to express expectations on policy variables or monitor the results.

A Walkthrough Scenario

In this section we show the main functionalities of PolicyOracle and how these can be used for the aggregation of expectations on macroeconomic and environmental policy indices.

Assume that a policy expert named John logs into the system. He is provided with a list of available questions as illustrated in Fig. 1-A. By clicking on the question he is interested in, the user is directed to the trading screen where he can provide a prediction by investing his play money. By default, he sees the simple view of the trading screen (Fig. 1-B). In this view, he can provide an estimate about a possible outcome using a likert-scale like interface. The available options span from "likely" to "almost sure" depending on his belief in a 5 point interval. John is more experienced with markets and trading interfaces and chooses the advanced view (Fig. 1-C). This view resembles a stock exchange where John can set the exact amount of shares she would like to buy or sell. The quantity of the shares is entered in the relevant boxes of each contract (i.e. the answers to the questions). Selling without owning an amount of shares is not permitted by the system. Before confirming a transaction, the system provides information related to the costs or gains of the transaction and the new contract prices. If John agrees, he confirms the transaction and his portfolio is updated. The trading screen provides additional information regarding the selected question. John can see how many days left while the question is open. Furthermore, there is information regarding the category of the question, relevant tags as well as the number of transactions.

John has a portfolio consisting of contracts and play money. As shown in Fig. 1-D, John can see the total value of his account, including the current value of his holdings and the available points. Moreover, the user can view his rank in comparison to other users. The market is a form of a prediction contest in order to foster participation. Other information includes a list of the contracts s/he currently owns is presented, together with the current profit/loss, the quantity of holding shares as well as the average cost of his transactions. The "sell" button is provided beneath each holding, so John has the option to sell his stake in case he changes his opinion.

In Fig. 1-E, the tool provides social functionalities that enable discussions and posts on twitter. He can provide comments and participate in discussions, enabling information and opinion exchange. A Twitter News Feed based on keywords related to the question is displayed in order to provide frequently updated social media information. Moreover, price charts show fluctuations in the prices of contracts as well as the trading volume over time. Finally, a section with background information provides a detailed description of the question as well as links to external information sources.

Current Status and First Results

Our tool is online at the http://experts.policyoracle.org url and is currently being used by stakeholders in the context of the SYMPHONY project (http://projectsymphony.eu/). We have already defined a number of indices in collaboration with policy modellers who participate in the aforementioned project, which have been introduced as questions in our Information Market. The indices are related to macroeconomic and energy variables, and are the following:  Gross Domestic Product (GDP): this is an aggregate measure of production equal to the sum of the gross values added of all resident, institutional units engaged in production. GDP estimates are commonly used to measure the economic performance of a whole country or region and can affect several economic policies, e.g. related to public investments and taxes.  Consumer Price Index (CPI): this index measures changes in the price level of a market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. CPI determines the real value of wages, salaries and pensions for regulating policies related to prices and deflating monetary magnitudes to show changes in real values.  Inflation Rate which shows the change of general price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. To ensure stability, current economic policies target for a steady and low inflation. Inflation forecasts determine how economic authorities (e.g. central banks) design and implement their monetary policies by setting interest rates, open market operations, and banking reserve requirements.

 Unemployment Rate: this is a measure of the prevalence of unemployment and it is calculated as a percentage by dividing the number of unemployed individuals by all individuals currently in the labour force. Knowledge of unemployment tendencies can determine the monetary and fiscal policies for reducing unemployment caused by recessions (also termed as demand side policies).  Interest Rate: this is a measure of the cost-of-borrowing indicator for new loans to corporations.  Oil prices: This refers to crude oil prices, the fluctuations of which affect monetary policies.  Electricity prices: This index shows the changes of prices in the wholesale electricity market. Electricity is a very special commodity as it is economically non-storable, and power system stability requires a constant balance between production and consumption. At the same time, electricity demand depends on weather and the intensity of business and everyday activities. Low electricity prices improve industrial competitiveness and consumer's welfare, thus accurate forecasts can help policy makers to devise policies which will keep prices at low levels.

The questions on macroeconomic indices have been implemented for Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece and the EU as a whole. The energy related questions have been implemented for the EU as whole. Currently 84 users have registered and are performing transactions; we expect to have an analysis of the first results in the coming months.

6

Conclusions & Future Work

In this paper we presented a tool based on the concept of Information Markets in order to aggregate expectations on policy indices. We have presented its design elements, including the market mechanism, the contracts which represent answers to questions on the future value of policy indices and the type of participants including the benefits they can acquire from such a tool. A walkthrough scenario showed how our tool can be used to aggregate information related to the policy indices in the form of transactions in the Information Market. Last, we have selected a first set of macroeconomic and energy related indices which are relevant for policy decision making. The tools is already online and we plan to evaluate its usefulness to policy modelling and its prediction accuracy. To this direction we have already planned a series of focus group sessions with policy modellers where are going to showcase the tool and the results of the expectation aggregation process, in order to gather their feedback. Moreover as the real values of the policy indices are announced we plan to evaluate the tool's accuracy in predicting these values.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Overview of the PolicyOracle main screens and functionalities.

Table 1 .

 1 Stakeholder groups and use of PolicyOracle

	Stakeholder group Policy Makers (Politicians, European Central Bank, Bank of England) Policy Advisors (e.g. Global Climate Forum, German Watch, National Central Banks of the Eurozone)	Use of PolicyOracle They are the key actors who take the actual decisions. PolicyOracle supports them by offering access to experts' aggregated expectations. They are the actors who support policy makers in their decisions. They may engage stakeholders (e.g. industry representatives) in discussions on the impact of alternative policy options. PolicyOracle supports them by offering access to experts' aggregated expectations.
	Industry (Large Enterprises (e.g. Siemens, RWE, Allianz etc.) Civil Society ( Environmental NGOs (e.g. WWF), civil society actors like unions (e.g. IG BAU)) Citizens (SME owners, Public servants, Young generation, Employees)	They are actors who influence the opinion of policy advisors and policy makers. PolicyOracle allows them to express expectations on policy variables or monitor the results. They are institutions and organizations that manifest interests and will of citizens. PolicyOracle allows them to express expectations on policy variables or monitor the results.

Acknowledgements

Research reported in this paper is partially funded by the European Commission project SYMPHONY (FP7 grant agreement no.: 611875).