Bibliogr. 150-152

Crowdsourcing is a relatively new concept, nonethel ess it has been raising more and more interest with researchers. More and more organisations reach for it, for instance taking into account its potential business value. It decides about access t o experience, innovativeness, information, skills, and work, which are located outside the organisation, a ctually in the crowd. An analysis of various examples of making use of crowdsourcing by organisa tions encourages reflection on the factors, which determine its success. In the literature, one emphasises, among others, the significance of proactive leadership to crowdsourcing. This arti cle is an attempt to specify the significance of proactive leadership in crowdsourcing. For the need s of specifying, evaluating, and identifying the existing state of knowledge on the significance of proactive leadership in crowdsourcing a systematic literature review was conducted. It also enabled se lection, critical evaluation of the existing resear ch, identification and synthesis of the results of all of the principal research studies and theoretical approaches. The results of the systematic literatur e review indicate that proactive leadership is considered to be the necessary condition for beginn ing any actions initiating crowdsourcing. A proactive leader takes the initiative, starts the action, initiates, is able to find the best soluti on, and actively searches for information in order to incre ase the knowledge resources. This is connected with identifying by these persons of the possibilities a nd willingness to introduce changes in work organisation. It creates incentives for the partici pation of virtual communities in crowdsourcing and propagates and promotes accepting their knowledge b y the employees.