Collective Action in Peer Production: On How Processes of Elastic Integration Incorporates Messiness in a Collective Crisis Response

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    Abstract

    Past research assumes that collective action requires collective action frames and strong coordination carried out by formal organizations. Such assumptions are challenged in this paper, which explores how strongly coordinated collective action is achieved in an open network with a diverse constituency driven by personal action frames. With a processual-relational ontology, I study this through a 5 week netnography of an open network of peer production, which builds on principles of high individual autonomy. I find that the coordination and autonomy are simultaneously enacted in processes of ‘elastic integration’, which incorporates divergent claims of the constituency, i.a. by the use of non-decisions. While elastic integration allows for variation and dissent in the group, it does so in different ways, which produce certain types of autonomy as more legitimate than other, and thus create a segmentation of membership
    Original languageEnglish
    Publication date2021
    Number of pages37
    Publication statusPublished - 2021
    Event37th EGOS Colloquium 2021: Organizing for an Inclusive Society: Meanings, Motivations, and Mechanisms - Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands
    Duration: 8 Jul 202110 Jul 2021
    Conference number: 37
    https://www.egosnet.org/2021_amsterdam/general_theme

    Conference

    Conference37th EGOS Colloquium 2021
    Number37
    LocationVrije Universiteit
    Country/TerritoryNetherlands
    CityAmsterdam
    Period08/07/202110/07/2021
    Internet address

    Keywords

    • Collective action
    • Autonomy
    • Coordonation
    • Peer production
    • Open networks

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