TY - JOUR
T1 - Fluidity, Identity, and Organizationality
T2 - The Communicative Constitution of Anonymous
AU - Dobusch, Leonhard
AU - Schoeneborn, Dennis
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - This paper examines how fluid social collectives, where membership is latent, contested, or unclear, achieve “organizationality”, that is, how they achieve organizational identity and actorhood. Drawing on the “communicative constitution of organizations” perspective, we argue that the organizationality of a social collective is accomplished through “identity claims”—i.e., speech acts that concern what the social collective is or does—and negotiations on whether or not these claims have been made on the collective's behalf. We empirically examine the case of the hacker collective Anonymous and analyze relevant identity claims to investigate two critical episodes in which the organizationality of Anonymous was contested. Our study contributes to organization studies by showing that fluid social collective are able to temporarily reinstate organizational actorhood through the performance of carefully prepared and staged identity claims.
AB - This paper examines how fluid social collectives, where membership is latent, contested, or unclear, achieve “organizationality”, that is, how they achieve organizational identity and actorhood. Drawing on the “communicative constitution of organizations” perspective, we argue that the organizationality of a social collective is accomplished through “identity claims”—i.e., speech acts that concern what the social collective is or does—and negotiations on whether or not these claims have been made on the collective's behalf. We empirically examine the case of the hacker collective Anonymous and analyze relevant identity claims to investigate two critical episodes in which the organizationality of Anonymous was contested. Our study contributes to organization studies by showing that fluid social collective are able to temporarily reinstate organizational actorhood through the performance of carefully prepared and staged identity claims.
KW - Anonymous
KW - communicative constitution of organizations (CCO)
KW - Fluidity
KW - Identity-claim analysis
KW - Organizationality
KW - Organizational identity
U2 - 10.1111/joms.12139
DO - 10.1111/joms.12139
M3 - Journal article
VL - 52
SP - 1005
EP - 1035
JO - Journal of Management Studies
JF - Journal of Management Studies
SN - 0022-2380
IS - 8
ER -