The Communicative Constitution of Organizationality

In this chapter, we present and discuss recent works from organization studies that suggest studying the “organizationality” of social collectives. Applying an organizationality lens helps transcend the binary distinction between organization and non-organization with a more gradual differentiation, capturing how social collectives may temporarily exhibit higher or lower degrees of organization. We argue that the emerging “communication as constitutive of organization” (CCO) perspective is particularly well-suited for this context. We showcase the usefulness of a communication-centered view based on a comparative analysis of two distinct social phenomena and their precarious organizationality: (1) the hacktivist collective Anonymous and (2) the coworking space betahaus. As our cross-case comparison reveals, organizationality is communicatively accomplished and materialized in very different ways across the two cases. More specifically, we argue that different functional equivalents (e.g., digital channels or a physical space) can enable the temporary stabilization of organizationality in fluidity.