Fluidity, Identity, and Organizationality: The Communicative Constitution of Anonymous

Abstract

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 analyse 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 collectives are able to temporarily reinstate organizational actorhood through the performance of carefully prepared and staged identity claims.

Diversity as Polyphony: Reconceptualizing Diversity Management from a Communication-Centered Perspective

“…This is because in line with the CCO perspective, we understand organizational membership not necessarily to be a pre-requisite for the co-constitution of the organization (e.g., Dobusch and Schoeneborn 2015). For instance, in the context of CSR, this would imply that corporations would teach representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on how they can voice their concerns in a way that the likelihood is raised that their arguments can find attentive ears in a corporate setting (e.g., by linking arguments for social and environmental concerns closely with the corporation's business practices and business opportunities of socially responsible behavior).…”

“…Thus, the boundaries of an organization are drawn communicatively, through the authorization of specific voices that are allowed to speak on the organization's behalf (Taylor and Van Every, 2014). It follows that organizations need to maintain their identity continuously through communicative interactions that may involve organizational members and/or non-members (Dobusch and Schoeneborn, 2015). In other words, from this view, we can understand diversity management as a form of organizational boundary management that needs to be receptive to the diversity and complexity of environmental and societal voices, while being able to ensure the organization's status as a (more or less) distinct entity, at the same time.…”

“…In this view, organizations are incarnated through communicative practices that allow actors to claim the authority to speak in the organization's name (Taylor and Cooren, 1997). Importantly, communicative practices can be invoked independently of whether or not such claims are uttered by members or non-members of the organization, as long as these speech acts contribute to the attribution of collective actorhood to organizational phenomena (Bencherki and Cooren, 2011;Dobusch and Schoeneborn, 2015). Thus, what is 'inside' and 'outside' the organization is contextually bound and tends to become continuously negotiated through communication.…”

“…From this perspective, the 'polyphonic organization' (Hazen, 1993; see also Belova, 2010;Belova et al, 2008;Kornberger et al, 2006;Shotter, 2008) and 'outside' of organizations (e.g., Christensen and Cornelissen, 2011). According to these works, the organizational boundary is relatively fluid, permeable, and ambiguous and thus needs to be maintained recurrently through speech acts that demarcate what the organization is and what it is not (Bencherki and Cooren, 2011;Dobusch and Schoeneborn, 2015).…”

“…However, the inclusion of external voices creates new challenges for organizations to maintain the status of a unified and identifiable social entity. Future research will need to investigate how diversity management can be further developed into a form of boundary management that finds a fruitful balance between maintaining organizational identity and the inclusion of diverse voices (see also Dobusch and Schoeneborn, 2015).…”