TY - JOUR

T1 - Fluidity, Identity, and Organizationality

T2 - The Communicative Constitution of Anonymous

AU - Dobusch, Leonhard

AU - Schoeneborn, Dennis

PY - 2015/12/1

Y1 - 2015/12/1

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 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.

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 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.

KW - Anonymous

KW - Communicative constitution of organizations

KW - Fluidity

KW - Identity claim analysis

KW - Organizational identity

KW - Organizationality

KW - Management studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84946483563&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/joms.12139

DO - 10.1111/joms.12139

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:84946483563

VL - 52

SP - 1005

EP - 1035

JO - Journal of Management Studies

JF - Journal of Management Studies

SN - 0022-2380

IS - 8

ER -