Cultivating dispersed collectivity: How communities between organizations sustain employee activism

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Pushing for social change at work is frustrating and precarious. Many employee activists therefore seek support in communities that form around their aspirations and reside ‘between’ organizations. This article advances our understanding of how community participation shapes employee activists’ experiences of their change agency as they return to and pursue their social purpose in their corporate lives. Grounded in an in-depth qualitative study of an inter-organizational community of employee activists, we introduce the notion of ‘dispersed collectivity’: employee activists generate a shared sense of collectivity that they maintain even as they disperse into their workplaces. Dispersed collectivity enables subtle agentic experiences by emboldening employee activists to endure their often-challenging corporate lives, unsettle corporate norms, and detach from their corporate positions. Even without mobilizing a collective push for change across firms, communities can thus play a critical role in sustaining employee activism. Our study contributes a more nuanced account of employee activists’ change agency and offers new theoretical insights into the role of inter-organizational communities in social change, the practices they can use to build collective momentum and empathic connections, and their impact on employee activists’ determination to drive social change from within.

Original languageEnglish
JournalHuman Relations
Number of pages30
ISSN0018-7267
DOIs
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

    Research areas

  • change agency, employee activism, activism in and around organizations, inter-organizational communities
  • Management studies

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Analysis of mechanical properties and microstructure of single and double-pass friction stir welded T-joints for aluminium stiffened Panels
  2. Demographic change in work organisations
  3. Soziale Netzwerke im Internet
  4. TACKLING THE GLOBAL WASTE PROBLEM AS A MULTI-LEVEL PROCESS
  5. Understanding Resulting Interdependencies Within Production Planning And Control In Hybrid Manufacturing/Remanufacturing Systems
  6. The Achilles' Heel of Absolute Power
  7. CSR and tax avoidance: A review of empirical research
  8. Markenwert
  9. Messung von Markenvorstellungen
  10. Making sense of sustainability transitions locally
  11. Start-up Consulting in the German Language Realm
  12. Der Sandbox Innovation Process: Wie Vielfalt in Open-Innovation-Communities genutzt werden
  13. Temperature-dependent mechanical behavior of aluminum AM structures generated via multi-layer friction surfacing
  14. On entrepreneurial risk-taking and the macroeconomic effects of financial constraints
  15. Earnings less risk-free interest charge (ERIC) and stock returns: ERIC’s relative and incremental information content in a European sample
  16. Schwerbehinderung
  17. What explains the performance of participatory governance?
  18. Kommunikative Interferenzen
  19. Article 72 CISG
  20. DESI
  21. Feedback mit eigenen Augen
  22. An analysis of the requirements for DSS on integrated river basin management
  23. Grounding Space
  24. Development of environmentally biodegradable drugs
  25. Structural forces driving global integration
  26. Archival research on carbon reporting quality. A review of determinants and consequences for firm value
  27. Leere untern Tannenbaum