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

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

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.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Management Studies
Volume52
Issue number8
Pages (from-to)1005-1035
Number of pages31
ISSN0022-2380
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.12.2015

    Research areas

  • Anonymous, Communicative constitution of organizations, Fluidity, Identity claim analysis, Organizational identity, Organizationality
  • Management studies

DOI

Recently viewed

Researchers

  1. Michael Besser

Publications

  1. The mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation in the task-environment-performance relationship
  2. Innovative approaches in mathematical modeling
  3. Ideological Stances in Yoruba Nation Secessionist Discourse in Nigerian Virtual Communities
  4. Building a bridge between school and university
  5. QUANT - Question Answering Benchmark Curator
  6. Students' Time Allocation and School Performance
  7. Sustainable engineering education in research and practice
  8. How health message framing and targets affect distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic
  9. A Social–Ecological Systems Framework as a Tool for Understanding the Effectiveness of Biosphere Reserve Management
  10. Co-productive agility and four collaborative pathways to sustainability transformations
  11. Impacts of entrepreneur’s error orientation on performance: A cross-culture comparison
  12. Speaking about vision, talking in the name of so much more
  13. Synchronic and Diachronic Pragmatic Variability
  14. The self-sabotage of conservation
  15. Globalization and the societal consensus of wealth tax cuts
  16. Discrimination at work: Effects on Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment. An empirical study of the influence of perceived discrimination on work-related behaviours among people with and without a migration background
  17. Influence of Torsion on Precipitation and Hardening Effects during Aging of an Extruded AZ91 Alloy
  18. Vermittlungstheologie II. Dogmatisch
  19. Spielt Charlie Parker in den Wind oder mit ihm?
  20. From the environmental state to the sustainability state? Conceptualization, indicators, and examples
  21. Action and action-regulation in entrepreneurship: Evaluating a student training for promoting entrepreneurship
  22. Wege in eine bessere Zukunft der Hochschulen
  23. Threshold stress during tensile and compressive creep in AE42 magnesium alloy
  24. General conclusions
  25. Tuning into Things
  26. Facing complex crime
  27. Public service media, innovation policy and the ‘crowding out’ problem
  28. Does a smile open all doors? Understanding the impact of appearance disclosure on accommodation sharing platforms
  29. Space-focused stereotypes and their potential role in group-based disparities in social work services
  30. High-Volume Resistance Training Improves Double-Poling Peak Oxygen Uptake in Youth Elite Cross-Country Skiers and Biathletes
  31. A Performance Motivator in one Country, A Non-Motivator in Another?
  32. Logic as a Medium
  33. Experimental-numerical study of laser-shock-peening-induced retardation of fatigue crack propagation in Ti-17 titanium alloy
  34. Farewell to the party model?
  35. Zinc and cadmium accumulation in single zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos - A total reflection X-ray fluorescence spectrometry application
  36. Kosmopolitismus
  37. Debattieren im Unterricht
  38. A review of ecosystem service benefits from wild bees across social contexts
  39. European hospitals as a Source for Platinum in the Environment in Comparison with Other Sources
  40. Reconciling Analytics with Holistic Thinking in Business Sustainability Decision-Making
  41. The priority value of scrubland habitats for carnivore conservation in Mediterranean ecosystems
  42. Modern Micropolitics of Antipopulism
  43. Datenbasierte Selbst- und Fremdevaluation