Collective Action Without Organization: The Material Constitution of Bike Commuters as Collective

Collective action

Traditionally collective action describes individuals coordinating to act together to further a common interest which could not be achieved independently (Olson, 1965). These common interests are often public goods which are both non-excludable (individuals cannot be excluded from access) and non-rivalrous (one’s use does not reduce others’ access) (Samuelson, 1954). Most research on collective action has sought to understand why collective action ever takes place, given that a rational economic actor should not be motivated to participate (Chwe, 1999). This problem has generally been answered by arguing that either incentives (Carney, 1987; Knoke, 1988; Oliver, 1980; Ostrom, 1990) or social network/context (Gould, 1993; Marwell et al., 1988; Wasko & Faraj, 2005; Wiertz & de Ruyter, 2007) encourage individuals to participate. This research emphasizes defining collective action by the process taken to achieve a common interest. In contrast, we deal with collective action in terms of the end: the creation of a public good or achievement of a collective goal or interest. We open the definition of collective action to include any means which achieve this.

To do this, we will challenge the a priori assumption of organization which is present in almost all collective action research across disciplines. For example, Ostrom (1990) described the problem facing a certain kind of collective action as “one of organizing: how to change the situation from one in which appropriators act independently to one in which they adopt coordinated strategies to obtain higher joint benefits” (Ostrom, 1990, p. 39). Organizational research has also generally conceptualized collective action (both between and within organizations) as a matter of intentional organizing towards a specific common end (examples include Czarniawska, 2009; Lyon, 2006; van Waarden, 1992; Wijen & Ansari, 2007).

Some recent scholarship has begun to suggest that given weaker institutional cores and the ability to organize via new technologies, coordinated action can take place with less coordination and organization (see Bennett & Segerberg, 2012; Peddibhotla & Subramani, 2007; Segerberg & Bennett, 2011). For example, in studies of online knowledge sharing, researchers have found that contributors are often motivated to share by intrinsic, personal benefits and the contributors themselves may not directly benefit (Peddibhotla & Subramani, 2007; Schroer & Hertel, 2009; Wasko & Faraj, 2005). In the case of reviews on Amazon.com, individual contributions aggregate to create a collective resource (Peddibhotla & Subramani, 2007). There need not be coordination between reviews, but they are still organized through Amazon’s platform for reviewing. These newer forms of collective action begin to reconceptualize the concept by reducing the coordination between actors and increasing the intrinsic and personal benefits of participating. Still, they all retain at least some formal organization.

To further rethink collective action, we turn to the work of Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl (Bimber et al., 2005, 2012; Flanagin, Stohl, & Bimber, 2006). Although these authors almost always retain the organized and intentional nature of collective action, their version presents some openings for understanding collective action in new ways. Furthermore, we favor the authors’ approach of situating collective action as a communicative activity (Flanagin et al., 2006). They redefined collective action as communicative “insofar as it entails efforts by people to cross boundaries by expressing or acting on an individual (i.e., private) interest in a way that is observable to others (i.e., public)” (Flanagin et al., 2006, p. 32). This is a performative and communicative reformulation which results in a new definition of collective action: two or more people crossing the public/private boundary in tandem with a public good (Bimber et al., 2005). For bike commuters this is relevant because in biking to work individuals act on individual interests like health or the environment in a way that is observable to others because it happens in a public space.

Although not stated explicitly, this definition of collective action provides the possibility that collective action could take place without formal organization, or without members’ awareness that they are engaging in such activity. However, despite the authors’ recognition that formal organization can have varying importance in collective action (Bimber et al., 2012; Flanagin et al., 2006), they also state that collective action requires identification of members, communication, and organization (Bimber et al., 2005). This approach is therefore useful, but not sufficient. In this paper, we will build on this to propose an additional definition of collective action: similar aggregated actions (communicative or otherwise) which interact and overlap to create some result which would not be possible without the scale of many actors. We will return to and elaborate on this definition in the discussion.

Constituting organizations and collectives

Now that we have described the type of organization which is our concern, we will introduce the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) approach to show how the collective in question is formed. Fundamentally the CCO approach argues that communication is not merely a property of organizations, but rather is the organization (Taylor, 1993; Taylor & Van Every, 2000). Organizations are not natural, but can only come into being as a result of communication, which is central to the coordination of human activity, including organizing (McPhee & Zaug, 2000; Taylor & Van Every, 2000). Because organizing is only possible through communication, organizations are not stable and communication constantly makes, remakes, and unmakes organizations (Putnam, Nicotera, & McPhee, 2008). In this way, organizations cannot be seen as fixed entities, but as ongoing products of communication (Taylor et al., 1996).

CCO scholars have thus been concerned with how organizations are constituted through communication, particularly the relationship between the organization as actor and the actors who manifest the organization (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2009; Kuhn, 2012). This has also led to the recognition of non-human agents because in observing organizations it is evident that materiality also manifests and communicates organizations (Ashcraft et al., 2009; Cooren et al., 2008). Material “spokes-objects” in relationship with human spokespersons act and speak for the organization and can be seen as the organization (Cooren et al., 2008, p. 1360). It is not only through humans that an organization is represented and manifest but also through documents and texts (Brummans, 2007; Cooren, 2010b), policies (Cooren, 2004), objects, buildings, and spaces (Brummans, 2011; Brummans & Cooren, 2011; Cooren et al., 2008).

CCO is an insightful and innovative approach. However, we are concerned that despite CCO’s concern for considering the role of material in constituting organizations, it has primarily considered the material world as manipulated by or supporting human activity. A review of empirical CCO research on human–material interactions in organizing indicates that most work examines intentional human use or manipulation of the material. For example, although texts have immense power for representing an organization, texts are always created by humans to fulfill some purpose (Cooren, 2004). Texts can control humans: one’s current intentions can be preserved in the future by a document like a contract, forcing one to do something which is no longer appealing (Brummans, 2007). However, the text would not gain this power without its original human creation. Similarly, Cooren et al. (2008) demonstrated that the organizational presence of Médecins Sans Frontières is a hybrid construction of human and material agents. However, the material manifestations they described—such as maps, forms, or vehicles—are created by humans and organizational presence is deliberately delegated by humans to those non-human manifestations, in some cases very strategically.

We suggest then that CCO theory has focused on how material elements support human organizing rather than how the material might organize on its own. Still, we think that CCO theory is amenable to more material instantiations of organization or cases in which material communication contradicts human intentions. Because of its roots in and alignment with actor-network theory (Latour, 2005), CCO does acknowledge strong agency for non-humans (Ashcraft et al., 2009). Theoretically, this move would challenge the conceptualization of an organization and how an organization is communicatively constituted. Some CCO scholars have suggested an inductive approach to defining organizations (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2009; Taylor, 2009), an approach we also use as we address the question central to all CCO work of what an organization is (Putnam & McPhee, 2009; Cooren et al., 2011).

Constituting the collective

First we will demonstrate the “organization-ness” of the bike commuters in our study. We will use collective action to argue that bike commuters are in fact a type of organization, and use a CCO approach combined with the work of Michel de Certeau (1984) to show how bike commuters are rendered organizational through material means.

Who acknowledges the collective? The first question to consider is who acknowledges this collective into existence (Ashcraft et al., 2009). An essential component of CCO theory is the co-constructed nature of organization; that is, those who name or recognize the organization are also implicated in its creation (Cooren et al., 2011). This can include participants in the organization as well as outside observers, including researchers. For example, because this study did not involve interviews with drivers, we cannot make claims about how car drivers perceive bike commuters as a group. However, we can use the perceptions of bike commuters to understand driver motivations to some extent, particularly because most of our participants are also drivers and have experience with that mode of transportation. Still, from our “omniscient” view as researchers we recognize the bike commuting collective, implicating the authors in the constitution of this collective.

How is the collective constituted? To make an argument about the constitution of the collective which has the potential to accomplish this kind of change, we draw on the work of Michel de Certeau on spatial resistance. De Certeau famously described the pedestrian in the city, comparing spatial action to communication: “Walkers…whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it… The networks of these moving, intersecting writings compose a manifold story” (De Certeau, 1984, p. 93). The pedestrians’ individual paths inscribe meaning into the city as they trace paths and create relationships through a language of embodied practices. Additionally, individuals’ actions come together to have an aggregate effect: “Their intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave places together. In that respect, pedestrian movements form one of these ‘real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city’” (de Certeau, 1984, p. 97).

Additionally, de Certeau (1984) distinguished between strategies and tactics to argue that resistance can take place at a spatial level. Strategies are the prescribed structures put in place by the powerful. The grid infrastructure of urban streets, for example, seen and understood only from on high, is a strategy. A tactic, on the other hand, is a spatial reinterpretation of strategy which takes place on the ground. The walker can cut corners, go the wrong way, or walk across a lawn. In these acts, the pedestrian poaches on the spaces of power by reinterpreting the strategies which appeared fixed and permanent. Following de Certeau, we then suggest that the movements of bike commuters also serve as communication, layering on top of each other, tactically challenging the strategies of the roadways. We suggest that it is the repetition of these communicative acts which constitutes a collective; many spatial enunciations aggregate into organization.

Paths communicate how people move through space. They indicate what bike commuters desire to do, how they desire to move through the world, and the story becomes richer as the individual cyclists’ paths intertwine and overlap. As Cooren has noted about texts, these spatial movements literally “constitute and stabilize organizational pathways” (Cooren, 2004, p. 388). Following CCO theory, organizations are fluid and it is through repetition and routine that a semblance of organizational stability can emerge (Cooren et al., 2011). Here it is the ongoing, daily, iterative tracings and retracing of the roads by bicycles as they claim roads as an acceptable domain for themselves that results in collective.

It is the adding up of the spatial communicative acts of multiple cyclists which constitute and “stabilize” a collective. A lone cyclist communicates very little to either drivers or city planners. However, many cyclists who iteratively and constantly reclaim and reinterpret spaces intended for cars or pedestrians as places where bicycles belong result in an amplified voice and an implied demand for change. This activity is not coordinated, but remains collective as individuals’ actions combine.

Visually, one can see the collective action of bike commuters by looking at a map of their routes. Participants were asked to mark their routes to and from work on a map of the greater Park City area. Figure 1 shows the aggregated routes of all participants. Routes from home to work are marked in pink, and routes returning home from work are marked in green. The more people who travel a given route, the thicker the line is. Although this map reflects an omniscient view accessible to neither drivers nor cyclists, we argue that this illustrates cyclists’ collective action as it represents a networked web of routes. These routes and tracings are not visible on the roads because except in the snow or mud cyclists leave no visible signs of their movement. However, as researchers who externally constitute this collective, we can see this movement and its additive nature and argue that, following de Certeau, these are tactics. As we will show below, it also seems that drivers sense this aggregation in different ways.

It is also important to note that although we are talking about the material constitution of organization, it is human agents who literally move this material and put it into action. Just as humans create texts but texts take on the ability to do things humans would or could not do (Cooren, 2004), the material mobilization that humans engage in results in organization. We will show that the human passions which animate the material are not intended to create this kind of effect, but personal passions have the unintentional result of animating the material to constitute a collective.

A final note on the constitution of this collective is that although participants do not experience the act of bike commuting as a collective or organized activity, a few did reflect on the collective nature of bike commuting. These reflections bolster our case that bike commuters are engaged in collective action (although unintentionally). These participant narratives may seem to contradict the move we will make in the next section, but we suggest that they express how cyclists believe that drivers perceive them, rather than their understanding of their own experience.

For example, Alex thinks that car drivers are cautious around bicyclists because of past experiences with bad cyclists:

Because I think they’re really afraid that I’m not going to come to a stop and just keep going. Cause I see bikers just go like straight through red lights even. And that’s scary, so I think, when cars notice me, they’re really, really cautious.

Alex believes that his individual activity reflects on all bike commuter behavior to drivers. Similarly, Steve said, “Too many students give the rest of us bad names. No helmets, wrong way down the road, on the sidewalks.” Steve indicates an external constitution of organization by drivers, rather than an internal constitution from cyclists themselves. CCO maintains that representatives speak for the organization as a whole (Cooren et al., 2008). Here, one cyclist’s behavior, or communication, has the ability to represent and manifest the entire group and affect how outsiders view the group. This example also demonstrates how we know that it is not a single cyclist who creates these routes and results in these effects—both cyclists and drivers have a sense that there are many cyclists engaged in this process.

What does the collective accomplish? By choosing to name this bike commuter organization a collective, we claim that the actions of individual bike commuters add up to do something which an individual could not accomplish independently, a public good. The cyclist collective has the potential to lead to real change because the more people who cycle, the more meaning the activity has. This idea is not new to cycling and is deliberately deployed by officials and activists alike. In cities around the world, cyclists gather on the last Friday of each month for Critical Mass, a ride through city streets in a pack which demonstrates that “We are not blocking traffic, we are traffic!” (Furness, 2007, p. 299). The Critical Mass movement is built on the idea that the more cyclists are present, the better they can claim the space and make themselves visible as legitimate actors in the road.

In the context of Collegetown and Park City where bike commuters are a small minority, Hugh referred to Critical Mass in reflecting on what might improve the cycling climate: “The Critical Mass movement, that’s what it takes. If they aren’t going to create the areas, then the cyclists just need to create the areas by demand.” He suggested that more bikers and their increased presence on the road would lead to change by collective demand.

Because bike commuters reinterpret the physical infrastructure by simultaneously challenging the normative definitions of roadways, they work together to claim the streets, sidewalks, and bridges as spaces acceptable for cyclists. Almost all participants reported being yelled at by a driver saying something like: “Why don’t you get off the road?!” (Christine) or “You belong on the sidewalk” (Kelly). These actions show that for at least some drivers (or, according to participants, most drivers), cycling is not viewed as an activity sanctioned in the space of the road.

Therefore, cycling takes place in opposition to the normative meanings and practices of the road. Particularly as certain parts of road are retraced over and over by bike commuters, that road takes on a new meaning for the bikers, as well as the drivers, city and campus planners, and policy makers. As David, who has been biking to Central University for over thirty years, described: “Probably the number of bicyclers has increased, so probably in a sense that’s a good thing, because you know, it establishes a presence.” This collective presence and activity results in a collective which has the potential to accomplish two things: attitude change and infrastructure.

First, several participants suggested that a critical mass of cyclists has been helpful in contributing to attitudinal change. Julie felt that she had seen positive changes in how cars react to bikes in the year that she had been biking to campus: “There have been more and more people on bicycles on the road. So, that means drivers are more aware that there can be bicyclists on the road and sometimes they’re a little more careful in their driving habits.” Additionally, as Steve described, each interaction with a biker has the potential to change drivers’ views of bikers: “If I tick somebody off, they may not hit me, but they’re probably going to hit the next cyclist that shows up, so I’m a bit of an ambassador.” Even though Steve prefers to bike alone, he recognizes that his actions contribute to attitudes towards all cyclists. Thus, the first potential outcome of bike commuters’ collective action is to improve driver attitudes.

Second, cyclists hypothesized that the presence of more bike commuters would lead to better cycling infrastructure. A few participants were involved in the Collegetown Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee and said both local and campus planners claim there is little demand for biking amenities. However, cyclists argue that if there were better structures for cycling, more people would bike. Hugh described this situation on campus:

And they say, not that many students ride, we don’t need that many racks. Well, maybe it’s cause you don’t have very many racks and no place for students to ride very safely. Maybe if you did, students would ride more.

Here, Hugh suggests that better infrastructure would lead to more cyclists which would result in even more infrastructure.

Ultimately, because campus and city planners have not created an environment which suggests the possibility of biking, cyclists suggest that possibility themselves, expressing their presence on roads and sidewalks and in workplaces. In this way, the actions of individual cyclists aggregate with the movement of others, and these layered and intersecting individual actions demonstrate the presence of cyclists as well as demanding infrastructure from planners and accommodation from drivers. Through the collective tracing and retracing of spatial routes, bike commuters’ spatial activity aggregates to create a common, active, and embodied voice.

Lack of membership

Although bike commuters’ activities result in a materially manifest collective, our data demonstrated a contradiction to typical understandings of organizing because participants did not identify as part of a collective and even worked to discursively distance themselves from other bike commuters. This is not a shortcoming or moral failing of bike commuters: we would not expect them to identify as a collective when they have little communication among themselves. It is only when we as researchers take an omniscient view, or when drivers who see bike commuters on an ongoing basis recognize them as a group, that the collective emerges. Now we will show the rejection or lack of awareness of organization experienced by our sample. This demonstrates both that we have a novel case of collective action and that material manifestations of organization do not always align with human discourse.

How individuals experience bike commuting

In addition to this discursive evidence of a lack of bike commuter collective identity, we can also draw on our phenomenological research methods to show that participants do not experience membership in a collective. First, we can see that bike commuters have primarily personal motivations for biking. To use CCO terms, it is personal passions which animate the material and lead it to communicate (Cooren, 2010a). Historically, collective action theory has conceptualized collective actors as engaging in activity which results in a public good, but would not benefit the individual (Olson, 1965). In this case, we see that bike commuters engage in this activity for highly personal reasons and to derive personal benefit.

Even when participants mentioned a collective benefit like the environment as a motivation, they always expressed individual motives as well. For example, when Abby was asked why she bikes to work, she responded:

I think it’s kind of fun…and it makes me feel more productive…it’s surprisingly faster than driving would be or it’s definitely faster than taking the bus… Also, it makes me feel better that I’m not using as much gasoline. So I guess I have less of a carbon footprint.

Abby’s motivations do not fit with a typical understanding of collective action because her collective environmental concerns are accompanied by personal reasons which animate her.

Other reasons given by participants extend this idea of personal motivation. As Blake said, “I do it for me… I bike because I like to bike and because I feel like it’s a good thing for me to do.” George, like many participants, expressed the pleasure he finds in biking: “I enjoy it, it’s fun.” No participants biked out of a sense of obligation; they all found pleasure in it, whether intrinsic or in practical benefits such as exercise, saving money, or convenience. Even for the three participants who could not drive, they still intentionally chose the bicycle over the bus. Ben bikes “out of necessity. I can’t see well enough to drive. I have lots of vision issues, so I just, that’s all I can use.” He said, “If I could, I would be like driving a gas-guzzling SUV with the worst of them.” Two participants, Eric and Brian, biked because they could not afford to buy a car, but they still positioned biking as something they enjoyed and as a personal preference over taking the bus.

In addition to having individual motivations for biking to work, participants offered other stories which demonstrate that they experience bike commuting as an individual activity. Blake provided an interesting example concerning Lincoln Street, a road on the edge of the university campus, where the bike lane runs on top of drainage grates in the sidewalk for several blocks (see Figure 2). Blake expressed his frustration with this bike lane, stating that “it was the worst bike lane I have ever seen.” The bike lane is narrow, pedestrians often wander onto it, and it is slick in wet conditions. Because of his irritation with the bike lane, Blake said, “On principle, on sunny, clear, dry days, I do not use that bike lane, because I’m protesting and no one knows I’m protesting and so it doesn’t actually help.” Here Blake has positioned his activity as individual: it is single, anonymous, and ineffective.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Blake rides next to, but not in, the bike lane on Lincoln Street, which goes over a series of drainage grates.

However, other participants mentioned this same bike lane and their response to it. Hugh described the lane in question as “kind of ridiculous” and said he only uses it when traffic is too heavy to ride in the road on Lincoln Street, which is narrow with no shoulder. Carol said she does not feel safe riding on the grates, so she usually avoids Lincoln Street if she can. When she must use Lincoln Street, she walks her bike to the side of the bike lane if there are any pedestrians present. Although all these cyclists are acting individually, from our point of view we can see that they in fact act together. The Lincoln Street bike lane does not afford cycling and as a result, the bikers choose not to use it, thus rejecting the prescribed spatial structures, or strategies, put in place by the powerful (such as campus and city planners) (de Certeau, 1984). Even though a given bike commuter may view their actions and decisions as individual, their actions in fact have the potential to take on a greater, collective meaning, constituting the individuals as a collective.

A final example of this lack of collective identity comes from Christine, who has been involved in planning the local Bike to Work event for several years. Because the mayors of Collegetown and Park City and the university president usually attend the event, she feels that it is a good opportunity to present a critical mass of cyclists. Several participants said that local policy makers have often dismissed plans to increase bike infrastructure because they perceive a lack of interest. For this reason, Christine sees Bike to Work Day as a means to present bike commuters as a sizable and legitimate group. However, she has found it difficult to assemble this group:

So in this community it feels like…I’ve been part of planning the ride your bike to work day event, for a couple of years running. And it’s really hard. You know, it’s not that there aren’t any people out there who cycle, but getting them to turn up in a visible way to put pressure on local political leaders is pretty hard.

Christine’s example also seems to show the absence of collective identification. Ernest, who usually attends the Bike to Work Day events, recalled Bike to Work Day a few years earlier:

One of the speakers…started fussing about it might rain and he was hoping he’d get to where he was going before the rain started and the longer he talked, the more I realized, you aren’t one of us.

Even in the one moment of official bike commuter gathering during the year, bike commuters continue to discursively differentiate themselves from others. Ernest talks about being “one of us,” but who are the us? From the rest of Ernest’s interview, it seems like his “us” is him.

To summarize our findings, we have shown how through their material/spatial communication, bike commuters constitute a collective which creates a public good of changing attitudes and infrastructure. We have also demonstrated that this collective lacks central organization and even collective identification on part of the members. Instead, members neither discursively nor phenomenologically recognize being a part of collective action even though their individual activities come together to effect real change.

Expanding collective action

The first research question we asked is whether organizing can take place without members acknowledging their role in the organization. We have demonstrated that this can be the case, although our argument rests on redefining both collective action and organization. First, this example requires a new understanding of collective action, particularly the roles of coordination, intentionality, communication between members, and a lack of personal benefit. Our claim that collective action can take place without members’ conscious participation or formal organization contradicts many of the assumed premises of theories about collective action, such as the rational, economic actor (Chwe, 1999), group identification (Kelly, 1993), or deliberate acts (Carney, 1987). Additionally, because of their personal motivations to participate, our reformulation of collective action does not need to deal with free-riding or incentives (Oliver, 1980; Olson, 1965), suggesting that individuals do act independently in some collective action situations, a major departure from previous thinking (Marwell, Oliver, & Prahl, 1988).

In contrast, we have broadened the definition of collective action to any instance when multiple individuals’ activity aggregates to result in some effect which is only possible with many people. This builds on Bimber et al.’s (2005) redefinition of collective action involving individuals acting on personal concerns in a publicly observable way. Our example has this element, but we also go further than Bimber et al. (2005, 2012) to show that no organization, coordination, or communication are needed among participants for collective action to emerge. Instead, individual actors going about their lives can act and communicate in ways that add up and result in some change or effect through this aggregation. This expansion of the definition and alternative method for identifying collective action is our first theoretical contribution.

Our example is not the only instance of this. Individuals regularly “organize” with others as singular, personal acts add up and intersect to result in some end goal, even if the contributors are not deliberately engaged in achieving that goal. For example, how individual consumers spend money sends a collective message to companies about which products are in demand. This “voting with dollars” organizes consumers into a collective which affects product availability, quality, and price. Similarly, as individuals use a search engine, the results one chooses help developers improve the search engine algorithms for greater public good (Levy, 2011). However, few of us consciously think about this in our daily Internet use. These examples demonstrate how pervasive this wider form of collective action is. They also show that it need not be a marginalized group or resistive actions which result in collective action—car drivers too could be considered a collective because their aggregated actions result in changes such as road improvements. Because this new version exists alongside more traditional collective action, what may appear to an outsider to be the result of organized activity may in fact be this unorganized collective action.

This leads to our second theoretical contribution, a somewhat radical rethinking of how we think about organizations and organizing. Organizational scholarship almost exclusively (with good reason) considers work organizations. Within such situations, there is little reason to ask if the object of study is an organization or what makes it organizational. However, in turning to a more marginal example of organization, such as bike commuters, we see organizational characteristics in something that looks rather unlike an organization. In general, organizational scholars have been hesitant to call these marginal examples organizations. Cooren and Fairhurst (2009), for example, suggested that a group of friends helping someone move house would not count as an organization even if they assembled through communication to achieve a goal. We agree that it is probably not accurate to consider this group a “formal organization” because it has inherent process and intentionality differences from traditional organizations, but there is still “organization-ness” to the group. Instead, we propose to call such groups proto-organizations to acknowledge their organization-ness, even if they are not full, formal organizations.

Studying and theorizing proto-organizations is important for several reasons. First, by having a more robust and clear definition of exactly what an organization is and is not, we will better understand both formal and proto-organizations. Looking for positive and negative cases of proto-organizations will aid scholars in further refining and defining exactly what an organization is, answering the “invitation to start from communication in order to explain organization and organizing and not the other way around” (Cooren, 2012, p. 4). Second, it seems that proto-organizations are regularly formed within organizations. These proto-organizations might be either informal groups formed to accomplish specific tasks or a collective through aggregation such as we have described here. Particularly in the first case, a proto-organization might lead to the eventual constitution of a formal organization. Better understanding of this relationship and possible movement between formal and proto-organization would also help us refine definitions of organizations, in particular, the exact point when something moves from being proto-organizational to properly organizational. Additionally, through this process of redefinition, the potential for CCO theory to bridge the micro-macro divide in organizational theory can be reinforced (Kuhn, 2012). Although we do not seek to provide a definition of organization here, we challenge current understandings of this term, suggesting that organizations might not need the formal coordination, structures, and communication that we assume are present.

Material communicative constitution of organizations

Our second research question asks what would constitute such a collective. We argued that although humans were not involved in constituting the organization, material means such as spatial movement and presence manifest this collective. It is then from the perspective of an outsider (in this case, researchers and perhaps drivers) that collective action is identified and attributed to a group, constituting cyclists as a proto-organization. This extends and challenges CCO thinking on materiality and the constitution of organizations in two ways.

First, in empirical CCO work, non-human agents are generally seen as complicit in human activity (for example, Brummans, 2007; Chaput, Brummans, & Cooren, 2011; Cooren, 2004; Cooren et al., 2008). Although no one has argued that non-humans cannot have a stronger role, there has been a lack of research to support this claim. We have demonstrated the centrality of the material in constituting certain organizations. Although humans are responsible for moving the bike along certain trajectories, it is the material presence and spatial movement of the cyclists which is the public communication that allows for recognition of the proto-organization.

However, this is more than just the material presence or communication of an organization because this research also demonstrates that the material can act contrary to actors’ discourses by organizing humans into a collective in which its human representatives do not recognize membership. The possibility that the material, even as animated by humans, might result in effects distinct from human discursive communication is a radical departure from current CCO understandings of the relationship between humans and non-humans (for example Aakhus et al., 2011; Ashcraft et al., 2009; Cooren, 2004). In many ways, this reflects and returns us to an ANT perspective in which one must constantly trace associations and where human and non-human agents have equal potential (Latour, 2005). Through this research we see not only how humans and non-humans work together in the constitution of organizations, but also an example of the material manifesting relationships which are denied in discourse. Studying organizations then cannot start by looking at only human activities and intentions, but also material effects which may not show an apparent relationship to human communication, activity, or intention.

The second contribution that we add to CCO theory is a different standpoint for creating a collective. Although CCO theory takes a performative approach to organizations (Cooren et al., 2011), in practice CCO research often takes an entative view in which the organization already exists and the researchers do not question the organization’s ontology. Here, we have begun with an amorphous case and uncovered the organization, a more inductive approach. However, this approach also depends on the external naming and constitution of an organization. From the outside, as researchers (and perhaps drivers), the organization is constituted. This constitution can be rather tenuous though: although one might group together all categories of people who share a certain attribute (Chinese, bike commuters, CEOs), they may not choose to be associated or in fact have more in common than a superficial shared characteristic. Still, if their actions aggregate to something, they become unified in pursuit of this goal, whether intentional or not. This introduces a different standpoint for creating a collective, but also demonstrates that what an organization is or is not may be relative and only exist from certain standpoints.

The role of power

One shortcoming of this paper is the lack of attention given to power, an issue which relates to this paper in several ways. First, because it is as outsiders (as researchers, car drivers, residents of a town) that this collective of bike commuters is named, agency of self-definition is taken away from members. As we have shown, this happens in part because bike commuters discursively position themselves as separate from the group. In some ways, this makes the outside naming and claiming of definitional agency even more problematic as it is contrary to members’ self-understandings. For bike commuters, the political implications may not seem troubling, but as one of the anonymous reviewers suggested, if this were a group of slaves or fools, we would find it disturbing that an outside authority could name and define a group against members’ intent. Stereotypes are founded in attributing characteristics (or perceived characteristics) of some members of a group onto all members of a group. Often these “groups” are not ones that “members” self-identify with, but to which they are assigned by outsiders. In this way, the external constitution of a group can be a problematic exercise of power.

Additionally, there is the issue of our authority as researchers in naming a group. Although we argue that the material effects and actions communicate the collective of bike commuters into being, as researchers, we have claimed a sort of omniscient standpoint to identify this collective. One could argue that it is through our viewpoint as researchers that bike commuters are constituted as a collective, rather than through their material traces. By making an argument which denies or downplays human agency, there are costs with problematic implications about power and the ability to reduce human agents’ subjectivity.

Future research and practical implications

This project suggests several areas for future research. First, scholarship can continue exploring non-traditional organizing arenas to defamiliarize organizational theory, working towards a more precise definition of organization. Second, we have mentioned other situations in which collective action may occur without organization. These examples (and others) should be investigated to develop a more comprehensive theory of this type of organizing. Finally, within CCO research, studies should begin by tracing the material, rather than discourses or humans, to see what consequences the material has for human action rather than focusing only on how humans mobilize the material.

Additionally, there are some practical and policy implications of these findings. First, city planners or other groups cannot assume that cyclists are a homogeneous group. For example, after we conducted this research, Park City added bike lanes to help sports cyclists get to open country roads (Bangert, 2012). Most likely, only some cyclists’ desires were fulfilled with these lanes. Second, in campaigns intended to encourage more people to bike places, the way that non-cyclists understand and name cyclists may affect people’s willingness to participate. If non-cyclists see and name cyclists as deviants, they are unlikely to desire membership in that group. One group’s external constitution of another may impact the naming group’s desire to join or identify with the named group.

Third, there are implications for those who organize cyclists for political action. Because of the conflicts in bike commuters’ discourses, not everyone identifies with the group. Although bike commuters are not obliged to engage in political action, if more people identified with the biking community, its political power might increase. One challenge for those involved in cycling politics is to break down or diffuse the internal conflicts to grow identification with the group and as a result its presence and political power. This example thus has implications for practical political organizing and social change. Ultimately, both theoretical and practical issues challenge our conceptualization of an organization and suggest that ongoing organizational scholarship should grapple with the meaning and definition of organization in both material and discursive ways.