Organization Studies

The Internet has impelled scholars to expand their views of organization. In 2005, Organization Studies called for papers about online communities that would stretch the field of organization studies. The articles in this special issue use empirical research and theory to re-examine fundamental questions of organizational boundaries, community, and member motivation.

This paper investigates when and how online practices (i.e. practices of management and use of web-based Information Technology) impact offline practices (i.e. regular work practices and communication patterns) within a bureaucratic environment. A case study of implementation and use of a Knowledge Management System by members of a network of practice within the bureaucratic environment of a public administration is interpreted through a situated learning perspective. This lens helps us to understand the process of emergence of continuity between online and offline practices. Findings indicate that the constructed continuity within the network of practice emerged from a combination of structural changes in the environment and of the involvement of key actors who actively encouraged others to integrate their online practices into their regular activities. The paper helps us to understand the processes of construction of continuity of online and offline practices and the bounded impacts of this continuity within bureaucracies. Such continuity may contribute to the circumscribed emergence of a soft bureaucracy in which professional competences and exchanges are recognized and encouraged, while the structural features of decision making, control, and resource allocation remain unchanged.

An institutionally independent organic online learning community (OOLC) founded and populated by London cabbies-in-training, more commonly known to the world and to themselves as `Knowledge Boys and Girls', is described here. Qualitative discourse analysis of message board transcripts and interviews with members was undertaken in an effort to elucidate benefits that accrue to OOLC members. Goffman's theory of region behaviour is enlisted to explain why frank, collegial and sometimes confessional interactions with peers might take place in such an online venue. This article suggests that through such candid interactions among peers, learners create a back-region that allows participants to compare themselves with one another, cultivate friendships and practise for high-stakes assessments. OOLC members take advantage of the pseudonymity provided by their electronic social space to engage in behaviours that, if they occurred in a front-region, might invite damage to a learner's reputation as a pre-service cabbie. The online community BR becomes a sanctuary of sorts for taking social and academic risks, one where potential adverse consequences are few and benefits are legion.

Public document repositories (PDRs) are valuable resources available on the Internet and are a component of the broader information commons freely accessible to the public. Instances of PDRs include the repository of reviews at Amazon.com and the online encyclopedia at Wikipedia. These repositories are created and sustained by the voluntary contributions of individuals who are not compensated for their inputs. This paper draws on and extends critical mass theory in the context of PDRs. Using data on the reviews written by prolific reviewers at Amazon.com and the text of their personal profiles, we find the critical mass of contributors at the PDR not only to be prolific and contributing high-quality reviews, but also to be among the earliest contributors of reviews on products. Reviewer profiles revealed the presence of multiple self-oriented motives (self expression, personal development, utilitarian motives, and enjoyment) and other-oriented motives (social affiliation, altruism, and reciprocity) for contribution. We find that the quality and quantity of contributions are inversely related and the motives for quantity of contribution are different from those related to the quality of contribution. The study highlights that PDRs are viewed by contributors as social contexts even though making contributions is an individual act that does not involve social interaction.

Firm-hosted commercial online communities, in which customers interact to solve each other's service problems, represent a fascinating context to study the motivations of collective action in the form of knowledge contribution to the community. We extend a model of social capital based on Wasko and Faraj (2005) to incorporate and contrast the direct impact of commitment to both the online community and the host firm, as well as reciprocity, on quality and quantity of knowledge contribution. In addition, we examine the moderating influence of three individual attributes that are particularly relevant to the firm-hosted community context: perceived informational value, sportsmanship, and online interaction propensity. We empirically test our framework using self-reported and objective data from 203 members of a firm-hosted technical support community. In addition to several interesting moderating effects, we find that a customer's online interaction propensity, commitment to the community, and the informational value s/he perceives in the community are the strongest drivers of knowledge contribution.

Online communities depend upon the commitment and voluntary participation of their members. Community design — site navigation, community structure and features, and organizational policies — is critical in this regard. Community design affects how people can interact, the information they receive about one another and the community, and how they can participate in community activities. We argue that the constraints and opportunities inherent in online community design influence how people become attached to the community and whether they are willing to expend effort on its behalf. We examine two theories of group attachment and link these theories with design decisions for online communities. Common identity theory makes predictions about the causes and consequences of people's attachment to the group as a whole. Common bond theory makes predictions about the causes and consequences of people's attachment to individual group members. We review causes of common identity and common bond, and show how they result in different kinds of attachment and group outcomes. We then show how design decisions, such as those focused on recruiting newcomers versus retaining existing members, constraining or promoting off-topic discussion, and limiting group size or allowing uncontrolled growth, can lead to common identity or interpersonal bonds among community members, and consequently to different levels and forms of community participation by those so motivated.

One of the principal merits of Gérard Mendel's socio-psychoanalysis lies in the fact that it strives to understand how organizational reality influences individual psychic reality, including in its unconscious dimension. A collective practice, it aims to study how actors, in the framework of their daily professional activity, and organized into specific groups (homogeneous in terms of profession), reflect by themselves on the forces that impact their personality. The working hypothesis of socio-psychoanalysis is that the hold of organizations on individuals is such that the latter have very little power over their acts of work; whence the negative psychological effects with their harmful socio-economic consequences. For Mendel, it seems necessary to intervene right from the beginning of the socio-psychoanalytic process in the dimension of the organization of work. The intervention methodology adopted is that of an institutional system whose function is to counter, as much as possible, the pathogenic effects of the organization of work by neutralizing the hierarchical, technical, social and organizational divisions that run through it, in order to trigger a `movement of appropriation of the act' (poweract). Thus, when the conditions are in place for individuals to exercise real power over their productive acts, then pleasure, creativity, motivation, participation and a sense of responsibility may all develop in them. In so doing, the system endeavours not only to act on the concrete reality of work, but also to enable certain psychosocial changes in the personality.