How Open Crowds Self-Organize

Majchrzak, Ann; Malhotra, Arvind; Zaggl, Michael A.

doi:10.5465/amd.2018.0087

Cited by 34 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…Participants may not identify with or see themselves as belonging to a particular social movement and operate without a shared identity or professional leadership to guide their efforts (e.g., Calhoun, 1995;Castells, 2004). Thus networked activists tend to operate more as a ''crowd'' or ''mob'' guided by passion and collective intentionality rather than in alignment with a formalized charter or clearly articulated mission (e.g., Melucci, 1996;Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker, 2014;Majchrzak, Malhotra, and Zaggl, 2020).…”

Section: Networked Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Order from Chaos: How Networked Activists Self-Organize by Creating a Participation Architecture

Massa

O’Mahony

2021

Administrative Science Quarterly

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Collectives attempting to self-organize without relying on managerial control can leverage open, digital networks to foster information exchange and agility. But, as collectives grow, the open boundaries that enable the mobilization of participants and rapid exchange of ideas can give rise to new organizing challenges that make collective action untenable. We examine this tension by exploring how networked activists self-organize through open, digital networks to achieve shared aims without belonging to a common organization that supports their cause. With a seven-year, inductive field and archival study, we capture how activists from the Anonymous collective organized 70 protest actions while struggling to integrate newcomers and coordinate increasingly complex activities. Rather than succumb to chaos or managerial control, Anonymous learned to self-organize, gradually abandoning normative forms of control in favor of forms of architectural control. By creating a participation architecture—a sociotechnical framework that empowered technical experts and unobtrusively channeled newcomers to designated forums—networked activists enhanced their collective ability to coordinate complex, interdependent actions at scale. Our grounded theoretical model reveals how the challenges of self-organizing emerge with rapid growth and how these can be overcome by configuring architectural control.

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Section: Networked Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Puranam, and Tushman, 2012;Majchrzak, Malhotra, and Zaggl, 2020). In theory, self-organization entails the spontaneous emergence of order out of local, independent interactions, where ''spontaneous'' signifies the lack of a visible hand commanding the process (Ashby, 1947(Ashby, , 1962Kauffmann, 1996).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Order from Chaos: How Networked Activists Self-Organize by Creating a Participation Architecture

Massa

O’Mahony

2021

Administrative Science Quarterly

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“…Compared with the manual method, the approach suggested by our work mainly uses the contribution content and statistical information retained by the community members to identify the lead users. That is because a series of suggestions and comments generated by user contributions in CDC can generate valuable and novel solutions [48]. Furthermore, the technological progress of machine learning technology for natural language understanding, such as semantic word space model and semantic network analysis, made it feasible to capture open text content on the Internet.…”

Section: Key Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Find the Key Participants in Crowdsourcing Design? Identifying Lead Users in the Online Context Using User-Contributed Content and Online Behavior Analysis

et al. 2022

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Lead users are the most valuable innovation sources in crowdsourcing design; how to identify these users is a research hotspot in the field of design and management. Existing approaches to discover lead users in the context of the online community, such as the manual method and ordering algorithm, have some limitations, for instance, low coverage and accuracy. To address these deficiencies, this article proposes a method that applies text-mining techniques, analysis of user behavior, and contributed content to identify lead users. We suggest a three-step analytical approach: First, a criterion system to evaluate the user’s leading-edge status is constructed. Second, we utilize a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process to assess the weighted value of each indicator and develop the reference sequence of the indicators. Third, grey relational analysis is employed to analyze the correlations between users’ indicators and reference sequences, and lead users are recognized based on each user’s correlation ranking. An empirical analysis is used to examine the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results reveal that the method has good precision and recall rate, can automatically process large-scale data, and has no strict requirements for respondents. Finally, the article discusses the limitations and provides possible directions for future research.

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“…Existing research has studied the provision of information in traditional organisational contexts as well as in more novel contexts such as open source software development and distributed work (Dahlander and O'Mahony 2010;Shah 2006;Majchrzak, Malhotra, and Zaggl 2021;Okhuysen and Bechky 2009). Many of the insights from this work may generalise to CS as well.…”

Section: Provision Of Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crowds, citizens, and science: a multi-dimensional framework and agenda for future research

Franzoni

Poetz

Sauermann

2021

Industry and Innovation

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Research projects that actively involve 'crowds' or non-professional 'citizen scientists' are attracting growing attention. Such projects promise to increase scientific productivity while also connecting science with the general public. We make three contributions. First, we argue that the largely separate literatures on 'Crowd Science' and 'Citizen Science' investigate strongly overlapping sets of projects but take different disciplinary lenses. Closer integration can enrich research on Crowd and Citizen Science (CS). Second, we propose a framework to profile projects with respect to four types of crowd contributions: activities, knowledge, resources, and decisions. This framework also accommodates machines and algorithms, which increasingly complement or replace professional and non-professional researchers as a third actor. Finally, we outline a research agenda anchored on important underlying organisational challenges of CS projects. This agenda can advance our understanding of Crowd and Citizen Science, yield practical recommendations for project design, and contribute to the broader organisational literature.

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How Open Crowds Self-Organize

Cited by 34 publications

References 88 publications

Order from Chaos: How Networked Activists Self-Organize by Creating a Participation Architecture

Order from Chaos: How Networked Activists Self-Organize by Creating a Participation Architecture

How to Find the Key Participants in Crowdsourcing Design? Identifying Lead Users in the Online Context Using User-Contributed Content and Online Behavior Analysis

Crowds, citizens, and science: a multi-dimensional framework and agenda for future research

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