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On the Beginning of a New Beginning:

Connecting with a Collective Mind in Form Emergence 

 

 

The topic of form emergence and evolution has garnered much scholarly attention in recent decades. However, although our collective knowledge in organizational theory has much to say about the legitimation and diffusion of existing forms and practices (Lounsbury & Crumley, 2007; Rao & Kenney, 2008), we know much less about the origin of new alternatives (Padgett & Powell, 2012; Scott, 2001). Given that forms are recombinations of what was there before and that they subsequently need legitimacy to be “taken for granted as a social fact” (Rao, Morrill, & Zald, 2000:242), the question arises as to how recombinations occur in the first place and who has the power to legitimize them. In short, how do we explain and predict what triggers the emergence of a new form, which involves “a thick and tangled bush of branchings, recombinations, transformations, and sequential path-dependent trajectories” (Padgett & Powell, 2012:2)?

 

This workshop aims to untangle this thick and tangled bush through the conceptual lens of socially emergent, cognitive aspects of a crowd—namely, a “collective mind.” The theoretical and practical relevance of studying crowds has never been more salient as the expansion of digital technologies and crowdsourcing is strengthening the crowd interpenetration of organizations. Enabled by the web, virtual crowds’ shifting collective minds pose new challenges for organizations that cannot be explained by our field’s existing axioms and assumptions rooted in social movement theory. Le Bon’s (1897) seminal piece on the psychology of crowds suggests that the crowd is not merely a congregation of individuals but rather forms a collective mind fundamentally different from the individual characteristics of its constituting members. This notion resonates with the theory of collective behavior and its numerous subsequent variants (cf. Killian & Turner, 1972). Given the spontaneity of the crowd’s shared meaning patterns, can we build systematic theories linking a collective mind to the political process of form emergence (Stinchcombe, 1968)?

 

Furthermore, how should we approach the role of entrepreneurs in such a way that the crowd’s interconnectedness is reasonably considered in our understanding of a new alternative generation? Today’s much-celebrated concept of institutional entrepreneurship has brought powerful actors onto the stage of institutional change (e.g., Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002; Lounsbury, 2002) but overlooked the “emergent, multilevel nature of how new kinds of activities emerge” (Lounsbury & Crumley, 2007:993). Instead of portraying institutional entrepreneurs as “hypermuscular supermen single handed in their efforts to [. . .] transform organizational fields and alter institutional logics” (Suddaby, 2010:15), we suggest looking at them as mindful interpretive systems (Daft & Weick, 1984) that actively respond to the changing dynamics of crowd conversations. 

 

We hope this PDW will provide a platform for discussing some of the most important interpretive aspects of novelty emergence, hence the title, the beginning of a new beginning. 

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References

 

Daft, R. L. & Weick, K. E. 1984. Toward a model of organizations as interpretation systems. Academy of Management Review, 9(2): 284-295.

 

Greenwood, R., Suddaby, R., & Hinings, C. R. 2002. Theorizing change: The role of professional associations in the transformation of institutionalized fields. Academy of Management Journal, 45(1): 58-80.

 

Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Sahlin, K., & Suddaby, R. 2008. Introduction. In R. Greenwood & C. Oliver & K. Sahlin & R. Suddaby (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

 

Killian, L. M. & Turner, R. H. 1972. Collective behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Le Bon, G. 1897. The crowd. London: Unwin.
 

Lounsbury, M. 2002. Institutional transformation and status mobility: The professionalization of the field of finance. Academy of Management Journal, 45(1): 255-266.

 

Lounsbury, M. & Crumley, E. T. 2007. New practice creation: An institutional perspective on innovation. Organization studies, 28(7): 993-1012.

 

Padgett, J. F. & Powell, W. W. 2012. The emergence of organizations and markets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

 

Rao, H., Morrill, C., & Zald, M. N. 2000. Power plays: How social movements and collective action create new organizational forms. Research in organizational behavior, 22: 237-281.

 

Rao, H. & Kenney, M. 2008. New forms as settlements. In R. Greenwood & C. Oliver & R. Suddaby & K. Sahlin (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism: 352-371. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

 

Romanelli, E. 1991. The evolution of new organizational forms. Annual Review of Sociology: 79-103.

 

Scott, W. R. 2001. Institutions and organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
 

Stinchcombe, A. L. 1968. Constructing social theories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 

Suddaby, R. 2010. Challenges for institutional theory. Journal of Management Inquiry, 19(1): 14-20.