Repairing ontological security: The collective sensemaking of affective stakeholders in online communities

IF 4.5 2区 管理学 Q1 MANAGEMENT
William Milton Foster, Diego M Coraiola, Francois Bastien
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Our study investigates how affective stakeholders – emotionally invested but organizationally powerless individuals – collectively make sense of unexpected organizational events in online environments. Drawing on a netnographic analysis of a National Hockey League fan forum, we examine how Edmonton Oilers supporters responded to the unexpected trade request of star player Chris Pronger. We find that the disruption of fans’ ideal, expected future triggered intense ontological insecurity, which they attempted to repair through collective temporal sensemaking. Fans cycled through three phases – rumour, confirmation and trade – each marked by distinctive uses of past, present and future narratives to reconstruct meaning and regain a sense of control. Our findings contribute to stakeholder theory by theorizing affective stakeholders as unique actors in organizational life. We also expand temporal sensemaking theory by showing how multitemporal narratives function as coping mechanisms in virtual communities. Finally, we emphasize the empirical value of studying collective sensemaking in digital spaces, where discursive interactions unfold in real time.
修复本体论安全:网络社区情感利益相关者的集体意义建构
我们的研究调查了情感利益相关者——情感投入但组织无能的个体——如何共同理解网络环境中意外的组织事件。根据对国家冰球联盟球迷论坛的网络分析,我们研究了埃德蒙顿油人队的支持者如何回应明星球员克里斯·普朗格意外的交易请求。我们发现,粉丝对理想的、预期的未来的破坏引发了强烈的本体论不安全感,他们试图通过集体时间意义制造来修复这种不安全感。粉丝们经历了三个阶段——谣言、确认和交易——每个阶段都以不同的过去、现在和未来叙事来重建意义并重新获得控制感。我们的研究结果有助于利益相关者理论,将情感利益相关者理论化为组织生活中的独特行动者。我们还通过展示多时间叙事如何在虚拟社区中作为应对机制来扩展时间意义制造理论。最后,我们强调了在数字空间中研究集体语义的经验价值,其中话语交互是实时展开的。
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来源期刊
Human Relations
Human Relations Multiple-
CiteScore
12.60
自引率
7.00%
发文量
82
期刊介绍: Human Relations is an international peer reviewed journal, which publishes the highest quality original research to advance our understanding of social relationships at and around work through theoretical development and empirical investigation. Scope Human Relations seeks high quality research papers that extend our knowledge of social relationships at work and organizational forms, practices and processes that affect the nature, structure and conditions of work and work organizations. Human Relations welcomes manuscripts that seek to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to develop new perspectives and insights into social relationships and relationships between people and organizations. Human Relations encourages strong empirical contributions that develop and extend theory as well as more conceptual papers that integrate, critique and expand existing theory. Human Relations welcomes critical reviews and essays: - Critical reviews advance a field through new theory, new methods, a novel synthesis of extant evidence, or a combination of two or three of these elements. Reviews that identify new research questions and that make links between management and organizations and the wider social sciences are particularly welcome. Surveys or overviews of a field are unlikely to meet these criteria. - Critical essays address contemporary scholarly issues and debates within the journal''s scope. They are more controversial than conventional papers or reviews, and can be shorter. They argue a point of view, but must meet standards of academic rigour. Anyone with an idea for a critical essay is particularly encouraged to discuss it at an early stage with the Editor-in-Chief. Human Relations encourages research that relates social theory to social practice and translates knowledge about human relations into prospects for social action and policy-making that aims to improve working lives.
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