Mathieu O'Neil * The social impact of online tribal bureaucracy (was: [ox-en] Conference documentation)

Hi list!

Here is the presentation of Mathieu as plain text. Please note that
the PDF is on the website and slightly differs from the text version
Mathieu gave me.


						Grüße

						Stefan

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==============================================
THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF ONLINE TRIBAL BUREAUCRACY
==============================================

--------------
MATHIEU O'NEIL
--------------

AUSTRALIAN DEMOGRAPHIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

FOURTH OEKONUX CONFERENCE

UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER, UK

27-29 MARCH 2009

PART 1: THEORY
==============

Why is there mass participation in online projects?
---------------------------------------------------

1. Autonomy (rejection of hierarchy)

2. Distribution (power is shared)

What does distribution mean:
----------------------------

* The right to fork (compromised in Web 2.0)

* In Web 2.0: people can rapidly attain powerful positions

Legitimacy online
-----------------

* Who rules in autonomous / distributed systems?

* Why do others accept their authority?

=> Leaders must *justify* their central position.

Defining online authority:
--------------------------

1. sovereign authority (role separated from person)

  - bureaucratic (also rules, release schedules, official repositories,
    written records): needs to be democratised to fit communal form

  - 'value-rational' (Weber 1978)

  - collective basis, will of the people

  See Debian: Project Leader, Constitution (organisation science:
  O'Mahony & Ferraro 2007).

But does not account for...

2. charismatic authority (role relinked to person)

  - charismatisation of meritocracy (expertise not bureaucratic /
    hierarchical)

  - affective attachment to personal qualities:

    - brilliance of great founder (hacker-charisma) 

    - position of great node (index-charisma)

See Linux, Wikipedia, Daily Kos

		      distribution of authority

				  +

		     conflicting authority orders

				  =

			      conflicts

=> drain on resources

=> unity and purpose, rite of passage

Role of leaders
---------------

* Integrate contributions / adjudicate conflicts

* To be accepted, these decisions must be legitimated by meaningful
  relationship between role and structure: networks offer no
  justification.

Organisational form?
--------------------

* Volunteer associations (Harrison 1960)

* Collectivist organisations (RothschildWhitt 1979)

* Voluntary hierarchies (Weber 2004)

Introducing...

Online tribal bureaucracy (O'Neil 2009)
---------------------------------------

A hybrid form used by autonomous groups and characterised by:

- cooperative production of free content

- overlapping of authority orders: bureaucratic traits are mixed with
  collective and charismatic (or 'tribal') traits

- prevalence of conflict

- deliberative procedures 

PART 2: WORK
============

Comparison: corporate bureaus
-----------------------------

(1) advantages of OTB

    - Good match people/work (ownership of authority)

    - No misuse of resource by insiders (risk by outsiders)

    - No representational costs

(2) disadvantages of OTB

    - No (legal) responsibility for well-being of participants

    - No means to oblige performance of unpopular tasks (lack of
      responsiveness / training)

    - Since decisions are collectively debated, there is more likelihood
      of affective conflict (flamewar)

Comparison: communes
--------------------

(1) advantages of OTB

    - Resolve scale issue (length of meetings)

    - Less unstable than communes (persons, unlike positions, are
      subject to sickness / moods)

(2) disadvantages of OTB

    - Normative controls less efficient in large groups

Challenges: peer production and conflict
----------------------------------------

- Elite projects: quarrels over control of development

- Mass projects: Herding of autonomous content producers can generate
  humiliation

Wikipedia: inflation of authority mechanisms

Challenges: types of conflict
-----------------------------

- minor conflict slows down the project

  - task [project content]: uncontroversial

  - affective [communes: persons not roles]: distributed work, but
    collective decisionmaking

  - process [approach to task]: betrayal of democracy, criticism of
    injustice

- major conflict consumes the project (combination of affective and
  process conflict) individual explicitly breaks rules => justifies by
  opposition to archaic force

Challenges: enforcement
-----------------------

- hard to punish loner or transient effectively (norms assume symmetry
  of interests)

- granularity (not coarse penalty of Leviathan): even if centralised
  decision, depends on agreement of individual members to be applied

Debian: reluctance to intervene

Challenges: deliberative procedures
-----------------------------------

- Fact: path-dependence

- Fact: speed, overexcitement

- Risk: disappearance of due process (notification of rule to obey)?

- Risk: disappearance of sacred quality, of surprise provided by
  voting?

PART 3: MARKET
==============

How to increase market share for peer production?
-------------------------------------------------

- Frame in terms of common sense, not common good:

- Pragmatic, not normative (Open Source rather than FLOSS)

- Personal realisation is paramount in society (see Duncombe 2007)

- Success-story as tool of depolitisation

Peer production in the business
-------------------------------

- 'Post-bureaucratic' organisation like W.L. Gore & Associates: no
  hierarchy, no title: create idea, recruit talent, peer-review of
  performance, emergent leaders: rankings

- Still have to compete for connections, best projects: still
  competition

Peer production and the market
------------------------------

- Free content in Capitalism: great product, great advice provision,
  reach those who would not buy

- Utopia online => consumption of hardware...

- Internet ideology of freedom / 'New Spirit of Capitalism' (Boltanski
  and Chiappello 2004)

What replaces the market?
-------------------------

- Capitalism rejected domination based on transcendence / tradition.

- Reversion to earlier models of exchange (closeness, mutual help,
  solidarity): risk of reversion to precapitalist exchange
  (role=person).

- Tribal model: charismatic / traditional leader

- What form of exchange? (Everyone needs to conform) 

These interrogations: explain my focus on peer organisation 

Important questions remain: justice provision in relation to
bureaucracy / State?

Connection to State? Possible? Desirable?

But if to represent viable alternative to bureaus, two other OTB
issues need to be resolved.

Expertise and identity
----------------------

- Tension between mass projects based on participation of amateurs and
  elite projects based on participation of experts.

- In one case anonymity is accepted.

- But: is anonymity viable (no responsibility)?

- But: total surveillance? 

- User-centric IDM? Web of trust? Solutions?

THANK YOU
=========

References
----------

Boltanski L & Chiappello E (2004 [1999]) The New Spirit of Capitalism,
London: Verso.

Duncombe S (2007) Dream: ReImagining Progressive Politics in an Age of
Fantasy, The New Press, New York.

Harrison P (1960) `Weber's categories of authority and voluntary
associations', American Sociological Review, Vol. 25, No. 2.

Rothschild-Whitt J (1979) `The collectivist organisation: an
alternative to rational-bureaucratic models', American Sociological
Review, Vol. 44, No. 4.

O'Mahony S & Ferraro F (2007) `The emergence of governance in an
open-source community', Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 50, No. 5.

O'Neil M (2009) Cyberchiefs: Authority and Autonomy in Online Tribes,
London: Pluto Press.

Weber M (1978 [1922]) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive
Sociology, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California
Press.

Weber S (2004) The Success of Open Source, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

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