ox4 - Final Version

Free Software and Beyond
The World of Peer Production

Speakers
Mathieu O'Neil
Schedule
Day 1
Room University Place 4.206
Start time 15:30
Duration 01:30
Info
ID 27
Event type Lecture
Track Theories on peer production
Language English

The social impact of online tribal bureaucracy

Internet-based peer production projects constitute a new form of organisation, stuctured around autonomy and the distribution of authority. This presentation shows how 'online tribal bureaucracy' borrows elements from organisational formats such as corporations and communes, yet differs from them in important respects. It also considers whether the tribal-bureaucratic organisational model is generalisable to other contexts, and whether such as dissemination is desirable.

The social impact of online tribal bureaucracy Proposal for 4th Oekonux Conference

Mathieu O'Neil Australian National University

Internet-based peer production projects constitute a new form of organisation. This presentation shows how 'online tribal bureaucracy' borrows elements from organisational formats such as corporations and communes, yet differs from them in important respects. Online projects distribute hierarchical control: participants have a high degree of autonomy, so that new entrants to Wikipedia (for example) can rapidly attain positions of power.

This is not new: demonstrating a counter-cultural aversion to authority, the IETF's 'Tao' described the organisation as a anti-bureaucratic collection of 'happenings' with no formal membership. This concern for direct democracy, which still animates contemporary online projects, mirrors the organisational structures of 'communal' or 'collectivist' 1970s groups such as free clinics and alternative newspapers.

But contemporary self-directed online projects are different from communes because they have rules, written records, merit-based promotion processes, and because they separate roles from persons (for example, Debian elects a different Project Leader every year). These characteristically bureaucratic traits are put at the service of democracy. This distinguishes online projects from corporations.

Online projects are also different from corporate bureaus because charismatic forms of authority intersect with collectivist bureaucracy in online projects. Where would Linux, Wikipedia or Daily Kos be without the 'extraordinary vision' of their respective charismatic founders, who wield extraordinary power? In addition to roles still being linked to persons, self-organised online bureaucracies can be defined as 'tribal' because of three defining traits: the high degree of autonomy and self-motivation of participants, the structuring role of conflicts, and the preferred mode of decision-making, deliberation.

This presentation evaluates the economic and political benefits and costs of these characteristics: for example, conflicts may serve to unify participants, and deliberation may make political participation less exciting, by removing the verdict of chance afforded by the result of elections. The presentation concludes by addressing a more general question: is the tribal-bureaucratic organisational model generalisable to other contexts? What conditions would be required for such a dissemination to occut? Is it desirable? What would the potential drawbacks be?