Making Space for Garbage Cans: How emergent groups organize social media spaces to orchestrate widescale helping in a crisis
Organization Studies
; 44(4):569-592, 2023.
Article
in English
| ProQuest Central | ID: covidwho-2253316
ABSTRACT
During the Covid-19 pandemic, citizens self-organized at an unprecedented scale to support vulnerable people in neighbourhoods, towns and cities. Drawing on an in-depth study of an online volunteering group that emerged at the beginning of the pandemic and helped thousands of people in a city in the United Kingdom, we unpack how citizens co-construct social media spaces to orchestrate helping activity during a crisis. Conceptualizing a novel synthesis of classical garbage can theory and virtual space, we reveal how emergent groups use ‘spatial partitioning' and ‘spatial mapping' to create a multi-layered spatial architecture that distributes decision-making and invites impromptu choice occasions spontaneous matchmaking, proximal chance connects and speculative attraction. Our insights extend the study of emergent organizing and decision-making in crises. Furthermore, we advance a new line of theorizing which exploits garbage can theory, beyond its existing application in classical decision sciences, to posit a spatial view of organizing that paves the way for its novel applications in organization studies.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
Databases of international organizations
Database:
ProQuest Central
Type of study:
Randomized controlled trials
Language:
English
Journal:
Organization Studies
Year:
2023
Document Type:
Article
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