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PP 489
The Emerging Organizationality of Online Music Producers, a CCO-Perspective
R. Järventie-Thesleff
1
1
Aalto University School of Business, Management Studies, Helsinki, Finland
The ICT-technology, media convergence and participatory media culture have profoundly transformed the relations, practices and business models in
the music industry (Wikström, 2009). In the new music industry several actors, like aspiring artists, record labels, distributors and retailers get engaged
in making, co-producing and publishing user-generated content. This paper takes the CCO (communicative constitution of organizations) perspective to
online music making entities and examines how fluid social collectives, where membership is latent, contested, or unclear, achieve ‘organizationality’(Do‑
busch & Schoeneborn, 2015). The idea of the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) is based on the notion that organizations are invoked
and maintained in and through communicative practices (Cooren, Kuhn, Cornelissen, & Clark, 2011; Schoeneborn & Blaschke 2014). Within this research
stream there has recently been interest to broaden the concept of organizations to looser, networked, and ‘boundaryless’ social arrangements, which,
furthermore, should be conceived as ongoing processes of ‘becoming’ (Dobusch & Schoeneborn, 2015). Dobusch & Schoeneborn (2015: 1006) introduced
the term ‘organizationality’ to ‘switch from the binary classification of social collectives as either organizations or non-organizations to a more gradual
differentiation’ defined by three characteristics: (1) interconnected instances of decision-making, (2) actorhood, and (3) identity. In this paper we focus
on a loosely connected network of music enthusiasts that worked with a Finnish online producer that was gradually gaining a considerable fan base and
obtaining positive critics.The empirical material consists of the discussions, activities and outcomes produced by this‘boundaryless’social arrangement over
a period of three years. Several interviews with the aspiring young artist were also conducted. Based on our preliminary analysis, the particular social entity
of music making that this paper focuses on can be described as a loosely connected organization of individual musicians, visual artists, promoters, record
labels, distributors and retailers who came together to discuss, showcase, and collaboratively work on and with the music of the aspiring artist. The increas‑
ing popularity of the aspiring artist as a ‘name’in the genre of electronic music increased the attractiveness of this collaboration. Furthermore, our analysis
shows that this organization was not a static entity but on the contrary, it was in an ongoing process of ‘becoming’. The identity of this social arrangement
built on growing brand recognition of the aspiring artist and it evolved in the temporal interaction between its collaborators. REFERENCES: Bagozzi, R. &
Dholokia, U. (2002), Intentional Social Action in Virtual Communities, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 16(2):2–21 Cooren, F., Kuhn, T. R., Cornelissen, J.
P. and Clark, T. (2011). ‘Communication, organizing, and organization: An introduction to the special issue’. Organization Studies, 32: 1149–70. Dobusch,
L., & Schoeneborn, D. (2015). Fluidity, Identity, and Organizationality: The Communicative Constitution of Anonymous. Journal of Management Studies,
52(8): 1005–1035 Schoeneborn, D & Blaschke, S (2014). The Three Schools of CCO
Thinking:InteractiveDialogue and Systematic Comparison. Management
Communication Quarterly 28 (2): 285–316. Wikström, P. (2009), Music in the Cloud, Digital Media and Society Series