Organization Studies

Organization Studies, Ahead of Print. <br/>Craft offers a path to enchantment and meaningful engagement with creation in an increasingly rationalized society. Yet, entering skilled domains where craft is practiced can be challenging for novices, particularly for those less familiar with these domains. While a growing body of research suggests that craft can be made more accessible through nontraditional pathways, the process whereby novices come to perceive craft as accessible remains undertheorized. We explore these ideas through the case of the makers, a diverse DIY movement that embraces all who build, modify, and invent across a variety of skilled domains. Using interview and observational data from Maker Faires—events wherein makers exhibit their projects and engage attendees in making activities—we induce a model of how experts enable novices to perceive craft as accessible. Our findings reveal how experts convey knowledge and skills using a creative craft approach, detailing how experts engage in scaffolding to facilitate novice creation, relax hierarchy, and cultivate fun and whimsy. In turn, this engenders the experience of enchanted engagement for novices who are able to experience how engaging in craft feels without the requisite skills or knowledge. Ultimately, this experience shapes and reinforces novices’ perception that craft is accessible. Our study contributes to the growing scholarship on craft in terms of alternative pathways for entering skilled domains, the role of craft in re-enchanting organizational life, and the emotional rewards of craft.

Organization Studies, Ahead of Print. <br/>

Organization Studies, Ahead of Print. <br/>

Organization Studies, Ahead of Print. <br/>We investigate how issue fields with increasing levels of contestation can develop into fields characterized by echo chambers. Studying the introduction of a controversial new approach to addiction services—harm reduction—we explain how proponents’ and opponents’ rhetorical arguments changed over time, transitioning the issue field through different configurations. Our findings reveal how field actors were initially differentiated by moral convictions, and as their expression of moral emotions became more intense, the two groups became increasingly divided and polarized in their views, leading to an issue field characterized by echo chambers. Through our analysis of archival materials and interview data, we explicate this process by identifying three phases of issue field transition: creating a moral emotional divide; intensifying antagonization; and insulating against the other side. We contribute to the literature by presenting a model of change explaining how emotional rhetoric, together with different types of triggering events, can fuel increasing levels of contestation and drive the field toward developing echo chambers. Second, by taking a discursive view of issue fields with particular attention to rhetorical arguments, we provide foundational work for an institutional perspective on echo chamber—that echo chambers result from ongoing social processes where people encapsulate themselves based on a sense of right and wrong, in contrast to the predominant view of becoming trapped in an enclosed space. Third, through our focus on the role of moral emotions and how they can escalate in situations of contestation, we advance knowledge regarding the importance of emotions in field dynamics.

Organization Studies, Ahead of Print. <br/>