Sub-Plenary 1-2
Organizing Algorithm-driven Governance: Openness & New Forms of Closure
Organizers:
Leonhard Dobusch, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Thomas Gegenhuber, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany
Panelists:
Anne-Laure Fayard, New York University, USA
Mikkel Flyverbom, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Danielle M. Logue, UTS Business School, Australia
Recording of session: please click here!
Organizational scholars have delivered affirmative accounts that digital platforms are an avenue to increase organizational
openness in domains such as entrepreneurship (e.g., crowdfunding), innovation (e.g., user innovation), public-administration
(e.g., open government platforms) or strategy-making (e.g., including audiences in the formulation of strategies). At the
same time, a growing set of societal challenges such as political polarization, misinformation, rising inequality or discrimination
have been linked to open digital platforms and their mostly algorithm-driven governance.
This sub-plenary addresses this rise in algorithm governance and discusses its consequences for new forms of open organizing,
related inclusionary and exclusionary dynamics and thus whether certain forms of closure are needed to enable open organizing
in the first place.
Inquiring into this new phenomenon benefits from dissecting it from multiple perspectives. Consequently, the three pre-recorded
and live-streamed talks we examine algorithmic governance from various theoretical orientations (institutional, practice and
communication perspectives) are at the heart of this sub-plenary. After the talks, we will have an interactive Q&A. In addition
to the ask questions via the EventsAir system, you are also invited to tweet comments and questions.
Leonhard Dobusch is Professor of Business Administration with focus on Organization at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. His research
interests include the management of digital communities, organizational openness and private regulation via standards, specifically
in the field of transnational copyright.
Thomas Gegenhuber is Assistant Professor for Digital Transformation at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany. Under the umbrella of digital
transformation, Thomas researches novel forms of organizing, crowdsourcing, various types of openness (open strategy, open
innovation, and open government) and (cultural) entrepreneurship in a digital economy.
Anne-Laure Fayard is Associate Professor of Innovation, Design and Organizational Studies at New York University, Tandon School
of Engineering, USA. She is an ethnographer studying work and collaboration at the intersection between organizations, technology
and people. Anne-Laure’s work has been published in several leading journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Organization Science, and Harvard Business Review. She is also the co-author of “The Power of Writing in Organizations”.
Mikkel Flyverbom is Professor and Director of the Digital Transformations Platform at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He is the author
of The Digital Prism: Transparency and Managed Visibilities in Datafied World (Cambridge University Press) and articles in
Organization Studies, Organization, Business & Society, etc. Also, he is a research fellow at University of California, Santa
Barbara and a frequently consulted expert on tech issues.
Danielle M. Logue is an Associate Professor of Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Strategy at UTS Business School and Director of the Centre for
Business & Social Innovation, Australia. Her current work engages in institutional theorizing to examine settings of social
innovation, including investigations of social stock exchanges, social impact bonds and civic crowdfunding platforms where
innovations in finance and digital technologies combine to address social problems.