Organizational Identity Work in an Emerging Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Network

The purpose of this paper is to explore real-time and naturally-occurring processes of emergence of organizational identity from inception. While previous studies provide insights into broader phases associated with identity formation, they do not reveal the potentially more contentious dynamics that are likely to have preceded or underpinned it. With a focus on organizational identity formation in the everyday, this study analyzes 9000 collective e-mails exchanged over four years since the foundation of an organization in the field of open-source hardware. Our study identifies three types of discursive organizational identity work engaged in by members through their interactions, that we call ideological, practice, and boundary work. We show how through their organizational identity work, members continually struggle to reconcile conflicting value commitments with pragmatic concerns about the sustainability of the organization. We argue that while organizational identity is about shared understandings, the capacity of organizational members to develop shared understanding about identity is paradoxically founded on their ongoing everyday confrontations with the tensions underlying it.