Phyles, Netguilds, and the Organizational Practices of Becoming
* Conference Paper: Phyles, netguilds, and the organizational practices of becoming. By Antonio Blanco-Gracia. 33th EGOS Colloquium - The Good Organization: Aspirations, Interventions ,Struggles. At: Copenhagen Business School CBS, July 6-8, 2017. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Abstract
"This paper explores a radical form of experimental organization that happens when the object of experimentation is the organization itself; it’s mere existence is already an experiment. Drawing from ethnographic work and the analysis of primary sources, describes the origin and practices of communitarian and hacktivists groups in Spain that pursue the constitution of phyles and federations of netguilds. They run experiments as a result of both their production and governance modes, but they are also pristine examples of organizations that are oriented to new experiences, which in the Stoic tradition, means that they and their members are open to uncertainty, unknowingness and surprise. These organizations feature a set of concrete practices that are not focused on being, but on becoming by doing, experimenting and learning (both individually and collectively). They also have in common that they are egalitarian, have been inspired by cyberpunk and hacker imaginaries, are transnational, and heavily rely on the materiality of the Internet to think, explain and organize themselves. Since traditional organizational practices and mindsets are useless to them, they are creating their own."
Contents
"The paper develops as follows.
Firstly, I describe the origins and activities of the two cyberpunk organizations that have most inspired others by openly sharing their ideas and practices. One is Las Indias Electrónicas (Electronic Indias, hereafter, Las Indias), a little cooperative group that nomadically has been operating from Madrid, Montevideo or Bilbao in its fourteen years of history. The other is X-Net, an association of cyberactivists born in Barcelona in 2008.
Secondly, I distinguish between two acceptations of the verb experiment,and argue that these organizations are a radical example of experimenting organizations.
Thirdly, I discuss the axiological implications of organizations that are consciously “becoming” and why they need to be materialized in a mesh of practices. Finally, I describe their concrete organizational practices, and model from them a completely different system of management functions of those that Fayol postulated a century ago and that are still accepted as a framework for both mainstream and critical management theories."