Van Maanen-Schein, 1979
Van Maanen, J., & Schein, E. H. (1979). Toward a theory of organizational socialization. In Research in Organizational Behavior, Barry Straw, Ed. 1, 209–264.
We'll be reading from the preprint version that is freely available. You can skip the beginning part and start reading from p. 30.
Read this one before you read the meta-analysis paper.
Obligatory First Summary Post (plus bonus material)
What at first appeared to be a daunting reading (printed on a typewriter, how quaint) actually turned out to be one of my favorite readings to date. It revealed a lot about how people socialize when entering a group for the first time, and how employers/agents can facilitate this entry to create certain outcomes. Of course, it's worth noting that none of this reading (or the embedded examples) had anything to do with technology or ecommunities, but the parallels were obvious and really interesting.
At the heart of this reading was measuring whether a newcomer will take up a response of socialization as a custodian or innovator once welcomed into a group. The author spell this out further by defining:
The authors assert that there are (to start) six tactics to view when deciding what type of role one would like the newcomer to be socialized into. They admit that there possibly infinitely more, but that these most basic ones give agents a place to start. So as not to completely rewrite or resummarize the entire article, here are the basics from each one and a brief comment at the end:
1.Collective vs. Individual socialization processes (38)
2. Formal vs. Informal socialization processes (43)
3. Sequential vs. Random steps to socialization processes (50)
4. Fixed vs. Variable socialization processes (55)
5. Serial vs. Disjunctive socialization processes (59)
6. Investiture vs. Divertiture socialization processed (64)
Again, so as not to discuss everything possible in the first post, I'd like to simply muse that designers or admins of ecommunities should really consider what role they want users to perform within their sites. While reading this, I kept thinking about idealized innovators, but in a lot of cases--such as information-based communities like Wikipedia or code support sites--a custodian role is not only necessary, but often desirable. As we think forward about how to apply the authors' myriad design claims it may be necessary first to think what kinds of roles we want our newcomers to perform, and then grown into since they will undoubtedly change.
examples/applying this in online communities
I'll hijack your list for the purpose of trying to come up with ways online communities
might do each.
1. Collective vs. individual -
I'm actually not sure how you could make an online community socialization collective. Perhaps the beste example I can think of is when you put a bunch of newbies in a "geographical" location of an online community to explore and learn. For example, Second Life orientation island or a MUD's isolated newbieland where you have to complete a quest, perhaps asking other newbies for help.
2. Formal vs. informal -
The most easy way to differentiate newbies "formally" from experienced community users is to leave some obvious label or distinction on their username/avatar. This may also go hand in hand with making them have different roles (say, they cannot be allowed to lead a hunting party in a MUD) and not being as respected (say, in forums)
3. Sequential vs. Random steps -
In MUDs, you gain experience points to advance to the next level. Similarly in some forums and thing, you may accumulate different status level by the number of posts or interactions you have had. On the other hand, communities like newsvine, as Jared explained, don't make their process for "promotion" explicit, so they would be more random. Truly random would be when it's someone's subjective call when they want to promote a user.
4.Fixed vs. variable -
Fixed socialization in a community might be gaining a community status when you have been a member for exactly a certain amount of time. Variable would be more similar to random steps, where subjective decisions come into play. It also may be dependent upon need. For example, in PBS, members are considered for volunteer positions such as verifying book data or being a tour guide, but it's based on need in combination with the desire.
5. Serial vs. disjunctive -
Serial socialization means that a somewhat clear path is given to new folks by older folks. Maybe a new volunteer in a community is given an outline for how to do their job and shadows an old person for a while. Alternatively, for a disjunctive socialization in a community, they may not have any example to follow. This could happen when a girl joins an avatar/role-based game for the first time and noone knows how she should act since there is no precedent.
6. Investiture vs. divestiture-
I think social communities are more likely to use investiture socialization processes while more serious communities of practices will use divestiture socialization processes.
Applying the reading to online communities
Liz, I found myself doing something similar to you, in trying to apply the concepts to online communities as I was reading the article. I agree with a lot of your points, but have some additional thoughts to expand upond them.
Take Collective vs. Individual, for instance. I don't see happening online in the same way the article describes - there are no online community "boot camps" or "apprenticeship programs", for instance. Instead, I see it as relating to whether a community is identity or bond-based for which form it takes. If it's identity-based, then newcomers would probably be socialized collectively, so that the new members "buid a collective sense of identity, solidarity, and loyalty". (p. 41) As the reading says, collective socialization is most likely to produce a custodial orientation among newcomers, which is what identity-based communities want - people who will stick to the established norms. But in a bond-based community, new members might be socialized individually, emulating a role model in the community that they might identify strongly with. These people are likely to be more innovative, which is okay since bond-based communities encourage things like off-topic discussion and tend to change more as the membership changes.
Formal vs. Informal - I would say on the whole that most online communities use informal socialization - i.e. they do not designate newcomers as newcomers. The exceptions would be message boards where your # of posts determines your membeship level, or MMORPGs it seems, according to others' comments. I'm not as familiar with these.
With Sequential vs. Random, it also seems that most online communities would be random, except for those with specific levels or membership, i.e. message boards with levels again, or role playing games where you are a character of a certain level. Are there other exceptions?
I see online communities as being Serial rather than Disjunctive because most all use "a process in which experienced members of the organization groom newcomers..." and "serve as role models for recruits." (p. 59) There seem to be very rare circumstances (Liz's is a good example) where this is not the case.
Finally, it seems that most online communities use Investiture processes rather than Divestiture - i.e. they do not seek to change the newcomer, but want to build upon the skills, values, and attitudes they already have. After reading others' posts on this topic, I think I see it this way because I am seeing it from a more literal sense.
Perhaps I am being too broad in some of my generalizations, but I think also that if we try to apply all of these types to online communities, then we are stretching their meaning a bit.
collective vs. individual & identity vs. bond
I liked your connection between the concepts of collective vs. individual socialization depending on whether the community is more identity vs. bond based. I think that makes a lot of sense!
careful with definition shift
I think you're letting the definitions of many of these tactics shift as you apply them to online communities.
Collective vs. individual-- to be collective, people have to do the socialization together. Perhaps there aren't many examples in online communities. But Chris Gerben's class community would count. And lasttime this class was offered, a student studied an online community of educators (Becoming a Webhead) that only allowed newcomers once a year, and went through a whole series of activities together.
Formal vs. informal-- the key distinction that the authors make here is not so much whether the new people are marked as new, but whether the socialization happens in a "formal" process separated from the everyday activities of the organization. So, think about sandboxes and tutorials and the like as formal socialization processes in online communities.
collective socializing in ecommunities
Thanks for the Webhead example. I was struggling to think of examples, and Chris's helped, but I still didn't could think of any that actually had successive cohorts enter together and be socialized as a group. The closest I came was things like the admitted students forum on CTools, but that's really a place for online socialization into a not-so-online organization.
Divestiture socialization online?
I found the section on Investiture vs. Divestiture socialization quite interesting. I understand how for instance a Harvard Business School grad might be treated differently on their first assignment than a marine recruit, but I was struggling to determine how this would work on online communities.
The closest analogy I guess I could find was in MMORPGs when the "newbie" levels have you do repetative, semi-pointless tasks, mostly for the purpose of serving as a tutorial to the environment, but I'm not quite sure it lives up to the depiction of divestiture in Maanen & Scheins organizational environment. Does anyone have any sort of evidence that the "tear you down to build you up" sort of socialization strategy works in online spaces?
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oostendo@umich.edu
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REPLYBOT SAYS:
You are asking a question, that's good, that should increase probability of reply by 14.92%
You talk about yourself an awful lot, that's bad, that decreases probability of response by 6.39%.
Possible example of Divestiture
haha! love the replybot.
Good question about divestiture online. This may be a stretch, but I wonder if it could apply to "rating" communities - rating books, music, etc. So on MovieLens, a movie recommendation system, when you first create an account, you rate 30 movies. The system generates the movies for you to rate, so in that way you're sort of striped of your individualism because you choose from their list instead of creating your own list. Also, rating movies is quite a repetitive task and doesn't take too much thought/energy. And it does serve to teach you how to use the rating system. So in those ways its a divestiture task.
On the other hand, though, rating movies does allow you to express your individual tastes. And it's not an entirely meaningless task because it helps you get better movie ratings. And by rating more movies, you improve the recommendations of the system as a whole. Those things bring in more to the investiture side.
Still, I think it's a close approximation. It would be stronger on divestiture if you had to rate, say, 200 movies within your first 3 days of joining the community. Or if you didn't rate movies but instead had to find movies that weren't already in the community database or something.
not enough to be divestiture
I don't this example quite fits. To fit, it would have to get you to do something that you didn't think you were good at or you didn't think was valuable, but you come to value it as a result of the process. For example, if it made you change your tastes in movies, that might count. Or if it made you change your opinion from thinking that movie critic reviews were a good way to choose movies to to thinking that peer recommendations are the only valuable thing.
MMORPG & Divestiture
I too was intrigued by the divestiture section of the paper. Given my community of study (a MUD), my mind immediately went the same direction that your post did: MMORPGs.
In MMORPGs you take on a new persona, and I think that is exactly what is discussed in the divestiture portion of the paper. If I roll up a new character, my personal "real world" attributes no longer matter. My degree, black belt in karate, and wicked awesome Reeboks don't have anything to do with my new identity... the person that I am in the game world is a level 0 lowbie. While hazing may not be explicit, other players don't care and may even become annoyed if you spend too much time talking about outside accomplishments. They're not relevant, and to be a part of the game world, you've got to invest in your new identity.
Crappy Tunics
I'd agree with Dustin that MMORPGs have a way of making you really weak at the beginning. It doesn't matter that I'm a human adult, I still need to kill rats for a living! And the sooner I change out of this crappy tunic and into some sweet mithril chainmail the better!
Also, being called "noob" over and over again by your peers could be a form of collective informal group divestiture.
I think this works
It seems there's no skill or attribute that you can bring to the community that is valued in the community. The only thing that you can be valued for is new things that you can only acquire in-game.
On the other hand, some guilds might recognize some characteristics that you bring from outside (being helpful, or tough, or a good leader). Initiations that focus on building up the characteristics you were selected for would be mroe investiture.
Interpreting Divestiture
I'm with Erin. Loved the replybot!
I think the answer to this question really depends on how strictly we are to interpret investiture/divestiture. It would seem that you are interpreting it in the "military bootcamp" sense, which is definitely an example of divestiture.
I understood the term "divestiture" in a broader sense – not so much tear you down and suck all the individuality out of you, but maybe some more benign interpretations. For example: a few weeks ago we talked about group social identity and how social identity forms in homogenous communities. Individuals forgo their own self-identity and identify more with the group identity. This, to me, seems to be another interpretation of divestiture.
Give some more time to think about some examples in the online space. It's very late right now... ;-)
in favor of a strict interpretation
I think we should adopt a fairly strict interpretation. Divestiture doesn't have to be hazing. But it does have deprecate some pre-existing characteristic(s) of the individual and build up some characteristic(s) that the individual did not think they already had.
Hazing, Mulder, and Trolls
I stumbled upon an article about hazing and online communities that examines an AOL community X-filesaholics.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/honeycutt.html
It is definitely *an* example of online hazing and quite amusing (cleaning-with-a -toothbrush ritual, Mulder's couch ritual). I'm not sure how much the example extends to many online communities but transgressions by newbies led the elite to codify initiation rituals and defend boundaries.
The discussion thread has got me thinking about the roll of trolls. I haven't spent enough time in online communities to really get the troll thing. But, I suspect trolls are part of online hazing - harassing people and casting suspicion on genuine newbie questions.
Replybot should say:
Brilliant photo choice - empathy quotient increase of 75%
New alums have it easy, online
For my online alumni community, the short answer for the newcomer
socialization tactics is: individual (new members join individually at random
times, rarely in a group), informal (learn and do as you go along), random steps
(no hierarchy or subdivisions in the community – so, at best is random or not
relevant), variable (no fixed time to be absorbed), disjunctive (no role model
involved), and investiture (each individual’s identity is valued and
recognized). In the end, the newcomer becomes a “custodian” – he does what
others have done, and does not innovate new processes, or challenge existing
knowledge.
The long answer is in my blog post. I mean, how hard can "socializing old friends" be?
Any role innovators?
Just an interesting note that, according to the reading, a socialization process which is "individual, informal, random, disjunctive, and involves investiture processes" (p. 69) is likely to lead to role innovation. Seems pretty close to the socialization process in your community, Nik, so I'm wondering if everyone becomes a "custodian," or do you see any role innovation?
Exception to theory?
Thanks, Matt. that is indeed a good observation. Ha ha.. I'm laughing to myself.. how can my conclusion defy the theory..
As mentioned in the text (p.70), it can indeed be difficult to change the norms of the community. It needs that strong person, in a conducive environment and supportive people, and maybe an unfulfilled need, to start innovating.
I'm thinking hard as to how someone can be an innovator in my online alumni. Save for the argument that it is not a work organization, I guess, an innovator can appear in my community to do new things/tasks/roles not yet in existent, such as becoming an effective fundraiser. Motivating and encouraging people to contribute towards a certain cause, has not existed in my online alumni yet.
Thinking further, maybe I have taken for granted the roles that exists in the community - now - but was not there originally 10 years back, such as organizing voluntary work. But then again, it cannot be easy for a newcomer to do such radical (innovative) things in a group run by oldtimers. The trust needs to be there.
But I still believe the rest (a big proportion) are merely custodians.
Some thoughts on the properties of this specific community
I think this is a very interesting topic which applies the theory to practical work.
However, I have two points on part of your classification about your community (I might be wrong as you know your community best:))
First, about the property of "individual", although online users process one specific online community by themselves, most of them have common set of experiences, which is one feature of collective socialization, in that sense; I am wondering whether it is too absolute for you to classify your community as “individual”.
Second, for the "informal" category, I partly agree with you on it but I also think that the formal socialization processes exist on online communities, for instance, the welcome page/ tutorial for new members.
Clarifying my position
Thanks Tracy for taking time to read and think of my post!
I guess if I take "formal" to mean "the process that everybody goes through", then I can agree with you that the welcome/initiation/tutorial page is a kind of formal socialization. In my situation however, there is no tutorial or elaborate welcome page -- bear in mind that the online portion of my alumni community exists merely as a mailing list (as johnlin puts it) or at best a discussion forum with artifact (photos, docs) sharing feature -- and the members simply learns the Y!Group functionalities, or what the community rituals are, as they go along. Thinking further in terms of members performing extended roles/tasks, such as taking the lead in organizing activities, even that is not formalized.
On the "individual or collective" socialization aspect, if I take the idea of "collective" as new members getting a "common set of experience", then I can agree with you that my community socialization is not "individualistic" - they do experience the same thing upon joining - then or now. My earlier reasoning was based on Maanen's implied definition of a fixed period of joining (i.e 1 or 10 per intake), which in my community's case is often 1 at a time. But I'm now thinking, online communities rarely (if ever) get people joining in batches and going through the same "orientation session" together, unlike a work organization, but collectively over time, they still get the same experience. In which case, my online alumni would be doing "collective" socialization. In fact, now I don't believe there is an online community that does "individual" socialization, based on this argument. Is there 1:1 mentoring online?
1:1 mentoring online
How about the Wikipedia adopter-adoptee system? It is not exactly 1-1, but I would like to take it as 1:x relationship since everyone's experience might be different with each other:)
individual socialization process
Individual just means that the socialization process is individual, that each person enters individually, either at different times or having different interactions or experiences. Having similar experiences, but not together with each other, would still be individual socialization.
worth looking for
I'm still hazy on exactly what the roles are in this community, but I think you've set a good exercise for yourself. Think about what the major changes have been in the past 10 years. Then think about where the impetus for those changes came from.
The theory doesn't suggest that everyone who goes your socialization process will become a radical innovator. But it does suggest that the process will not extinguish their innovativeness. So there should be some signs of role innovations occasionally.
If the community really hasn't changed in any significant way in the past 10 years, then that will bear some analysis, too. Something must be locking in and re-producing the current processes. If it's not the socialization tactics, then what is it?
Excellent!
It's great that you noticed this, Matt.
According to the theory, this process should be more conducive than other socialization processes to somebody becoming a full member and then inventing a new role or changing the purpose of a role.
I just realized I posted on
I just realized I posted on the main page of week 10 and not here...
example of divestiture
there is a company that was launched not too long ago with an intriguing, forward thinking business model that takes makes a play on both divestiture and investiture. the company is:
http://www.bottlenotes.com/
If you are an individual that likes wine(who doesn't) and like to think you know alot about wine(most people) or would like to know more about wine(most people again) you join bottlenotes. you undergo a lengthy questionaire which captures key information about your personal likes and dislikes not only with regards to wine but food and desserts and spirits. it also asks more personal questions about you as a person,etc. they have developed an algorithm which in combination with all of the answers given recommends wines to you. there is an entire community within this site of wine novices who went in just wanting to learn about wine. they went in with an intention but not not an indentity. Their identity as educated wine consumers is being developed step by step by bottlenotes. the proof is in the pudding as they say because this company is growing by leaps and bounds. The genius is not only in their algorithm where they are tailoring wine to the consumer but also in socializing a consumer's habits.
chardonnay is gauche??
To be divestiture they would have to be using their questionnaire to identify where your wine tasts are wrong and then use the system to re-educate you.
Your example doesn't seem to be either investiture or divestiture. In fact, a recommender system is not really a socialization process at all-- it doesn't change you, it just serves your existing self.
Maybe we need a bit more
This piece is particularly an interesting and comprehensive one to explore the big picture of the socialization process into organizations. The implications on online communities were always the question in my mind when I was reading it. Online communities, as a sort of looser and with particular media for interaction -- computer network do have a lot of similarities with traditional organizational settings.
However, there are some differences that worth for notice. Fundamentally, the roles of agents have different motive structure than in an organizational setting. In organizational setting, both the recruit and recruiter have strong motivation to promote the socialization process; while in most online communities, the tensions are much less weight. Although those who act as recruiter in online communities, like the website administrator, has strong intention to promote the socialization process; however, in my opinion, the participator, corresponding to recruit in organization, take much more initiative power for this process; as the result, some of the tactics discussed in the article would not as efficient as in organizational setting. For example, the collective socialization process in online community like a new user guideline/frequent asked questions part in a forum, can be hard to get people to follow as the training process for newbies in army. For another example, investiture or divestiture, for a participator in online community, is really a personal choice.
What I am arguing is that although we could find all these materials in online communities, but the weights and distributions of the tactics can be very different from organizational settings. I more believe, in order to understand the complexity in new comers' interacting process, we need much more than these things, for example, I more tend to believe that online community involves more multi-agent dynamic than in organizations where the collative organization takes a big and dominent role in this process; especially to the extreme, in troops.
Adaptation to online communities
It is interesting to see how organizational studies (like this paper) will be adapted into the online communities. I think the adaption will follow the adage, "The more things change, the more they stay the same". I'm not sure if the six dimensions of social process, presented in the paper, will change. But I think the types of responses from newcomers to the community will continue be the same. Members will have either a custodial or an role/content innovative orientation towards the community.
I have made one analogy with a social process dimension and one question regarding the application of the dimensions to newcomers in online communities.
Sequential Vs Random socialization process
In many online forums a there is a common social progression of newcomers towards becoming community organizers or moderators. In some communities a clear identifiable steps is defined to reach a target role. Albeit I don't know any community that has follows this method, it is not difficult to imagine a forum defining the number of posts that a member should post to become a moderator. Random process is more common in online communities. Most website want to deter any "gaming" of their ranking/reputation system hence they intentionally hidden or vague. Digg is a good example where the steps that will take a story to front page is not clearly known. Perhaps this explains why most of the stories these days are awfully similar.
Newcomers in online communities
It well known that most online communities members have much higher unregistered visitors than registered visitors. A common practice is to visit a site a few times before making an effort to register in the site. So the socialization process of the newcomers begins implicitly even before they register in the website. I'm curious to find if any of the six dimensions can be applied to the socializing process between the first visit and actual registration (is it happens) of a new user?
This paper discussed about
This paper discussed about the possible behaviors from newcomers in terms of their responses to taking a transition in position with role defined originally. Theoretically there could be two extremes and three situations which in the paper were referred to as custodianship, content innovation and role innovation. And the authors argue that there are particular forms of socialization that can enhance or retard the likelihood of an innovative or custodial response to an organizationally defined role. The first one is people processing. I would strongly agree with this argument that how newcomers who are to take the role will be selected is very likely to affect his responses. Six people processing tactics were discussed then, which are nor mutually exclusive and are usually combined in sundry and sometimes inventive ways.
The first is collective vs individual socialization processes. In my opinion, neither of these two would exist alone in reality and what we see in real world is always a combination of the two, but the weight could be somewhat different. As to how much on each side, the nature of the work that the new people under training are expected to do in future might be decisive. If the work focuses more on team cooperation, then collective socialization might be emphasized more. On the other hand, if the work does not require much team work and individuals are expected to complete the tasks mainly on their own, individual socialization might work better, examples illustrated in the paper including apprenticeship, specific trainee assignment and etc. And it seems true to me that collective socialization tend to produce a custodial orientation among new comers.
Another argument I noticed is the fixed vs variable socialization processes. I thought at first that fixed socialization should lead to more custodianship which is just the opposite as what I see in the paper. But I was convinced by the argument after I went through all the propositions for this dimension and the logic makes sense, especially the doctor and patient example.
Same question
This is an interesting article, but I found I can’t fully understand some reasoning. I am still not sure I understand the reasons why “fixed socialization processes are more likely to produce innovative responses; variable socialization processes are most likely to produce custodial responses.” (p56) I kind of understand that variable may lead to anxiety, but I am not quite sure how the anxiety leads to conformity.
holding out until the fixed end time
It is harder to resist the pressures to conform one's attitudes when the person in charge not only decides whether you've conformed but how long you have to show conformity for. It's easier to pretend to go along, without really changing your attitude, if you know how long you have to do it for.
Fixed socialization in online forums
One of the things I noticed about this reading was its classification of fixed vs. variable socialization. This reminded me a bit of the "leveling" and other random rewards that we've seen in forum systems (like the Simcity one, for example).
A way to encourage newcomers to participate and integrate is to give them points for doing it. Most people don't like "noob" being placed under their forum avatar, so they go ahead and post 100 replies to topics so they can be a "forum regular." By setting very concrete fixed goals, there's little question as to how a newcomer should act for a reward.
Superpoke on Facebook also does this. "poke 10 more people to level up and get more actions." It's sad for me to admit that it's worked for me. I wanted to see what new actions were there!!!
does it produce less conformity or commitment?
Did you end up less committed to the "application" than you would have if you had had to "poke enough to show that you're a good poker", without telling you how many times?
Simple document showing relationships in a table
Since I'm often a visual person, especially when comparing different sets of data (or in this case, responses vs. tactics), I cooked up a little PDF that compares which tactics are most likely to be observed with the three different response types:
It helped my keep it all straight in my head as I was trying to understand the relationships between all these things. Here's the link:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ggamette/school/si884/MappingResponsesTactics.pdf
Please let me know if something is incorrect. Thanks.
Thanks
Nice diagram, I found it enormously helpful
good idea; some inaccuracies
I think if you forced yourself to fill in each of the cells with a citation to one of the propositions in the paper, you'd change a few of the cells.
For example, on formal vs. informal, B.3 suggests formal leads to custodial. B.4 suggests informal is more likely to lead to content and role innovation.
Not sure if there are any others that will need to be changed, but filling in a proposition for each will help check.
Like Clay?
<cite>And, like a sculptor's mold, certain forms of socialization can produce remarkably similar outcomes no matter what individual ingredients are used to fill the mold or no matter where the mold is typically set down.(pg 35)
I was surprised that more resistance to the theories hasn’t been displayed (Perhaps Van Maanen would call it innovation?), Because of the conversation that we had in class about the value of using these social models to interpret behavior. The design claim listed above is perhaps one of the strongest in any of the readings thus far. Any thoughts?
By the way does anyone know how to get html tags to work? I keep trying to cite text and it won't acknolwedge my tags.
I agree....
That's a good observation and I think there are certain assumptions which the authors state that they work on that are not necessarily the same for online communities as they were for real world organizations in 1979. Because the assumptions that the author is working under have changed the design claim may not be applicable directly and perhaps has to be modified.
For example in their very first assumption the authors state that there is an anxiety amongst new members which is promoted by the feeling of "loneliness and isolation that are associated initially with a new location in an organization as well as performance anxieties a person may have when assuming new duties', and while the authors do say that the level of anxiety differs the kind of anxiety is vastly different when one is in an organization he is going to work in as opposed to when he becomes a member of a site like digg or youtube. The authors further qualify their findings by stating that they attempt to identify the likely effects upon "individuals who have been processed into a general organizational location through certain identified means" where there may be important differences between physical and virtual locations because of factors like anonymity and different social costs of conforming to norms vs. deviating from them.
So while the claim is probably true for organizations during that time I don't think it is as applicable in every online community today irrespective of the 'individual ingredients' that form the online communities.
For example the kind of freedom that can be granted to 'strangers' to a community posting once they can log in using their umid may be different from the kind of freedom that can be given in an online forum where anyone with an internet connection can login.
Some additional thoughts...
Beyond what I've already posted, there are a few more issues/questions I have after reading this article.
First, I want to point out some inherent problems in using this article to apply it to online communities. Now, I'm not just talking about the fact that this article is old and written before the Internet existed (or I was born, for that matter). There's nothing wrong in applying offline social theories to online ones, for the most part. What I think might be an issue, though is the fact that this article is written about socializing newcomers to actual jobs or places in society, while on the other hand, involvement in online communities is voluntary, disjointed, and does not require any sort of formal commitment for the most part. These are some big differences. What are the ramifications of these differences? I'm not so sure. I guess I'm just wondering if this does matter - if some of these categories don't really apply online like they do in real life.
Secondly...my other questions was about whether online communities want their newcomers to have a custodial or an innovative approach to the community. Does this depend on whether its bond-based or identity-based, i.e. an identity-based community might want members to be more custodial and committed to the group's purpose? Do others have thoughts on what factors in a community might determine this?
Custodial or Innovative Users Wanted?
In response to your second question, I had a similar curiosity about how the study's principals might play out in bond- or identity-based settings.
I interpreted the framing of "custodial" orientations to have a negative connotation in the eyes of the authors, mainly because they mention symbolic interactionism as a inspirational force in their research questions.
If this is the case, it would seem that both bond- and identity based communities would seek to promote innovation if they want to avoid getting caught in habitual patterns of behavior that just get repeated based on tradition.
"Innovation" as a buzz word has, of late, begun to show up more that "social capital." Its interesting to note how ambiguous both concepts are.
Lisa McLaughlin
Very interesting thoughts. 2
Very interesting thoughts.
2 points come to my head:
1. People are more free with strangers in online communities vs in real commnities.
2. The reverse is true for people we know: We are more free with closed ones in real communities than in online community. < I wrote it, but I doubt it now >
Missing Conclusion (originally posted on Week 10 thread, sorry)
I was frustrated by this otherwise great article's conclusion because socialization processes appear to ultimately represent tactics from all six dimensions, whether intentional or not. Yet Maanan and Schein avoided arguments for at least one dimension in each socialization process. I'll make a claim for each dimension they missed.
1) "A custodial response will be most likely to result from a socialization process which is (1) sequential, (2) variable, (3) serial, and (4) involved divestiture processes." I argue that it is most likely to occur by structuring socialization through collective and formal experiences because these methods enact constraints upon the newcomer. Group consensus will direct acclimation toward one extreme (custodial vs. role innovation) response, but will more likely skew toward the organizational mean for values and direct norms. Moreover, a formal introduction within a segregated environment will convey an organization's desired precepts.
2) "Content Innovation is most likely to occur through a socialization process which is collective, formal, random, fixed, and disjunctive." I argue that it is most likely to occur by encouraging investiture, like Role Innovation, because creative thinking is the result of solving problems in new ways. Thus if a newcomer conforms to his adopted organizations values, processes, and hierarchy, there is no room for brokering practices across communities. The high-risk involved with new methods of innovation can be translated and mitigated via formal procedures, though this means the newcomer would need to convince high-status and rank members to support his idea.
3) "Role innovation is… most likely to occur through a socialization process which is (1) individual, (2) informal, (3) random, (4) disjunctive, and (5) involves investiture processes." I argue that it is also fixed because a timetable to promotion will reduce anxiety and the incentive to conform. However, I understand why Maanan and Schein didn't make a claim because constraints that nullify status and role ascension are also more likely to reduce risk-taking incentives. People are less likely to excel beyond what's expected of them if their effort won't possibly lead to the advancement of their status or access to power and resources beyond their peers. (socialism,
communism...)
Our future careers may depend our ability to construct the following argument: Design choice X will achieve Y because Z. This article excels in the "because
Z" department (best practices + justification) whereas a few of our other readings haven't provided as much reasoning. (I'm looking at you, Powazek Chapter 8)