Abstract

This study uses a novel situation of organizing, bicycle commuting, to develop an argument regarding the requirements for collective action and increased autonomy for the material in constituting organizations. We found that through individual material and spatial practices, bike commuters constitute themselves as a collective, making their presence known and creating possibility for change. However, bike commuters’ discourses indicate that they do not experience a collective identity or sense of community of practice. We use this study to extend two areas of theory. First, we suggest that collective action can take place without organization or organizing: individual activities can aggregate to have an effect even if they are not officially coordinated or members do not acknowledge membership in a collective. Second, we suggest that this example moves beyond previous work on the communicative constitution of organizations to suggest that the material can constitute a collective, even without human, discursive recognition of it.

Keywords: bike commuting, collective action, communicative constitution of organizations, materiality, organizational communication, organizing