Seminar – Transcending the Formalisation Dilemma: How Communities Formalise without Subverting Founding Values

Dr Marya L. Besharov, The ILR School, Cornell University

Formal structures enable social collectives to coordinate and manage their activities as they grow in scale and scope, but their introduction has historically undermined collectives’ founding values by reducing opportunities for participation, autonomy, and free expression. Although the benefits and costs of formalisation are well known, little research explores how collectives navigate this “formalisation dilemma” in ways that enable them to grow while remaining true to their founding values. We address this question through a comparative ethnographic study of three open source software communities. Following these communities longitudinally over a 15-year period, we find they confronted similar organising challenges around coordinating work, managing participation, and maintaining order. Yet they addressed these challenges in different ways, relying on varying combinations of formal and informal approaches to manage growth. Moreover, the adoption of formal structures did not necessarily undermine participatory and expressive values, nor did their absence prevent communities from expanding in scale and scope. In contrast to prior research, these findings suggest the trade-off between formalisation and collectivist ideals is a false dichotomy. They further contribute a previously under-appreciated range of organising models – which we term federated, bureaucratic, and informal – that communities can adopt to incorporate formal structures in ways that sustain rather than undermine their founding values.

Speaker bio

Marya Besharov is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the ILR School at Cornell University. An organisational theorist with a background in organisational sociology, she studies how organisations and their leaders navigate competing goals. Much of her research focuses on social-business hybrid organisations such as social enterprises and mission-driven businesses that combine social and commercial goals.

Marya’s work has been published in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Business Ethics Quarterly, Academy of Management Learning and Education, Research in Organizational Behavior, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, and Industrial and Corporate Change. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Organization Science.

Marya received a BA in Social Studies, an MA in Sociology, and a PhD in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University. She also holds an MBA from Stanford. Prior to her academic career, Marya worked as a researcher and consultant in the healthcare field.