Dear colleagues,

You are cordially invited to join us for the Center for Organizational Research Beginning-of-Year Event.

DATE: Friday, October 20
WHEN: 12:00-1:30
WHERE: SBSG 1321

This will be an opportunity to connect with old friends and meet new colleagues and hear about each other’s research projects.

The second round of COR Small Grants recipients will briefly present their research projects as well, including Andrew Penner, John Joseph, Kelly Ward and Stephanie Pulles.

Lunch will be provided.

Please RSVP by October 12 to cor@uci.edu.

We hope to see many of you!

Best wishes,

Nina Bandelj and Melissa Mazmanian
COR Co-Directors

Dear colleagues,

You are cordially invited to join us for the Center for Organizational Research Beginning-of-Year Event.

DATE: Friday, October 20
WHEN: 12:00-1:30
WHERE: SBSG 1321

This will be an opportunity to connect with old friends and meet new colleagues and hear about each other’s research projects.

The second round of COR Small Grants recipients will briefly present their research projects as well, including Andrew Penner, John Joseph, Kelly Ward and Stephanie Pulles.

Lunch will be provided.

Please RSVP by October 12 to cor@uci.edu.

We hope to see many of you!

Best wishes,

Nina Bandelj and Melissa Mazmanian
COR Co-Directors

Siobhan O’Mahony

Boston University Questrom School of Business

April 21, 2017

10:30-12:00

Porter Colloquium Room (Merage SB1-5200)

ESCALATING INSURGENCY: EXPLAINING REPERTOIRE INNOVATION THROUGH SELECTIVE SYNTHESIS

(with Felipe Massa)

Social movement scholars have shown how insurgents, despite limited access to resources and power, affect powerful targets through the deployment of an innovative repertoire. Repertoire innovation is theorized to occur through novel combinations of existing tools and practices or through the emergence of de novo elements. Extant research usually focuses on the tactics insurgents deploy without explaining how insurgents execute on those innovations. Little research explains how insurgents initially craft, revise and innovate repertoires over time. Without understanding this process, we cannot explain how insurgents escalate or deescalate their operations to achieve social change. We call for a broader conception of repertoire innovation that includes not only the tactics, but also the practices and tools used to carry out insurgency. With an inductive, longitudinal field study, we show how the insurgent community Anonymous crafted, expanded and refined a repertoire of tools, tactics and organizing practices aimed at disrupting increasingly ambitious targets over an eight-year period. Our in-depth examination provides a grounded theoretical explanation of how insurgent communities escalate their operations by selectively synthesizing repertoire elements and a particular explanation of how this process unfolds in an under-explored, extreme contex