“No dig,No Ride”: The Communicative Constitution and Consequences of Imperfect Authoritative Texts in Fluid Collective Organizing

Abstract

Drawing upon the theoretical roots of Montreal school communicative constitution of organizing (CCO), this study extends the notion of “authoritative texts” (Kuhn, 2008) to loose, emergent, and fluid forms of organizing. Based on interviews and observations among a fluid collective of bicyclists that maintain a public jump course, findings show how repetitive stories and labor analogies are communicative elements giving rise to an authoritative text, that, although imperfect in many ways, exerts influence on organizing practices. Despite lacking conventional organizational structures, the article demonstrates how the emergence and disciplining function of authoritative texts is made possible by a unique form of indirect assertive speech acts. This work contributes to organizational communication theory by extending authoritative text research to fluid organizing, theorizing differences in the coorientation and scaling up processes forming authoritative texts, and providing precise explanations of how texts discipline through intertextual relations.

Authority is a key component of coordinating activity in organizations (Taylor & Van Every, 2011). Dating back to Weber (1946) and Fayol (1949) traditional notions of authority were tied to position within an organizational hierarchy. That is, rational-legal or legitimate authority is part of the chain of command. In more contemporary forms of organizing, scholars treat authority as a negotiated phenomenon between organizational members that transcends hierarchies and official positions or titles (Kahn & Kram, 1994). In particular, the Montreal School variant of communication as constitutive of organization (CCO; Cooren, 2010; Cooren & Fairhurst, 2009; Taylor & Van Every, 2000) theory considers authority as distributed among various agents and emergent from interaction (Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009). More specifically, recent research on “authoritative texts” (Kuhn, 2008) explains how authority emerges from communicative interaction to guide activity.

In this article, I argue that Kuhn’s delineation of authoritative texts provides an important intellectual tool to understand the communicative complexity of organizing. However, there are opportunities to further refine authoritative text theorizing and apply the concept in more diverse organizing settings. First, more robust theoretical explanation is needed concerning the specific types of interaction that give rise to these texts. The conversation portion of the conversation/text dialectic in coorientation systems (Taylor et al., 1996) that gives rise to authoritative texts could be further specified with empirical data. Second, the concept of authoritative texts could use more explanation of how those texts discipline members. This investigation seeks to advance precise theoretical explanations of how this discipline occurs.

Underpinning each gap is the fact that most authoritative text research focuses on stable forms of organizing, often taking an employer/employee context as standard. We are missing an explanation of how authoritative texts emerge and operate in fluid (Dobusch & Schoeneborn, 2015) or partial (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2011) social collectives that lack defined membership, leadership, or clear boundaries. For example, community gardens, public art installations, hiking trails, community ‘free boxes,’ or communal meeting areas, often exist without financial support or oversight from local governments or organizations and are constructed/maintained through fleeting and improvisational volunteer actions. Given the benefits provided by these fluid groups, it is important to understand how authority emerges and guides activity among collectives. It is not simply that these contexts have not been studied. Rather, the lack of conventional structural elements of fluid collectives provides an opportunity to test and extend existing authoritative text theory. The central problematic of this study is how the conversation text dialectic allows or constrains the scaling up of authoritative texts in environments lacking material and structural features of organizing (e.g., buildings, meeting rooms, set times of participation).

Next, I detail theoretical premises of CCO informing this study followed by a description of the fieldsites—loose collectives of BMX bicyclists who build and maintain public dirt jump parks—and describe methods of data collection and analysis. Findings reveal how the authoritative text concept can be extended beyond conventional organizing by empirically demonstrating how repetitive stories and labor analogies are part of the communicative coorientation process giving rise to an authoritative text in this fluid collective. This article adds more theoretical precision to explain how texts discipline through intertextual relations between multiple authoritative texts. The article concludes by discussing implications of this work for CCO theorizing, authoritative text research, and investigations of informal organizing more broadly.

Coorientation and the Communicative Constitution of Authority

Understanding the CCO perspective on authority requires briefly detailing how conversations and text come to constitute organization. Organization, as Taylor et al. (1996) see it, “is a set of transactional relationships, mediated by interaction: people making requests of others, promising things, passing judgment on others’ performances, promoting and demoting, hiring and firing, entering into contractual arrangements” (p. 12). This view builds on speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1979) to explain how organizing is found in communication. A full discussion of speech acts is beyond the scope of this work, but in short, it concerns the performativity of language. Through directives, assertives, commissives, declaratives, and expressives (i.e., speech acts) realities are brought into being. Speech acts have a “direction of fit.” The directive, “take out the trash,” has a “world-to-words” fit because the speaker wants the hearer to make the world match their words whereas the assertive “it is raining” is a “words-to-world” fit. In the Montreal school CCO perspective, “coorientation systems” (Taylor, et al., 1996) are foundational for organizing. Coorientation systems consist of a self-organizing loop between conversation and text. Conversation is localized observable communicative interaction often comprised of speech acts, whereas text is the “subject matter and goal of interpretations” (p. 4) generated during conversation. Conversations generate texts that “scale up” (Taylor & Van Every, 2000) and gain distance (i.e., “degrees of separation”) through, borrowing Ricoeur’s (1986) terminology, a “distanciation” process. Put simply, conversations generate texts, or shared interpretations, that individuals orient to during future interactions. Key to the process, is that texts are “simultaneously the input to, and outcomes of, conversation” (Kuhn, 2008, p. 1233), meaning individuals at each degree of separation draw upon the text as a guide for conversation but may also alter the shared understanding of the text. The original precise words spoken in conversation may “vanish” (Taylor & Van Every, 2011) as the text gains distance, “scales up” (Taylor & Van Every, 2000) or becomes distanciated through the degrees of separation. I turn to review research on particular forms of these texts that are most relevant to this investigation.

Authoritative Texts

In the CCO line of thinking, authority is accomplished through special forms of these “scaled up” texts— “authoritative texts” (Kuhn, 2008). Texts can be “concrete” such as documents, policy statements, websites, white papers, etc., or “figurative” in that the text is an abstract representation of “common or valued elements of the group” (Kuhn, 2008, p. 1234). Texts are “rarely unitary or monolithic” rather, they can be considered as “networks of meaning.” The distanciation process hides individual contributions of authors making the text appear as a legitimate collective accomplishment. As local conversations vanish it “conceal[s] the ideological foundations” (p. 1234) of the text while also creating “rules of the game” organizational members consent to. The authoritative text stands in as the ‘official’ organization as a whole and provides the “raison d’être” of the collective.

Colloquially, the term authority is often applied to a person who possesses the legitimate power, ability, or authorization to give orders or command obedience. Conversely, CCO conceptualizes authority as intertwined with authoring of the organization. Although not strictly a possession of the individual, actors can invoke authority by speaking for or in the name of someone or something or by making an organization present in an interaction to bolster their claims. That is, other sources of authority outside the immediate interaction are “presentified” (Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009) when brought into interactions to give additional weight to their own actions (Bourgoin et al., 2020). A text becomes authoritative when people “attribute causal power” to it and adjust their practices to align with the text in anticipation of formal or informal rewards or punishments (Kuhn, 2008, p. 1236). Thus, the text exercises power by “making a difference” (Cooren, 2004) in organizing practices. Knowing others align actions and interpretations to this text, individuals may attempt to exert authority by influencing the formation of the authoritative text. Kuhn further specifies that texts represent intentions of the authors, mediate conversation, direct attention, link distinct practices together by regulating talk at different sites, and discipline by encouraging actors “to subordinate personal interests to the collective good” (Kuhn, 2008, p. 1236). This last point, on the disciplining function of texts, is one I return to later and highlight as an area in need of greater clarity.

The authoritative text should not be thought of as a discrete and objective ‘thing,’ such as a defined mission or vision statement. Rather, Kuhn (2017) envisions authoritative texts “more as an analytical device” (p. 21) allowing for examining practices of organizational (re)constitution. Further, although the terms figurative and concrete may invoke images of separate material and social things, recent turns in the field toward relationality (Kuhn et al., 2017) transcend this dualism in considering authoritative texts as relational products formed by indivisible discursive/material relations. Overall, authority is not tied to position, rather, it is socially constructed and negotiated by organizational actors.

Several studies have applied Kuhn’s authoritative text concept to explain organizing. Koschmann (2013) studied an interorganizational collaboration (IOC) seeking to improve social outcomes within a community. After struggling to negotiate what the IOC should be about, during a meeting someone suggested the IOC’s job may be likened to keeping an eye on the gauges of a dashboard of a car. The “dashboard” statement was recorded into meeting minutes, repeated in future conversations, and eventually scaled up to the level of authoritative text. From a higher education context, Blaschke et al. (2014), revealed how legal frameworks and strategic issues can be considered as authoritative texts shaping and guiding practices of educational institutions. Additional work by Koschmann and Burk (2016) within a federal government scientific laboratory revealed how authority in collaborative settings entails both authoring and de-authoring of texts. For an authoritative text to lose its status, members must undo the “vanishing” act of the original conversation by “recontextualizing an authoritative text back to its original circumstances” (Koschmann & Burk, 2016, p. 410).

Holm and Fairhurst (2018) show how authoring of texts during “formal meetings of a leader team” (p. 696) play a role in situations of both shared and hierarchical leadership. Hierarchical leaders may use the discursive device of “bookending,” wherein the context or topic of a meeting is either setup or closed down, which ultimately influences meeting outcomes.

Shanahan (2022) explores organizational democracy in a network of non-profit organizations seeking to decommodify food supply chains and finds that the ability to transparently revise an authoritative text, particularly through shared ICT use, is a key dimension of organizational democracy.

A commonality among empirical research on coorientation and authoritative texts is the focus on formalized organizing settings. The emphasis on formal organizing is not surprising considering Taylor et al. (1996) originally developed coorientation to explain “large, extended enterprises that are a typical feature of the late twentieth-century industrial and governmental landscape” (p. 4) and most publications using coorientation have followed their lead. For instance, in Taylor and Robichaud’s (2004) foundational study they conduct a conversation analysis of a senior management meeting. Indeed, managerial meetings and rituals within formalized meetings are often studied (Koschmann & McDonald, 2015).

The conventional organizational setting of existing research also complicates our understanding of discipline. First, Kuhn (2008) states discipline occurs by “portraying particular phenomena, as well as forms of knowledge and action, as (in)appropriate and (un)desirable” (p. 1236), yet little empirical work has demonstrated precisely how the authoritative text accomplishes this discipline. In later works, Kuhn (2017) further specifies that the text “disciplines actors by compelling some level of consistency between distributed practices and the narrative of the ‘we.’… it outlines responsibilities for managing problems encountered in practice” (p. 20). Despite this further explanation, the notion of discipline is left somewhat implicit within the concept. To be clear, I agree that authoritative texts can discipline, but the context within which an authoritative text operates matters. It is no stretch to think someone would accept and abide by an authoritative text if their paycheck, continued employment, or career advancement is reliant upon submitting to the text. For example, the coorientation and distanciation process of several CEO and board of directors’ meetings may generate an authoritative text subordinate units should accept if hoping to remain employed. The nesting of action presented in this scenario, often termed “imbrication” (Taylor & Van Every, 2000), embedding, or “hierarchization effects” (Cooren & Seidl, 2022) are what afford discipline. Put simply, the authoritative text disciplines because individuals are within an employment context. There are consequences for not abiding by an authoritative text and potential rewards for accepting the text. However, when one moves authoritative text theorizing to loose, partial, and emergent forms of organizing that lack defined power relationships, will the authoritative text still carry disciplinary weight? If so, how might this discipline occur?

As the prior examples reveal, authoritative text theorizing is built upon a bedrock of formal organizing. I argue complementary research is needed that seeks to uncover (a) if authoritative texts can form in more loosely structured collectives lacking formal structures for interaction (e.g., interagency meetings, defined roles), or codified standards of operation (e.g., procedures, rules), (b) if there are theoretically significant differences in the coorientation process of fluid organizing, and (c) precisely how authoritative texts discipline. Looking collectively at research on authoritative texts, scholars have primarily applied the concept to various contexts or phenomenon (e.g., higher ed, IOC, leadership) or looked solely at outcomes of the text. In other words, the authoritative text concept has mostly been used as an explanatory mechanism for other phenomenon. Less research has gone back to the concept of authoritative text itself to provide greater theoretical precision.

Last, Koschmann and Burk (2016) suggest future research, “should explore the notion of authoring and de-authoring authoritative texts across a number of contexts” (p. 410) while Dawson (2017) also noted “complex, already formed organizations” (p. 5) are frequently studied in authoritative text research. Christensen et al. (2021) even claim “we need further studies of how text-conversation dynamics extend beyond organizational boundaries” (p. 421). This study takes it a step further, not simply by going beyond organizational boundaries, but by seeking to explore the conversation-text dynamic when firm organizational boundaries are absent.

In sum, additional research is needed to explore mechanisms by which authoritative texts can form, how this authority manifests in fluid organizing, and the ongoing consequences for processes of organizing. The following research questions emerged through an “abductive” (Locke et al., 2008; Timmermans & Tavory, 2012) approach to qualitative inquiry wherein I engaged with the field site and consulted existing literature to theorize surprising findings that do not fit with existing theory. Thus, these research questions are part of a larger project seeking to understand a fluid volunteer collective’s activity coordination more broadly:

RQ1:

How is authority socially constructed among a fluid volunteer collective?

RQ2:

How do authoritative texts discipline?

Method

Field Sites

I collected data among three loosely structured and ephemeral groups of bicycle motocross (BMX) cyclists in a large United States city who design, build, and maintain public bicycle dirt jump courses—the 18^th Street, Texano, and Apple Creek dirt jumps. Dirt jump courses consist of takeoff and landing ramps, banked turns, and switchbacks of varying heights, angles, and trajectories and built from earthen soil. Courses are designed so the BMX rider uses momentum rather than pedal power to maintain speed and jump through the air. The 18^th Street Jumps were founded in the early 90s, while Apple Creek and Texano jumps were constructed around 2010 (see Image 1A-B, Appendix). All three locations were surreptitiously built on public property without the city’s permission, but each location was eventually recognized by local government agencies and allowed to continue operating, albeit with little to no material or financial support. Maintenance is an ongoing endeavor (see Image 2A-B) carried out by park users and entails digging up fresh soil and spreading it onto the track, sweeping leaves from the jumps, trimming overgrown flora, stacking piles of dirt into new jumps, and watering the course so the dirt does not dry out and crumble. Although there is no central organization “in charge,” interviewees described the group as a collective and some riders use an Instagram handle to make announcements about the trails. Individuals heavily involved at all three locations often post status updates or videos and photos about the trails on social media.

Data Collection

This investigation is guided by the tenets of abductive reasoning through a “double engagement” (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012) between existing theory and careful data collection and analysis steps. In abductive analysis, a researcher is likened to an “informed theoretical agnostic” by beginning data collection with both open interests and an “in-depth familiarity with a broad range of theories” (p. 169) but no predilection for a specific theory. As surprising findings arise from the data, the researcher iteratively consults existing theory against new data as an “inventive activity” to generate new explanatory propositions and theoretical extensions.

Thus, this project began with an open interest in how the informal collective of riders at 18^th Street construct and maintain the space. I initially entered the field site as a “participant-as-observer” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011) meaning I rode my bicycle at the jumps, helped build and maintain the space, and built rapport with others in the field. Taking notes during active participation proved challenging and appeared out of place, therefore I recorded field notes by hand during downtime at the sites, or shortly after leaving the field. I also captured original photographs of the field site and activities within. Observation sessions allowed for “ethnographic interviews” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011) wherein I casually conversed with participants at 18^th Street. Recruiting participants was challenging given the ad hoc and sporadic nature of participation. Despite spending several hours in the field, on many occasions I was not able to converse with participants because no one came to the park to ride or dig. Fortunately, as the project progressed, ethnographic interviews revealed Texano and Apple Creek jump locations as additional field sites, and I expanded my focus to include those jump courses which increased chances of participant recruitment. I also conducted more structured audio recorded field interviews with riders. Ethnographic interviews provided rich contextual information, but all direct quotations presented in this article are taken verbatim from audio recorded field interviews. Many interviewees surfaced the topic of social media and how comments and posts online related to events happening at the field sites. Thus, I amended IRB coverage to allow for collecting screenshots of online interactions about activity in these spaces. In total, I conducted 19 field interviews, 293.5 hours of observation over a 4-year time frame, and collected a combined 364 photographs and screenshots for analysis.

Data Analysis

Interviews were transcribed into a digital text format and stored in an electronic cloud-based qualitative data management system. I applied Charmaz’ (2014) constructivist grounded theory coding methodology as it is compatible with the logic of abduction in allowing for joint collection and data analysis. During a first step of line-by-line open coding of interviews and fieldnotes, I primarily generated in-vivo codes of what was happening in the scene or conversation. For example, interview segments mentioning normative ways of behaving were initially coded as etiquette and interviews mentioning the collective’s interaction with local government were coded as city relationships. A second round of coding further detailed the etiquette code by appending sub-codes of etiquette for riding and etiquette for building. After these first two passes, I noticed that, although there were no conventional authority figures or codified rules, there were patterned ways of working and communicating within this space that seemed consequential in guiding riders’ actions and decisions. Prompted by this “puzzling observation” (Locke et al., 2008), I then returned to extant literature on organizing, once again guided by an abductive reasoning to “consider all possible theoretical interpretations of your data but maintain a critical, skeptical stance toward these theories” (Charmaz, 2014, p. 201). Through this process of reviewing existing theory and “memo-writing” (p. 162) about discoveries in the data, I began to focus in on the relationship between communication and organizational constitution—with particular emphasis on authority. Literature revealed that theoretical explanations of authoritative text formation are bound up with conventional organizational elements—something this field site lacked. This insight led to the formation of RQ1. Research question two emerged after uncovering that an authoritative text seemed to operate across field sites, and some individuals seemed disciplined to do specific things, yet precise theory on how texts discipline was underspecified in extant literature. A third focused coding round allowed for concentrating on communicative interactions related to the overarching idea of authority. Throughout the coding process, each code was “constantly compared” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to other codes to make sure ideas were grounded within the data and did not overlap. Finally, axial coding allowed for fully fleshing out each theme and determining its relationship to other categories. This step helped to develop the three organizing implications presented in the findings.

Findings

Findings are grouped into three overall sections: Emergence of Authoritative Text, Disciplining, and Organizing Implications of an Imperfect Authoritative Text. In the first section, I explain that repetitive stories and labor analogies are two specific forms of coorienting communication scaling up to create an overall group ethos functioning as an authoritative text. Within the Disciplining section, I discuss how specific forms of face-to-face and social media interactions discipline participants to accept the existing group ethos as an authoritative text. This section adds precision to the communicative elements that scale up to form an authoritative text and discipline members. Last, I detail how authoritative deficiencies text leads to three challenges to the collective’s organizing ability. The discussion ties together the findings of all three themes as well as details theoretical contributions to Montreal school CCO theory and organizational communication more broadly.

Emergence of Authoritative Text

In this loosely structured volunteer collective, the group ethos functions as an authoritative text guiding activity. The group ethos is best summarized by the phrase “no dig, no ride.” No dig, no ride is a textual abstraction upholding an ethos that if you ride the jumps then you need to help maintain or build the jumps. The original conversations that generated no dig, no ride have long vanished as the phrase gained distance over the years. This figurative text becomes concrete when transformed into stickers, hashtags, and other stable forms (See Image 3). I argue for a group ethos as the authoritative text because it is not “unitary” or “monolithic,” rather, this text is a “network of meaning” (Kuhn, 2008, p. 1235) subject to a dominant reading. Although data do not reveal an original conversation that generated no dig, no ride, two communicative elements within the conversation/text dialectic reinforce the overall group ethos: repetitive stories and labor analogies.

Scaling Up Repetitive Stories

Stories are often repeated across dirt jump locations. In one story, a BMX rider was ostracized from the Texano and 18^th Street jumps based on a January 2015 event. The Texano builders strung a chain on across the trails to prevent people from riding the course in adverse weather. During a 2017 interview, Mark (all names are pseudonyms) recalled:

This guy, [name], says ‘Well, screw you. I wanna come out here and ride. This isn’t your property. You can’t chain up the trails.’ And they’re like, ‘Well, screw you. You’ve never lifted one shovel out here. Who gives you the right to tell us shit?’

Interestingly, other riders were aware of the story, but unaware of the particulars of what happened. In one version, the outcasted rider was operating a business of teaching BMX lessons to children at the park. Nora recalled, “there was someone there trying to get in there to teach lessons, which you also need a permit for, and it was just like, ‘Hey, man. You didn’t dig here. What are you doing trying to teach lessons here on our jumps?’” Nora clarified that ordinarily this likely would not be a problem, but this rider did not contribute or teach the kids how to fix the jumps. In another version of the story, the outcasted rider informed the city about the illegal status of the trails, putting their continued existence into jeopardy.

During one observation session, I witnessed a rider get into an angry verbal exchange with a remote control (RC) car hobbyist who was driving his RC car on freshly surfaced jumps. Not wanting the RC car’s wheels to destroy the smooth jump face, or for a bike and RC car to collide, a BMX rider politely asked the RC driver not to use his car in the park. The RC driver refused, claiming the jump site was a public park and he could do whatever he liked—which led to an argument. The story of the argument was recounted at the different sites, with the dominant reading that the RC drivers do not contribute to the jumps and therefore should not be using the space in a destructive manner. In another story, two riders got into a fistfight, and one threw a bicycle at the other. Particulars of the story are vague, but the conflict started after one rider suggested to another to ‘pick up a shovel some time’—insinuating the rider was not contributing to the jumps.

The common underlying theme of the stories is that conflicts stemmed from a perceived, or real, lack of contribution (i.e., digging) at the sites. As is the case with distanciation, “the textual outcomes of interaction are inevitably generalized and simplified” (Koschmann & Burk, 2016, p. 398), meaning the specifics of each conflict are less important than the fact that the narratives reinforce the group ethos of contribution. One could consider the original 2015 dispute between the ostracized rider and the trail builders as the original “conversation.” This conversation generated a “text” that scaled up to the point where it is still referenced years later.

Labor Analogies

Across both in-person and online interactions, I witnessed individuals make joking statements that attempted to discursively position their contributions, not as a simple hobby or pastime, but as hard work. I label these statements as labor analogies. For example, during an observation session, members of the collective often joked about submitting time sheets or having a fictional ‘lip license.’ A lip is the smooth face of a takeoff jump that requires some skill to perfectly craft. Hogan explained, “The term is, ‘Do you have a lip license?’ That’s, kind of, the in-joke’s like, ‘Where’s your lip license at?’” In one social media post (see Image 4) an individual posted the details of a group workday at the local trails. In this string of interaction, one rider commented about not needing a ‘lip license’ whereas another stated “Remember to clock in everybody. I heard we’re getting paid overtime”—the joke of course being that no one is paid for their labor or required to possess a certification to work on the jumps. Joking about submitting a time sheet, clocking in, and razzing others for not having a ‘lip license’ likens their volunteer contributions to more structured forms of labor. In further validation of the repetitive stories theme, Mark used a labor analogy in talking about the story of a rider who charged kids fees for BMX lessons at the jumps:

It’s just kind of a kick in the nuts when you’re working all the time, and someone shows up, and they’re not cool to you…there was the fact of, “Dude, you’re using our free volunteer labor to make yourself money, and you’re not clocking in, and you’re not on the same level.”

The above example shows how Mark uses the labor analogy of being ‘clocked in’ to illustrate one of the repetitive stories. I argue the labor analogies are a discursive move meant to characterize their participation and contributions as hard work. Conversing about participation in this way reaffirms to others that nothing comes free and it requires arduous physical efforts to sustain the space. In the discussion, I return to the theoretical foundations of coorientation, and argue these are a special type of speech act (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1979) yet to be theorized in the constitution of authoritative texts—indirect directives. Taken together, repetitive stories and labor analogies build a group ethos of no dig, no ride that becomes an authoritative text. Each is recursive in that every time they are mobilized they reinforce the ethos valuing contribution to the collective effort.

Disciplining

Sweeping and watering the jumps are crucial for prolonging the course. Jared explains, “You don’t want to show up and dry ride a spot, which means just riding it dry where there’s no water, no moisture. Things are just gonna crumble. Things are just gonna fall apart.” Watering the jumps before riding is the ideal, but individuals often rode when it was dry (either intentionally or from lack of knowledge of proper riding etiquette). Chris explained, “if you show up at the trails, and they’re cracked and crumbling, and you start riding before sweeping, or watering, that’s typically how you get the name ‘dry guy.’” The dry guy label is used disparagingly against someone who does not contribute even though they know they should. As Patrick said, “To me, that’s the worst word you can call somebody. They know what it takes but they’re doing it, they’re hitting up a spot” without watering and sweeping.

The phrase disciplines others by enforcing the group ethos of no dig, no ride. Taken at face value, it may seem as if the dry guy label is a straightforward insult meant to induce behavior change against someone breaching social etiquette. However, throughout my observations, interviews, and field notes, I did not encounter specific instances of one person calling another a dry guy to shame or pressure them into contributing. Although behaviors considered as worthy of earning the nickname dry guy often occurred, participants did not directly chastise or confront that person. Occasionally, social media posts were shared threatening (See Image 5) to “openly call you out” on being a dry guy, but based on my field notes and observations, these sorts of interactions did not occur. Instead, the dry guy label is used to setup a figurative, to borrow a term from professional wrestling, ‘heel’ character that everyone in the community could recognize as breaching social norms of the collective. The ‘heel’ character in professional wrestling plays the villain in a match, often acting immorally, breaking rules, cheating, employing dirty tactics (e.g., eye pokes), and insulting the audience. When people were called a dry guy, it was done in an ironic or humorous way. For instance, one rider might jokingly call another a dry guy for taking a break to ride, even though the two of them just spent several hours digging drainage for the jumps. The communicative disciplining to accept the authoritative text does not happen through direct and outright name calling, rather, the figurative dry guy label looms as a threatening nickname one does not want to earn.

Organizing Implications of an Imperfect Authoritative Text

This authoritative text is both ambiguous and paradoxical. The short pithy nature of this text permits easy scaling up and travel across sites, yet these same characteristics lead to conflict within the sites. For example, the use of no dig, no ride varied among participants. Penn related his interpretation:

No dig, no ride means you don’t just show up at the trails and ride and then take off again. Sweep, clean up a little bit, do something – make an effort. Everybody that’s going to the trails, that’s doing maintenance on the trails – nobody’s getting paid for it. So, for somebody just to show up and just not pitch in somehow is disrespectful.

Penn’s version of the authoritative text emphasizes varied forms of contribution as preferential. However, the short quip of no dig, no ride does not specify this. As the initial conversations that generated no dig, no ride scaled up through the “degrees of separation” (Taylor, et al., 1996) one sees that “specificity is abandoned in favor of generality” (p. 26). The authoritative text does not specify a person should sprinkle a small amount of water onto the jump face, fill a wheelbarrow with fresh soil, spread a light layer of fine dirt particles on the jump face, and then patch cracks in the jumps. Instead, the authoritative text generalizes digging as the preferred contribution. Some participants, like Mark, have begun to realize the paradoxical nature of no dig, no ride:

The thing is, I’ve realized this over the years, and I think everyone else has, too: You don’t want everyone digging. The guys that are Dry Guys may be Dry Guys for a reason. They don’t know what the fuck they’re doing with a shovel.

Carl also acknowledged the text may not actually mean everyone should dig, “That whole BMX trails exploit, of ‘no dig, no ride’ is more complicated than that, right? Because, they [trail builders] don’t actually want anybody digging – or everybody digging” [emphasis added]. Patrick also cautioned against having anyone dig, “You don’t want somebody that definitely doesn’t know what they’re doing trying to make a jump… there’s people that they have no business even working with a broom or shovel.”

I consider this an imperfect authoritative text for two reasons. First, the same thing making the authoritative text successful and capable of transcending the local, such as its ambiguity and short, pithy, repeatable form can lead to conflict within the sites. Second, some riders interpret and use no dig, no ride in a way that runs counter to the phrase. They do not actually want people to dig on their jumps. This imperfect authoritative text guides activity in jump sites with differing features, practices of work, and environmental constraints— even if those sites are not amenable to everyone digging. Next, I explain the three main implications of this imperfect authoritative text.

Implication One: Obligation but Not Competency

The authoritative text succeeds in obligating people to contribute, but fails to specify the exact nature of how to carry out contributions. No dig, no ride suggests contributing through digging, but does not precisely indicate when, where, or how to dig. This lack of specificity, combined with the obligation produced by the authoritative text, perpetuates conflict. Individuals who feel obligated to participate, but lack knowledge of how to dig properly or where to direct their efforts, often end up damaging existing jumps. For instance, many community members reacted negatively after a rider altered an existing jump by making it smaller. One rider commented on a photo of the altered jump, stating “if the reason I quit digging at [location] was a picture.” In other cases, riders possess knowledge and skills of how to dig, but hold competing ideas over how steep a jump should be or how far apart jumps should be spaced. Dina recalled, “there might be spats here and there between people, or someone says, ‘someone changed this jump and we’re gonna change it back!’ Sometimes people do stuff that other people aren’t too stoked on.” Mark commented that often well-intentioned contributions end up disrupting the flow of beginner jumps:

Usually [beginner jumps], that involves no gaps, and more mellow lips. And, along come somebody, like, ‘Man, I’m gonna fix this up!’ So, they’ll change it into a gap, or something. So, that’s your first classic conflict. Or, making a lip really steep, and tall, that people aren’t comfortable with.

As Mark detailed, one person’s idea of “fixing something up” and improving a jump may not align with the greater community’s vision. Although the authoritative text of no dig, no ride obligates participants to contribute, it is not specific enough to spell out exactly how one should contribute. As a result, individuals often contribute at sporadic times, alter existing jumps in undesirable ways, and build jumps without being in tune with what other builders are trying to achieve. In other words, the ambiguity and paradoxical nature of the authoritative text reinforces and perpetuates conflict within the space.

Implication Two: Energizing the Base

Borrowing a term from the arena of politics, “energizing the base” refers to a politician’s ability to instill fervor and zeal into already committed members of a political party—as opposed to persuading new individuals to join the party. The authoritative text is only reaching people who already know how to carry out activities in the space thus energizing the base of committed participants. As Hogan claimed, “most of the people that spend any time at some trails, you figure them out, you’ve already got that general sense of, ‘Alright, keep the place clean. Work on this when it needs it.’” One participant commented that much of the destruction of the site is caused by people who do not know the group ethos, “like, people that don’t know, just kids that always ride through the mud that don’t know better. They think they’re having fun, but they’re really just getting us to work later.” Similarly, participants frequently bemoaned the tourists on rental electric scooters and bicycles who rode on the jumps when they were too wet, causing ruts and damaging the track.

Observations revealed many visitors to the site, whether parents of small children or electric scooter riders, are unaware the informal group and the no dig, no ride ethos. Thus, individuals who would most benefit by learning of and abiding by the authoritative text are not part of the conversation/text dialectic perpetuating the authoritative text. To illustrate, Nora claimed, “Not everyone that knows how to fix a jump is gonna be around when these kids show up that don’t have the experience or know what to do.” In essence, the authoritative text is caught in an echo chamber, energizing the base of participants already committed to making contributions while failing to reach newcomers and individuals who damage the jumps.

Implication Three: Ideals of Participation Impede Participation

Opposite the ‘obligation but not competency’ implication, some individuals possess the knowledge and skill of dirt jump maintenance. However, an unintended consequence of this authoritative text is that it instills in some riders a feeling they must contribute fully or not participate at all. Leon has two small children, a full-time job, and recently started his own dirt jump spot close to his house. When discussing his trips to other jumps, he recalled:

A few times, I’ve wanted to go ride somewhere and I feel like – I mentioned my limited schedule—I kind of feel that if I don’t go and put time in digging, I feel guilty going to ride because I kind of feel like I’m not pulling my weight.

Consequently, Leon did not visit dirt jump locations unless he had hours to spend digging at the sites. Although a mere 10 minutes of watering or sweeping and 20 minutes of riding would be a beneficial contribution, he often chose not to venture to other dirt jumps because he could not commit to full participation. Patrick reflected on the group ethos, “I think that might be a bad… but I think a lot of people get that in their mind [no dig/no ride] and they’re like – it makes them nervous to even come out here.” The implication of this authoritative text is that it upholds fully committed participation (i.e., digging) as the singular ideal, while ignoring the also helpful smaller sporadic contributions (e.g., trimming weeds, picking up trash, sweeping).

Discussion

Findings contribute to organizational theory in three ways; (a) by extending the authoritative text concept beyond conventional organizing to include partial, emergent, and fluid organizing, (b) by empirically demonstrating how these texts form and detailing theoretical differences in the coorientation process among this community, and (c) providing theoretical precision as to how authoritative texts discipline. In the following discussion, I unpack how each finding contributes to authoritative text and Montreal school CCO perspectives and briefly touch on implications for organizational communication theory more generally. The article concludes by noting limitations and outlining future areas of study.

Coorientation in Fluid Collectives

The first research question sought to discover how authority is socially constructed among a fluid volunteer collective. The fluidity of the collective and its lack of conventional organizational structure requires additional theorizing of the coorientation process as it relates to authoritative text scaling.

The first sticking point of existing theory is the role of power, convention, and structure—often enabled by the formal nature of the organizations under study. For example, drawing on ideas from Greimas (1987) and Searle’s (1979) speech act theory, Taylor et al. (1996) explain a state of affairs will exist in “potentiality” (p. 18), or a virtual state of existence, until the “desire, obligation, knowledge, or skill” of a competent agent is directed to fulfill a task that will bring the uncertain state into actuality. For instance, a university dean may direct an assistant to finalize the yearly budget. The budget exists in potentiality until the interaction triggers the assistant to complete the task. The employee likely possesses the knowledge and skill (i.e., competencies) to complete the task, however the dean’s request triggers the assistant’s willingness or intention. In Austin’s (1962) speech act terms, the request is “satisfied” when the assistant completes the task, or in Montreal school CCO terms, actions become “imbricated” (Taylor & Van Every, 2011), or embedded within one another creating “hierarchization” effects (Cooren & Seidl, 2022). Usually, directives, assertives, commissives and so forth accomplish this coorientation because they have “illocutionary force” often granted through status positions of the speaker or “extra-linguistic institutions” (e.g., court of law; Searle, 1979). Relatedly, for Montreal scholars, the triadic relationship of person A relating to person B in pursuit of shared X (i.e., A-B-X systems) places organization, or X, in a role of “thirdness” where people co-orient to some shared objective. Indeed, research has shown how authoritative texts emerge as “collective identity” (Koschmann, 2013) or “a conception of the ‘we’” (Kuhn, 2017, p. 20), meaning some form of shared identity is important in coorientation.

Contrasting and extending existing research, this study shows how an authoritative text forms and disciplines without coalescing to the level of collective identity or a shared “conception of the ‘we’” or relying on formal organizing conventions. No dig, no ride functions as an authoritative text, but does not specify a collective identity. Rather, the authoritative text focuses on desired behaviors of individuals instead of shared identity. To be clear, participants expressed belonging and used ‘we’ or ‘us’ statements, but the statements referred to a small crew of friends and not an overarching organizational identity. The group ethos of no dig, no ride is “translating the one back into the many” (Brummans et al., 2014, p. 181) when individuals align practice with the text. Further, the communicative building blocks of coorientation differ. Speech acts cannot rely on the “additional punch” of illocutionary force from an “authentic agent of the organization” (Taylor et al., 1996) or “extra-linguistic institutions” when status differences, institutions, or organizational “thirdness” are absent or not fully apparent. Instead, this study reveals how indirect directives are a type of speech act that has not been empirically linked to coorientation processes. What may appear as a clear directive (e.g., submit your time sheet, remember to clock in) with a world-to-words fit, is actually an indirect directive. Searle (1979) explains that speech acts can be indirect when “the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says” (p. 31). Thus, the ulterior illocutionary point of labor analogies is for others to recognize construction and maintenance of the jumps requires hard physical labor and honed skills— things typically associated with paid employment. Although associations with paid labor appear as a simple directive (e.g., bring a lip license), because there are no ‘lip licenses’ or ‘time clocks,’ they are actually indirect directives using humor to convince and remind others of the hard work needed to sustain the jumps.

A corollary of the lack of structure is that for informal collectives it may not be as simple as triggering willingness or intention through speech acts to bring a potential or “virtual” (Taylor et al., 1996) state of affairs into existence if the possible contributor does not possess the knowledge or skill for how to craft a dirt jump. Because there is no screening process, tryout, or employer/employee contract, one cannot assume interested parties possess the requisite competencies to build or maintain dirt jumps. When specificity is abandoned in favor of generality, it also may not allow for easy absorption of newcomers into the collective. Because the authoritative text is not readily apparent to beginners and does not provide specific guidelines, newcomers might struggle finding ways to meaningfully contribute to the collective. The authoritative text does not reach the people who most need to abide by it, such as newcomers and those who damage the track, further illustrating the challenge of communicatively enacting authority in fluid organizing.

Collectively viewing these unintended effects (e.g., restricting newcomers, impeding participation, perpetuating conflict) lends further empirical support to the ventriloqual nature of communication (Cooren, 2010) and Cooren’s (2004) claim that texts can sever themselves from their original circumstances and “act” in unanticipated ways. A “mutual ventriloquation” (Cooren et al., 2022) occurs when people make the authoritative text say certain things through them (i.e., ventriloquize), but those hearing or observing the authoritative text are also part of the ventriloquism in that they may interpret the text in a way that counters the original speaker’s intent. That is, those interpreting the text also ventriloquize it by making the text say something else. The authoritative text no dig, no ride could have the unintended effect of making newcomers feel unwelcome in the space and creating a sense of obligation preventing committed individuals from making smaller contributions.

Prior research suggests authoritative texts can be “de-authored” (Koschmann & Burk, 2016, p. 410), by linking the text back to the original circumstances that created it, or by continually associating the text with another physical location. More precisely, undoing the “vanishing act” by revealing the original authorship of the text, or linking the text to a different time and place will de-legitimize the text’s authority. This study suggests it may not be possible to “de-author” the authoritative text of no dig, no ride because the original conversations are impossible to track down. However, Koschmann and Burk’s idea of continually linking an authoritative text to a specific location to de-author a text may hold promise for volunteer groups. As members of the collective construct new dirt jump spaces, they could associate no dig, no ride with other dysfunctional locations and craft their own authoritative text as they see fit.

The Disciplining Function of Authoritative Texts

The second research question sought to uncover more precise explanations for how authoritative texts discipline. Kuhn (2008) claims authoritative texts discipline by portraying certain actions or knowledge as “(in)appropriate and (un)desirable” (p. 1236). In conventional settings, elements of coorientation detailed earlier, such as illocutionary force, imbrication, defined roles, a clear vision of the organization, are likely helping the authoritative text discipline. For instance, Kuhn states that discipline occurs by encouraging actors to subordinate personal interests to the collective good (2008, p. 1236) or getting people’s practices to align with “the narrative of the ‘we’” (2017, p. 20). In other words, in traditional organizations the authoritative text defines what the firm is trying to achieve, and individuals align their actions to meet those goals. Most studies of authoritative texts treat discipline as an implicit part of authoritative texts without unpacking the communicative elements playing a role in disciplining.

This study adds more precision to how discipline occurs. Rather than a clear authoritative text disciplining actors, multiple texts exist alongside one another and work together to achieve discipline. I argue a concept Kuhn (2008) originally detailed, although rarely explored in empirical depth, is key to discipline—intertextuality. Kuhn used intertextuality, where texts “construct ‘potent’ networks of other texts around them” (p. 1237) to explain how an organization’s authoritative text is altered when contacting other stakeholders and organizations. I argue that intertextuality is more than an explanation for interfirm relationships, it is also an important explanation for how authoritative texts discipline in fluid organizing. It is not that a singular authoritative text disciplines by creating a stable “narrative of the we,” and it is not an authority reliant upon conventional organizational structures and power relationships, rather, the threat of becoming the heel character in the community disciplines people to abide by the group ethos. No dig, no ride exists alongside the figurative dry guy text. The two are intertextually related because together they reinforce one another and ultimately discipline.

The organizing evident in this article lends additional credence to Cruz and Sodeke’s (2021) claim that liquid organizing “challenge[s] the usual assumptions regarding the prerequisites for organizing to take place” (p. 540)—mainly the necessity of hierarchy, stable structure, and formally possessed authority. Looking collectively at the findings, Kuhn’s concept facilitated theorizing organizing processes in absence of conventional structural elements. Although lacking meetings, defined power relations, leadership, contracts, hierarchy, buildings—any number of conventional organizational elements—findings show how repetitive stories and labor analogies are part of the communicative coorientation process giving rise to an imperfect authoritative text guiding practice and facilitating organizing. Thus, this article extends the authoritative text concept to fluid organizing contexts and provides more theoretical precision to explain how texts form and discipline.

Beyond the two main theoretical contributions to authoritative text research, other findings, while not the central focus of this study, are relevant to adjacent areas of organizational communication research. In what follows, I discuss connections to (dis)organizing scholarship, breaching in narratives, and highlight interesting areas for future study.

Conclusion and Future Directions

The finding that the authoritative text produces an obligation but not competency to contribute lends empirical weight to prior claims of the (dis)ordering function of texts. Vasquez et al. (2016) suggest multiple possible interpretations of texts mean they are “functioning not only as ordering devices, but also—and simultaneously—as disordering devices” (p. 635). The authoritative texts in this study scaled up through the degrees of separation, but never quite coalesced into a complete definitive vision of the organization. Instead, texts circulate that work reasonably well enough, evidenced by the fact that the jump site has existed since the early 90s. On one hand, imperfect authoritative texts order when people are disciplined to contribute. On the other hand, texts also disorder when they perpetuate conflict in the site. It may be the case that, in fluid, partial, or emergent forms of organizing, textual outcomes may be related more to long term stability than short term efficiency. To wit, coorientation processes of conventional organizations seek to produce authoritative texts that get people efficiently working toward the same goal. Conversely, in fluid collectives the most useful, or most likely to scale up authoritative text, may be a text providing long term stability over short term efficiency. A more specific authoritative text could provide more efficiency in day-to-day organizing, but flaws and all, the imperfect authoritative text has worked well enough to provide long term stability—further illustrating the (dis)ordering character of texts.

The idea that stories contribute to an authoritative text bears semblance to research on narrative. Bruner (1991) claims that for a narrative to be worth telling it must concern how “an implicit canonical script has been breached” (p. 11). Canonical scripts are “often highly conventional” (p. 12), and the breach represents a moral or ethical violation of the convention, such as a partner cheating on a spouse or an innocent person wrongly accused or fleeced. In this study, the “canonical script” is the authoritative text of no dig, no ride. However, there are two interesting caveats related to stories in this fluid collective. First, a dominant reading of the events of the story emerged, despite several members of the collective lacking clear factual details about the story, thus story details may not always impact a story’s ability to scale up and reinforce an authoritative text. Second, the ethos of participation may not be at the level of widely accepted canon among the wider community. A simple “canonical script” in Bruner’s terms might be the script used to order a meal at a restaurant, something most people understand as having a proper procedure for conduct. Alternatively, the process of building and maintaining dirt jumps does not have a “canonical script” easily accessible by most people. In keeping with the “energizing the base” finding, people unfamiliar with the group ethos, hence, unfamiliar with the “culturally defined situation” (Bruner, 1991, p. 11), may not understand that a script was normatively breached and are accordingly not disciplined by the text.

A unique aspect of this research is that it tracks development of an authoritative text over an extended time frame. For instance, observations span 4 years—enough time to witness the unfolding of stories and their eventual scaling up to reinforce the authoritative text. Whereas studying the development of authoritative texts over time is important, it is worth considering the minimum length of time necessary for authoritative text emergence. To illustrate, in time critical situations where disparate individuals and organizations come together to coordinate activity (e.g., rescue operations, widespread natural disaster response) will authoritative texts emerge to help them coordinate? Also worth questioning is whether an authoritative text emerging in these contexts would scale all the way up to the sixth degree of separation given the rapidly formed and short-lived nature of this form of organizing. Although texts may not reach higher degrees of separation, it is still worth studying the initial emergence of the texts—especially considering other forms of control are lacking in those emergent events.

It is important to recognize that although multiple sources of authority exist within social contexts, this article is exploring textual authority. Although the CCO perspective tends to stray away from viewing authority as vested solely within the agent, certain individuals in this social scene exhibit more influence than others. In fluid collectives where an authoritative text does not coalesce to the level of collective identity, future research could investigate the individual’s underlying motives for employing texts with an eye toward legitimacy concerns, authority, or emergent leadership. This is not arguing authority is solely within the person, rather future work could tease out how authority is shared between various agents, whether human or other-than-human.

Introducing this work, I highlighted that Kuhn’s (2008) authoritative text theorizing is built upon a bedrock of formal organizing. Pointing this out is not meant as a critique. Over a decade of research illustrates the explanatory power of authoritative texts in the communicative constitution of conventional organizations. Readers should bear in mind this study departs from Kuhn’s original work by not focusing on interorganizational relations or games of marshaling consent and attracting capital and perhaps extends the concept beyond the author’s original intention. Nevertheless, this study speaks to the power and staying capacity of Kuhn’s work by showing that the concept can be applied and refined in more diverse forms of organizing.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - “No dig, No Ride”: The Communicative Constitution and Consequences of Imperfect Authoritative Texts in Fluid Collective Organizing

Supplemental Material for “No dig, No Ride”: The Communicative Constitution and Consequences of Imperfect Authoritative Texts in Fluid Collective Organizing by William Roth Smith in Management Communication Quarterly