Although the question whether organisation obstructs or supports social movement claims and mobilisation has long been debated, it is undeniable that some level of organisation exists in even the most radically horizontal social movements. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to how movements operate in dealing with the tensions associated with the question of organisation, that is, how they seek to be effective in decision-making while maintaining or advancing inclusivity and participation. This chapter presents an analysis of the organising efforts of a timebank. With a particular focus on the production of organisation, we illustrate how a group vested on the idea of horizontal, non-hierarchical collective action is dealing with the coordination and decision-making challenges they meet over time.

This chapter is concerned with further advancing a process perspective on partial organization. More specifically, we address the question of how the different organizational elements of partial organization (i.e. membership, hierarchy, rules, monitoring, and sanctions) interrelate dynamically. Based on the emerging ‘communication as constitutive of organization’ (CCO) perspective in organization studies, we argue that social collectives can alternate between states of organizational ‘partialness’ and ‘completeness’ over time. The temporary and situational completion of partial organization can occur in and through communicative events that demonstrate and ‘celebrate’ a social collective’s ability to mobilize all five elements simultaneously. We illustrate our theoretical considerations by drawing on selected findings from an earlier empirical case study of the hacktivist collective Anonymous.