r/place A fruit fly for organization science

out/literature-C3.md

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Literature, stage C3: the model read against the explanation shelf

This file holds what the literature did to the model, leg by leg. The model is stage C2's resting state, pass 5 (model-p5.md). The notes and the record of each step are in notes-C3.md and the diary.

How claims about the literature are marked. verified: I opened the work on the shelf in this session and quote it, with the page the extraction names. recalled: I am working from memory, with author, year and the claim I attribute, so a reader can check it. The read tier was served whole this leg: Puranam, Alexy and Reitzig (2014); Felin and Zenger (2016, the SSRN manuscript, pages the manuscript's); Felin and Zenger (2017); O'Mahony and Ferraro (2007); Bechky (2006); March (1991). Nothing on the on-request tier was served.

What the read log can and cannot show. _mem_reads-C3.jsonl and _cite_reads-C3.jsonl record what was served, not why. They cannot tell a check of a quote or a count from an abductive read I failed to log. Each abductive read of this stage is listed below with the diary line logged before it ran. The other room reads of this leg were checks of instances the model already cites.

Leg 1 (C3a): work that contradicts the model

Four works contradict the model, or explain its phenomenon with something it did not use. For each: the two claims, what in the record decides between them, which of three things is true (the accounts disagree about the world, about the setting, or are about different things), and whose claim the disagreement bounds.

O'Mahony and Ferraro (2007): a shared basis of authority (verified)

Bechky (2006): role-based coordination in temporary organizations (verified)

Felin and Zenger (2016; 2017): the theory-based view (verified)

Olson (1965): collective action without selective incentives (recalled)

Works read and not taken as contradictions

The abductive reads of this leg

  1. Prompted by O'Mahony and Ferraro (2007). Logged before it ran (mem.py log --kind abductive, C3a). It looked for whether decided order gathers in rooms that rule on other rooms' works, held to room size (out/_analysis/c3a_decided_order_split.py, output c3a_decided_order_split.txt). It bounded F-006 (a superseding line with literature, abductive: true and prompted_by) and wrote a C01 line in model/history.jsonl with the same flags. No element statement, arrow or tier changed. Move: relating or contrasting, snapped as C3-move-relating-48.

The read also surfaced one turn I did not act on: "jiAPggk+x8m5bwxd/l61z1oUQxA= was a fellow comrade during the button. He is a very good choice for this role!" [PurplePixels/c0165, h23.72]. It names a tie from an event before the canvas. The model states colour factions as bodies the canvas gathered, whose faith is not a tie from before the canvas. One turn does not change that, but it is a doubt carried to the next legs.

Switch records

None. F-006 rested on a count across rooms and still does; the bound is another count across rooms. No name moved from the participants' words to the literature's, and no claim moved between the rooms' words and a pattern across rooms.

Leg 2 (C3b): work that resembles the model

Distant fields, and the mechanisms (section 4a)

The arrows whose mechanisms were hardest to write are the ones resting least on a count. Two are theorised: the template settling a design (A11) and the one-line answer to a call (A12). Four are thin: the settled border (A05), the move after doubt (A10), help along a border (A14) and coalitions (A19). One is partly constitutive: the refusal of an attack call (A16). For each, I asked what literature outside organization studies describes the same move. All six distant works below are recalled: none is on the shelf.

Conversation analysis: the one distant field that supplied a mechanism. I believe Schegloff and Sacks (1973) set out the adjacency pair: a first part, such as an invitation or a request, makes a fitting second part the next thing due. I believe Pomerantz (1984) and Levinson (1983) set out preference organization: acceptance is the preferred second and comes bare, refusal the dispreferred one and comes marked, often with an account.

Threshold models of collective behaviour. I believe Granovetter (1978) holds that each person acts once enough others have, so that a crowd's outcome turns on the spread of thresholds and on people seeing how many have acted. structure.md already names this as what Critical mass may be mistaken for.

Behavioural ecology: the "dear enemy" effect. I believe Fisher (1954) named it and Temeles (1994) reviewed it: a territory holder that has settled a boundary is less aggressive toward its established neighbour than toward strangers, because the neighbour no longer threatens the territory and contesting again costs more than it gains.

Social psychology: superordinate goals. I believe Sherif (1958), and Sherif and colleagues' Robbers Cave study (1961), hold that a goal neither of two rival groups can reach alone turns them to cooperation and lowers their hostility. Walt's (1987) balance of threat in international relations says much the same of alliances.

Game theory: focal points. I believe Schelling (1960) holds that in tacit coordination people converge on the option they expect others to expect. I also believe, but cannot verify here, that he held a suggestion can make an option focal.

Animal contests: the war of attrition. I believe Maynard Smith (1974) holds that a contestant gives up when its costs pass what the resource is worth to it.

The resembling works on the shelf (verified)

The concept (section 4b)

The one-line enrolment is a relabelling. Its form is conversation analysis's preferred acceptance (recalled), and the account asymmetry held where tested (F-014). Its claimed function, the replies as the room's head count, failed its test (F-015, weak). It is renamed as borrowed, "the preferred acceptance". What the material adds is a setting: written, public, given by a stranger to a stranger's call to labour.

The nearest three short of that name:

The verdict sits close to the third outcome, a relabelling that adds nothing. Stage C5's propositions should not lean on a named concept. concept-C3.md is written whole, and concept.md stands.

Declarations amended (section 6)

Each is a tier_history.jsonl line with the old line as was, move relating or contrasting, snapped as C3-move-relating-49. No fourth-order theme or dimension was renamed, and the third-order themes keep their descriptive names. structure-C3.md carries both amendments.

The abductive reads of this leg

Each was logged before it ran (mem.py log --kind abductive, C3b). 2. Prompted by conversation analysis (Schegloff and Sacks 1973; Pomerantz 1984; Levinson 1983; recalled).

  1. Prompted by threshold models (Granovetter 1978; recalled).
    • What it looked at: the first turn on the doubt-about-numbers theme in 40 seeded rooms, read whole under rules written first (c3b_threshold_sample.py, c3b_threshold_codes.json).
    • What it changed: F-015 written; the concept's head-count claim dropped.
    • What it showed beyond its question: a ground the rules did not foresee, the readership's size, coded apart.

Reads declined, each with its reason above: the dear enemy effect (A05), superordinate goals (A19), focal points (A11), the war of attrition (A10).

Switch record: the concept

Leg 3 (C3c): the four universal problems, put to the structure

The claim. Puranam, Alexy and Reitzig (2014, verified) hold that any organization must solve task division, task allocation, reward provision and information provision. Solutions to the four are "individually necessary and collectively sufficient" (p. 166), and a form of organizing is defined by its set of solutions to them (p. 166). Their definition of an organization assumes a multiagent system with "identifiable boundaries" and goals at the level of the system (pp. 163, 166).

How it was put. The claim was put to the structure and the model as they stood at the C3b close. Nothing was revised to fit it. The one written operation is mapping-C3.jsonl: one line per fourth-order theme, mapped to one problem or to none, with a clause of why. Each mapped line says what this material's version of the problem cannot do. Each unmapped line names the test it meets. c3c_mapping_check.py checks the file against the tier and counts the rooms per problem.

The result in one line. Nine of 28 fourth-order themes map to one of the four, and 19 do not (F-016).

Every count here is of rooms whose coded talk sits under a theme. It is not a count of rooms that solved a problem.

The reads of this leg. All room reads of this leg were counts through mem.py rooms and mem.py codes, and quotes served through cite.py. None added or changed a theme, an arrow or an element. The goal counts answer the stage's own question (section 5) and wrote F-017 with Felin and Zenger as its literature. I did not log them as abductive, because they are the stage's design and changed nothing in the structure or the model. A reader who counts every read a paper prompted as abductive should read F-017 as one.

Two themes answer by construction

Two fourth-order themes already carry one of the four's names under their declarations.

1. What I expected

prior.md does not name the four problems. The substitution held (notes-C3.md). Its kinds and its refusals still speak to each problem.

What turned up only where the material was thin. Division among teams (5 rooms), elections (2), prizes (7) and timing a mass placement together (2). Each is a textbook solution to one of the four, and each is a rare-tier theme.

What prior.md holds that the structure has no room for. Its first refusal: "Deliberation off the record ... the material will give only 'a decision returned from a venue'." The structure holds the venue and the decision returned. It has no theme for how a venue divided or allocated the work.

2. What in the structure speaks to the claim

The next table lists the nine mapped fourth-order themes. For each it gives the problem, the rooms carrying any member, the largest member, rule 5's gate for its members, and who put it there. Every member's gate is all (every room had the opportunity), except Attribution's, whose gate is work (the room had a work of its own). The gates and counts are read from structure-C3.md by c3c_rule5_members.py.

Fourth-order theme Problem Rooms of 705 Largest member (rooms) Gate Put there by
Standardization of output (T4-008) division 237 sharing coordinates, templates and how-to (207) all the material: a template is the frame's own kind of division artifact (p. 165)
Mobilization (T4-005) allocation 370 calling members in to place (345) all its declaration, by construction
Decided order (T4-011) allocation 46 putting decisions to a vote (18) all me: the theme holds the rooms' rare decided elements, and allocation is one of them beside oaths and excluding vandals
Completion ritual (T4-026) reward 522 celebrating the finished work (442) all its declaration, by construction, against prior.md
Visibility returns (T4-025) reward 117 recruiting canvas visitors (76) all me: the return goes to the room, not to a member
Sensemaking (T4-003) information 283 explaining what the canvas is (232) all the material
Stigmergy (T4-007) information 348 building and reporting the mark (237) all the material; the frame names the product as "its own representation" (p. 172)
Backstage decision-making (T4-010) information 276 moving planning into a chat (263) all the material
Attribution (T4-019) information 155 tracing who changed the work (119) work me: it tells the room about a change, after the work exists

Three of the nine mappings are mine more than the material's: Decided order, Visibility returns and Attribution. Two rest on declarations I wrote at C1: Mobilization and Completion ritual.

3. What the structure carries that the claim has no place for

The remainder is 19 fourth-order themes. Each was tested as a different mechanism, a renamed instance, a change of level or an evidence gap. The test is in each line of mapping-C3.jsonl.

Why it extends the framework. There are two extensions, each specific enough to be wrong.

prior.md's forms already differed "in where the work was coordinated and on whose terms the room held its space". The first half is the four problems. The second half lies between rooms.

4. Which of the four the structure reaches richly, thinly, or not at all

Where each limit lies. For allocation and information, in the material: chats are off the record. For reward, in the rooms, as I read it above. In the coders' selection, any assignment or offer made in a thread would have been coded, since both move the work. In my own pruning: prize-giving sits in Completion ritual, one member of eight, and two rare-tier themes have no rooms in the store (recruiting quietly to avoid attackers; moderators disowning the canvas work).

Stage E1 inherits this paragraph. These rooms were seen to solve information and to allocate by self-selection. They were seen rarely to assign, and rarely to offer a reward before the work. What a chat decided, they were not seen at all.

5. The goal

Where the making of a goal sits.

No theme or dimension gathers the goal as such. That is a finding about the structure: the goal is scattered across five themes, because it was never a code's object.

Whether the rooms inherited, negotiated, contested or changed it (F-017; modes placed by me from the third-order themes' names, counted by c3c_goal_counts.py):

The modes overlap: 49 rooms both inherit and negotiate, and 93 both negotiate and change. 515 rooms carry at least one of the four modes.

Against Felin and Zenger. Their chosen problem rests on an actor's contrarian theory (2017, p. 258). Here the problem was mostly inherited, and the solution negotiated. The room already had its sign. A member proposed which picture of it to make, and the room argued over the pixels. This bounds no claim of theirs (C3a: about different things). It says what the chosen problem looks like where no one can choose for others.

What the setting did to the four problems. The goal is a picture, and a picture can be stated exactly. So one artifact can state the goal and divide it: the template (A11, theorised). The frame says division knowledge "is more likely to exist for well-understood goals" (p. 165), and a picture is as well understood as a goal can be. The half-built picture informs, and members join a sign they already share. I tested the first claim at room level and it is weak. An argued design goes with shared coordinates in 94 of 281 rooms, against 113 of the other 424 (not held to size). So I do not claim that settling the goal divides the work in most rooms.

6. Whether the material supports the claim, contradicts it, or is silent

7. Whether the claim is answerable with this material

In part.

For the claim as stated, a claim about necessity, the structure does not speak to it.