From Sonnets to Statistics: How Open Scientists Leverage Occupational Heterogeneity for Change

Abstract

Occupations and their transformation have received only little attention in research on open organizing. To address this shortcoming, we advance a vernacular view on openness and use it to empirically examine how the open science community in Germany addresses a typical challenge of occupational change: occupational heterogeneity. We deepen current understandings of open organizing by theorizing the vernacular lens as a complement to the programmatic and constitutive views. It allows us to analyze openness as a practical resource for organizing rather than as a mandated principle or an imprinted value. We further theorize identity inception work as a set of activities that facilitate peer-driven change in heterogeneous occupations. Identity inception work creates a supplementary and versatile “add-on” identity that can be easily attached on top of a primary identity as specialist in a sub- discipline of academia, but in subtle ways commits its carriers to an increasing number of open practices.