Understanding decentralized autonomous organizations from the inside

Abstract

Blockchain technology is argued to drastically change the way we operate within an organizational context, with decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) representing a first manifestation of this ongoing trend. DAOs are characterized by an online community that builds the organization’s backbone by providing knowledge and human resources in a transparent, virtual manner, as well as the use of blockchain technology to coordinate their endeavor. Nevertheless, current research highlights the conceptual ambiguity of this emerging phenomenon, leading to potential issues for practitioners and researchers. To provide further clarity on the phenomenon, we study DAOs through the perspective of their members with a two-staged approach by combining elements of a netnographic approach and structural topic modeling. Our findings highlight several contextual features surrounding DAOs, such as their members’ underlying beliefs and views, helping to embed DAOs in existing research streams.