Collaborative crowdsourcing has become a popular approach to organizing work across the globe. Being global also means being vulnerable to shocks -- unforeseen events that disrupt crowds -- that originate from any country. In this study, we examine changes in collaborative behavior of editors of Chinese Wikipedia that arise due to the 2005 government censor- ship in mainland China. Using the exogenous variation in the fraction of editors blocked across different articles due to the censorship, we examine the impact of reduction in group size, which we denote as the shock level, on three collaborative behavior measures: volume of activity, centralization, and conflict. We find that activity and conflict drop on articles that face a shock, whereas centralization increases. The impact of a shock on activity increases with shock level, whereas the impact on centralization and conflict is higher for moderate shock levels than for very small or very high shock levels. These findings provide support for threat rigidity theory -- originally introduced in the organizational theory literature -- in the context of large-scale collaborative crowds.
Abstract The effects of uncertainty and threat upon the centralization of group communication structures were investigated in a laboratory study. The performance of these groups was also analyzed. Uncertainty was manipulated by varying stimulus ambiguity; threat was manipulated by varying the possibility of loss and the use of time reminders. Results indicate that group structures became differentiated over time with groups in the high uncertainty, low threat condition showing the greatest degree of centralization. Centralization appeared to be associated with the experience of tension: subjects in the high uncertainty, low threat condition reported the highest degree of tension. Uncertainty had a negative effect on performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.  Understanding the processes by which task groups function is a major concern of social psychologists who study small groups. Equally important to the applied group researcher is the understanding of how group processes are altered by the external environment. Research suggests that organizations respond to stress with a centralization of authority so that decision making becomes concentrated in the higher levels of an organizational hierarchy. In this study, this hypothesis was extended to the small-group level of analysis, and the effects of stress on group status and decision making were examined. Experimental results clarify and delimit the centralization-of-authority hypothesis: Rather than centralizing authority and decision making under stress, group leaders and group members become more receptive to information provided by others. Implications for group decision making are discussed.  The relationship between external threat and group decision-making processes was tested with 24 groups involved in a management simulation called Tycoon.1 Results indicate a restriction in informat... Teams have become the norm for operating in dangerous and complex situations. To investigate how physical threat affects team performance, 27 threeperson teams engaged in a complex planning and problem-solving task, either under physical threat or under normal conditions. Threat consisted of the possibility that during task performance the oxygen level would be reduced (which, in reality, did not occur). Team processes were measured by automated behavior recordings and questionnaires. Results confirmed that physical threat caused restrictions in information processing, more controlling leadership, less group discussions, and a reduction in coordinating and supporting behavior. These results support the propositions of the threat-rigidity thesis and extend previous research by establishing these results for physical threat and demonstrating effects on coordinating and supporting behavior as well. We develop a theory to explain how individual compassion in response to human pain in organizations becomes socially coordinated through a process we call compassion organizing. The theory specifies five mechanisms, including contextual enabling of attention, emotion, and trust, agents improvising structures, and symbolic enrichment, that show how the social architecture of an organization interacts with agency and emergent features to affect the extraction, generation, coordination, and calibration of resources. In doing so, our theory of compassion organizing suggests that the same structures designed for the normal work of organizations can be redirected to a new purpose to respond to members' pain. We discuss the implications of the theory for compassion organizing and for collective organizing more generally.