Imprisoned Freedom at 'Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia'? A Sociological Systems Theory Perspective on Contradiction and Consistency in Wikipedia’s Identity Narrative

Abstract

We see an increasing number of studies related to organizational issues that are informed by systems theory as developed by Niklas Luhmann. Despite the progress that has been made in this regard, there are only a few studies that try to access empirical phenomena from this theoretical perspective. In this paper address this void by analyzing self-descriptions of Wikipedia using narrative analysis. We elucidate how Wikipedia’s identity is strongly grounded in freedom. A closer look at how Wikipedia is reproduced, however, reveals that multiple contesting identities thwart the allegedly free nature of Wikipedia. We propose a systems theoretical interpretation of how Wikipedia handles the resulting tensions in order to maintain structural and temporal stability of its identity. Introducing the argument of endogenously driven identity change our study also contributes to the general discourse on organi-zational identity.

Keywords: Systems Theory, Organizational Identity, Wikipedia, Narrative