• Work

• External Shocks

• Reshaping organizational forms

DeSci DAOs emerge at the end of 2021 and struggle to find their way to sustainable development. They attract a lot of interest from the crypto community: people invest in new initiatives and participate in open events like DeSci London or DeSci Berlin. They manage to recruit researchers with a proven publication record but a critical perception of the current organization of knowledge production, and even gain some attention in publications (Hamburg, 2021). At the same time, they are not well connected to the established system of knowledge production and transfer. Cooperation with large universities and research organizations is limited - DeSci researchers usually refer to Bloxberg supported by Max Plank Society. Cases of investment by traditional organizations are relatively rare - the most discussed case is Pfizer's investment in VitaDAO (Cumbers, 2023). Therefore, DeSci DAOs are still in an unstable position, with some attention and contributors, but lacking support from key stakeholders. Like any new organization, DeSci DAOs must build legitimacy in the relevant institutional field. Legitimacy corresponds to "a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions" (Suchman, 1995, p. 574). Legitimacy refers to the ability to obtain resources, build trust with other actors, and develop the organization itself (Zimmerman & Zeitz, 2002). It is a key component of the sustainable development because it enhances persistence and credibility of the organization (Suchman, 1995). Since legitimacy is created in a particular institutional field, actions will depend on the rules and characteristics of that field at any given time (Oliver, 1991; Suchman, 1995). Accordingly, DeSci DAOs should strategically consider the existing rules of legitimation in the field of scientific knowledge production. However, DeSci DAOs act as alternative organizations. Alternative organizations try to change the constraints (Clarence-Smith & Monticelli, 2022) and look for new forms of organizing beyond the current neoliberal ones (Böhm et al., 2010). They actively oppose their approaches to work with existing approaches in universities, scientific publishing houses and R&D laboratories of industrialized companies. They are trying to create a new approach to the funding of science, the production of scientific knowledge, the management of scientific projects, and the commercialization of results (Ducrée et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2022). That is, they seek not so much to conform to institutional rules as to transform them. A key element of an organization's legitimacy is its presence in space. The appearance of buildings, the organization of workspaces, and the fit with the environment demonstrate the organization's presence and embody the organization to stakeholders (Wasserman, 2011). Opening new buildings signals strategic achievements and transformation (van Marrewijk, 2009). Changes in workspaces are a form of non-verbal communication of the organization (Proffitt, Zahn, 2006). Accordingly, by creating and changing organizational spaces, organizations broadcast their claims to legitimacy (de Vaujany & Vaast, 2014). There are several reasons to examine the legitimacy of DeSci DAOs from a spatial perspective. First, their self-naming encapsulates the idea of decentralization, which includes the distribution of data, the geography of participants, and resources. It is described as “DeSci's focus on decentralization ensures the democratization of access to resources and research material while reducing gatekeepers' power” (What Is Decentralized Science (DeSci)?, 2024). Second, the use of the construct of organizational space is what most distinguishes DeSci from other organizations in the field. Unlike universities, they do not have visible, urban campuses, they do not create innovative spaces with modern architecture, unlike R&D laboratories, unlike both types, they do not represent particular features of the organization online, but create the basic infrastructure there. Finally, the organization of space allows us to link external legitimation, the construction of the organization's identity, and the internal features of work and collaboration. Thus, studying legitimation through the lens of the topology of organizational space allows us to study the most specific to the new format of organizations and to examine the situation of greatest tension between institutional norms and the strategy of specific organizations. Accordingly, the process of legitimation and the combination of following and changing institutional rules will be examined through a new topology of organizational spaces. Rethinking what internal and external spaces of the organization are, how workspace is produced and destroyed, and the rhythms of using different spaces for work, allows for the creation of multiple "interfaces" for participants and different stakeholders of the organization. They initiate new spatial practices to make more effective use of existing resources and encourage counterparts to revise some rules. Spatial practices to resolve the conflict of legitimization and transformation of institutional rules involve digital and physical space. For example, DeSci DAOs strive to make funding of scientific projects more transparent, and therefore receive investments and grants in cryptocurrency and fund scientific projects in cryptocurrency within the application on the Ethereum platform. However, they use fiat currency and Switzerland's online banking to settle accounts with university labs where experiments are set up. Similarly with physical space. New organizations combine the temporary rental of meeting rooms in co-working spaces to meet with partners and the creation of pop-up cities for strategic planning and engagement. The whole range of spatial practices is not explored at the moment. Thus, my aim will be to describe what strategies of legitimation through the topology of organizational space exist in decentralized scientific organizations and to identify a mechanism for resolving the contradiction of alternativity and legitimacy within organizations. The existing approaches to the study of organizational topology of organizational spaces can be divided according to the main themes: site, contestation, multiplicity, and poetics (Beyes & Holt, 2020). The first corresponds to descriptive topology and the study of the expression of organizational relations in space. The second focuses on spatial hierarchies, relations between subjects and objects of knowledge in space, and other power relations. The third concentrates on organizational atmospheres, the study of performativity and new forms of organization. Finally, the last is concerned with the creation of representations of space, as model and map, and the imagination of organizational space. Preliminarily, it seems that the approach based on the identification of power relations and hierarchies is closest to legitimation studies, however, this requires further study. References: 1. Beyes, T., & Holt, R. (2020). The Topographical Imagination: Space and organization theory. Organization Theory, 1(2), 2631787720913880. https://doi.org/10.1177/2631787720913880 2. Böhm, S., Dinerstein, A. C., & Spicer, A. (2010). (Im)possibilities of Autonomy: Social Movements in and beyond Capital, the State and Development. Social Movement Studies, 9(1), 17–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742830903442485 3. Clarence-Smith, S., & Monticelli, L. (2022). Flexible Institutionalisation in Auroville: A Prefigurative Alternative to Development. Sustainability Science, 17(4), 1171–1182. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01096-0 4. Cumbers, J. (n.d.). Longevity Startup VitaDAO Raises $4.1m, Backed By Pfizer, Balaji Srinivasan. Forbes. Retrieved October 27, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/johncumbers/2023/01/30/longevity-startup-vitadao-raises-41m-backed-by-pfizer-balaji-srinivasan/ 5. de Vaujany, F.-X., & Vaast, E. (2014). If These Walls Could Talk: The Mutual Construction of Organizational Space and Legitimacy. Organization Science, 25(3), 713–731. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2013.0858 6. Ducrée, J., Codyre, M., Walshe, R., & Barting, S. (2022). DeSci-Decentralized Science [Preprint]. ENGINEERING. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202205.0223.v1 7. Evans, J., & Jones, P. (2011). The walking interview: Methodology, mobility and place. Applied Geography, 31(2), 849–858. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2010.09.005 8. Hamburg, S. (2021). Call to join the decentralized science movement. Nature, 600(7888), 221–221. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03642-9 9. Marcus, G. E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24(Volume 24, 1995), 95–117. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.000523 10. Oliver, C. (1991). Strategic Responses to Institutional Processes. The Academy of Management Review, 16(1), 145–179. https://doi.org/10.2307/258610 11. Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches. The Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571–610. https://doi.org/10.2307/258788 12. van Marrewijk, A. H. (2009). Corporate headquarters as physical embodiments of organisational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 22(3), 290–306. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810910951078 13. Wang, F.-Y., Ding, W., Wang, X., Garibaldi, J., Teng, S., Imre, R., & Olaverri-Monreal, C. (2022). The DAO to DeSci: AI for Free, Fair, and Responsibility Sensitive Sciences. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 37(2), 16–22. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2022.3167070 14. Wasserman, V. (2011). To be (alike) or not to be (at all): Aesthetic isomorphism in organisational spaces. International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion, 4(1), 22. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJWOE.2011.041529 15. What Is Decentralized Science (DeSci)? Everything You Need to Know. (n.d.). BNB Chain Blog. Retrieved September 21, 2024, from https://www.bnbchain.org/zh-TW/blog/what-is-decentralized-science-desci 16. Zimmerman, M. A., & Zeitz, G. J. (2002). Beyond Survival: Achieving New Venture Growth by Building Legitimacy. The Academy of Management Review, 27(3), 414–431. https://doi.org/10.2307/4134387

How do DeSci DAOs use digital and physical spaces to legitimize themselves to different stakeholders and enforce their own rules?

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• Interview
• Observation

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• Unstructured

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