Performing catharsis: The use of online discussion forums in organizational change

Online discussion forums have been used to both support and resist organizational change. Our empirical study examined how employees in one organization used an online forum to help them deal discursively with changes that they perceived as threatening to their identity. In particular, we found that the postings of one key individual were central in framing the organizational changes in a way that had powerful cathartic consequences for employees’ feelings of anger and loss of face. Paradoxically, however, we also found that such use of the online forum had the contradictory consequence of helping to facilitate the very changes that employees perceived to be problematic.