How Organizations Claim Authenticity: The Coproduction of Illusions in Underground Restaurants
研究了地下餐厅组织者如何通过社区、透明和赠礼三种幻觉的共演来声称真实性，发现食客明知是幻觉却仍视其为真实，揭示了真实性声称是组织与观众共同构建的持续过程。
With perceptions of authenticity offering contemporary organizations a key competitive advantage in the marketplace, a growing body of research has investigated “authenticity work”: the diverse ways in which organizational actors fabricate authenticity claims for their audience members. However, claiming authenticity is a challenging and problematic task, because organizations must weigh how much authenticity they can safely project without incurring backfire. This is further complicated by consumers’ fickle and contradictory attitudes regarding authenticity work. This study examines this challenge by asking how organizations can claim authenticity in a way that aligns with their audiences’ variable understandings and expectations. Drawing on a qualitative study of underground restaurants—alternative social dining establishments, also known as “pop-ups” or “supper clubs”—I show that organizers claim authenticity through the coperformance of three illusions: community, transparency, and gift-giving. Instead of rejecting these illusions, most diners and underground organizers knowingly embrace them as authentic. This paper suggests that authenticity work, far from sending a one-way signal that audience members passively accept or reject, involves a continual process that generates the active co-construction of illusions by organizers and their audiences.