Organization Of Collective Action Research Articles

A Critical Realist Model for Organizational Sociology

Current discussions surrounding organizational sociology theories indicate a state of stagnation. This paper aims to invigorate theoretical innovation by drawing on contemporary social theories, particularly employing a critical realist perspective. Focused on addressing the theoretical convergence between organizational and collective action sociologies, as identified by Friedberg, the paper reinterprets his concept of organized collective action through the critical realist collective subjectivities theory, as proposed by Vandenberghe. The objective is to generate an original Critical Realist Model for Organizational Sociology. This initiative stems from critical realism’s critique of flat ontologies and epistemologies that tend to conflate different objects of reality. The proposed model takes the form of a trialectic generative sequence, highlighting driven objects configured in a specific ontological situation as the necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the emergence of organizations. This sequence includes (a) time-space co-presence and the embodiment process; (b) symbolic community sharing and the identification process; and (c) power dynamics and the processes of representation, delegation, and subordination. This model positions collective organized action as a fundamental intermediary concept for understanding organizations and collective action within a realistic social theory. It indirectly contributes to addressing the broader debate on agency and structure.

Role of International Institutions in Ethiopia’s Rural Land Policy

This Article explores whether and to what extent Ethiopia`s contemporary land policy is influenced by international institutions chiefly the World Bank and the USAID. To this end, the article has identified and examined two opposing views, the first of which contends government policies including land policies in Ethiopia are dictated by some influential international institutions as the regime in Ethiopia is dependent on aid funds in implementing its social policies, which include land policy. According to this first perspective, such policies are not the result of organized collective action by the insecure land holders. The second view is that such policies are internally driven because international institutions have been unable to push through policy agenda their way meaningfully. Having considered such views, the article finds it is not persuasive to put the extent of influence of international institutions in Ethiopia`s land policy in black and white; yet, it seems unreasonable to argue that such institutions which contribute significantly to Ethiopia`s annual budget have no influence over land policy at all even if determination of the extent of their roles is complex and vague. For instance, some tenets of Ethiopia`s current land policy as a tool to poverty reduction and smallholder commercial agriculture are strikingly similar to the tenets of the WB`s 2003 Land Policy which include legalizing land rentals, land use collateralization for agricultural investors and establishment of customary dispute resolution methods, regularization of informal landholdings, and landholding registration programs without however conceding the fundamental aspect of land law. The USAID`s involvement in drafting Ethiopian current Federal and regional rural land laws has led to the inclusion of some of these elements. External pressures may not nevertheless have a decisive role as domestic political and bureaucratic interests in land policy at implementation phase may lessen their magnitude.

Sociopolitical development of female migrant domestic workers in Southern Spain: A qualitative study of a pathway against injustice

AbstractDomestic work is a sector characterized by various forms of injustice, prompting some women to embark on a pathway towards activism. Based on the Sociopolitical Development (SPD) framework, this study aims to explore female Latin American migrants' experiences of injustice in the domestic work sector in Spain and how they challenge them, particularly when they become involved in organized collective action. To this end, in‐depth interviews were conducted with 11 women of Latin American origin who actively participate in the Association of Domestic Workers of Seville. The qualitative analysis found that being a domestic worker, having experiences of exploitation, discovering rights, receiving rights training, sharing stories of oppression, and engaging in sociopolitical actions are key experiences in guiding migrant women from the acritical and adaptive stages of SPD towards the pre‐critical, critical, and liberation ones. Knowledge about these significant life‐changing events may be useful for designing interventions aimed at fostering different ways in which oppressed groups can challenge injustice.

On the Issue of Social Movement Definition

The paper is a theoretical review of “social movement” term definitions. Aiming to show differences among definitions within different paradigms and scientific evolution of the term the main approaches of defining social movements are discussed. Initially, social movements were studied by psychologists, who were examining different forms of collective behavior, such as mobs, crowds, protests and etc. Most of them considered social movements as an irrational and destructive form of collective action driven by the instincts of people. During the next decades, the theory of social movements was developed mostly by sociologists who, on the contrary, started to seek social reasons inducing this type of collective action. Different theoretical schools proposed various concepts of explaining the origin of social movements, but all of them agreed on the main characteristics: rational and organized collective action driven by unfulfilled social needs. Different authors linked social movement definitions with other important social phenomena such as norms and values, social conflict, social identity, and social network. Political scientists have also contributed to the study of social movements but in terms of power and state, terrorism and violence. Discussing psychological, sociological, and political science approaches to term definition we came to the conclusion that the most inclusive sociological definition is viewing social movement as a social network through which collective action is performed to achieve total or partial social change. Such kind of definition makes it possible to reveal the main criteria necessary to distinguish social movement as a separate social phenomenon from other types of collective action.

Overcoming ‘small peasant mentality’: semi-proletarian struggles and working-class formation in China

ABSTRACT The accelerating urbanization for peasant-workers and the growing labour unrest in China since the 2010s have promoted some scholars to applaud how proletarianization can lead to working-class consciousness and action. Drawing on Marxian theory of proletarianization, we question the assumptions that ‘proper proletarians’ possess more revolutionary potential than semi-proletarians, and that institutionalized collective bargaining represents a more advanced form of labour struggle. Through an ethnographic study of labour activists and workers in China, this paper investigates the dilemmas that peasant-workers have encountered in working-class formation as well as tactics for overcoming these barriers. Migrant workers’ ‘small-peasant mentality’ can be overcome not by turning them into full proletarians or relinquishing rural identity, but by educating more co-workers and getting them more experienced in collective action organization. China’s experience will provide important lessons for conceptualizing the direction and tactics of organizing informal labour for the Global South.

Rethinking neoliberalism, rethinking social movements

ABSTRACT Social movement scholars have not satisfactorily engaged with the concept and reality of neoliberalism. The growing academic consensus is that neoliberalism is a waning analytical category devoid of conceptual rigor, and therefore, inadequate for academic use. At the same time, research on neoliberalism repeatedly confirms the centrality of organized collective action in its ascent to global hegemony. Blurring the artificially constructed boundaries between politics and the academy, I propose an actor-centered approach to neoliberalism, shedding light on the mechanisms driving the term’s conceptual stretching and its exclusive usages by its political and intellectual foes. But I also probe social movement theory with the case of neoliberalism, understood as a peculiar type of movement: a transnational movement of market-fundamentalist intellectuals that, interestingly, relentlessly refrained from collectively asserting an ‘identity’. This makes neoliberalism a case ill-suited to canonical ways of describing social movements. Hence, my aim is to rethink not only neoliberalism but also to stretch a bit what we think movements are.

Public good provision by large groups – the logic of collective action revisited

The organization of collective action is extremely important for societies. A main reason is that many of the key problems societies face are public good problems. We present results from a series of laboratory experiments with large groups of up to 100 subjects. Our results demonstrate that large groups, in which the impact of an individual contribution (MPCR) is almost negligible, are able to provide a public good in the same way as small groups in which the impact of an individual contribution is much higher. Nevertheless, we find that small variations in MPCR in large groups have a strong effect on contributions. We develop a hypothesis concerning the interplay between MPCR and group size, which is based on the assumption that the salience of the advantages of mutual cooperation plays a decisive role. This hypothesis is successfully tested in a second series of experiments. Since Mancur Olson's “Logic of collective action” it is a commonly held belief that in large groups the prospects of a successful organization of collective actions are rather bad. Our results, however, suggest that the chance to successfully organize collective action of large groups and to solve important public good problems is much higher than previously thought.

Toilets and resistance in Italian factories in the 1950s

ABSTRACTIn the literature on industrial conflict, the Italy of the 1950s is often described as marked by worker acquiescence and an absence of conflict, ensured by high unemployment and the severe repression of union activism. My research challenges this. While formal, organized collective action subsided, workers continued to show their defiance and opposition to factory authorities by means of diverse acts of individual resistance that have escaped scholarly study. Drawing on anthropological theory, particularly Scott’s notion of ‘weapons of the weak’ – the strategies used by subordinate classes when facing heavy repression or lack of resources – this article undertakes an innovative analysis of the use of insults, irreverent behaviour, rumours and mockery of foremen and bosses to undermine the authority and legitimacy of factory hierarchies. It casts new light on the protest cultures and practices of Italian workers in the 1950s and improves our understanding of post-1945 industrial conflict.

Collective Action and Governance Activism*

AbstractWe examine how an investor collective action organization (ICAO) enhances activism by institutional investors. The ICAO initiated a new form of engagement—private meetings with independent directors to discuss governance proposals. Compared with a single investor acting alone, the ICAO has stronger incentives to engage in activism. Its dollar holdings and voting power are six times larger and predict direct access to the board and the firms it engages. Firms engaged by the ICAO are at least 58% more likely than non-engaged firms to adopt the ICAO’s governance proposals that include adoption of majority voting, say-on-pay, and specific compensation policies. Engaged firms also increase CEO incentive pay. An event study around the announcement of the ICAO’s formation shows a positive impact on value that increases in both dollar holdings and voting power. We conclude that institutional investors improve governance outcomes through collective action.

UK Unions, Collective Action and the Cost Disease

AbstractThis article looks at the financial resources of trade unions in the UK. The core argument is that trade unions are subject to ‘cost disease’ pressures such that costs rise over the long term above the general level of inflation. They have this property because of the difficulty in solving first‐ and second‐order collective action problems. First‐order problems refer to the problems of initiating collective action and second‐order problems refer to the management of collective action organizations. Both UK aggregate and case‐study data — from one of the largest UK unions, Unite — are presented to illustrate the cost disease problem and to suggest options for its management. In conclusion, the wider implications of ‘cost disease’ pressures for unions are assessed.

From the blogosphere into the parliament: The role of digital technologies in organizing social movements

In this paper, we present a process model exploring the roles played by digital technologies (DTs) in the organization of collective action (CA) of social movements (SMs) at different points in their lifecycles. The process model, which is based on an exploratory case study of the Italian Five Star Movement, relates the environmental conditions to the working logic, structure and use of DTs at three different stages of the SMs. We explain how these choices are adopted at each stage to address internal and environmental challenges and how they create further challenges to be addressed to pass to the next stage. We further explore the dynamics between the logic of connective and collective action and reflect on the growing need for structures and control. By so doing, our work addresses the need for a better understanding of the coevolution between DTs and organizational structures and of the ways in which DTs are used to mobilize people to sustain CA along the SM lifecycle.

Playing with data and its consequences

The fundamental paradigm shift brought about by datafication alters how people participate as citizens on a daily basis. “Big data” has come to constitute a new terrain of engagement, which brings organized collective action, communicative practices and data infrastructure into a fruitful dialogue. While scholarship is progressively acknowledging the emergence of bottom-up data practices, to date no research has explored the influence of these practices on the activists themselves. Leveraging the disciplines of critical data and social movement studies, this paper explores “proactive data activism”, using, producing and/or appropriating data for social change, and examines its biographical, political, tactical and epistemological consequences. Approaching engagement with data as practice, this study focuses on the social contexts in which data are produced, consumed and circulated, and analyzes how tactics, skills and emotions of individuals evolve in interplay with data. Through content and co-occurrence analysis of semi-structured practitioner interviews (N=20), the article shows how the employment of data and data infrastructure in activism fundamentally transforms the way activists go about changing the world.

Research as knowledge democratization, mobilization and social action: pushing back on casteism in contexts of caste humiliation and social reproduction in schools in India

ABSTRACTDalit (the ‘downtrodden’) students continue to experience caste-based discrimination, humiliation and dehumanization; illegal practices that are being reproduced in the school system in the state of Odisha, India. Based on a research study organized by the Center for Research and Development Solidarity, an adivasi (original dweller/Scheduled Tribe)-dalit (Scheduled Caste) research organization and 401 dalit students in grades 6–10 attending 16 government schools in a 25-village zone, this paper elaborates on this research initiative. It demonstrates how knowledge democratization, both, as research undertaken with and for dalit students as producers of (caste-resistance) knowledge and as knowledge sharing as mobilization, can simultaneously mobilize wider circles of organized collective action with parents, Village Education Committees (VECs) and local dalit NGOs and movements to address casteism and untouchability in state schools. The paper concludes with some brief insights pertaining to academic and funded research as knowledge democracy and mobilization for social action that are emergent from this caste research and related research and social action addressing land-forest-labour assertions in South Odisha.

Action Organization Analysis: Extending Protest Event Analysis Using Hubs-Retrieved Websites

The comprehensive and systematic study of collective action organizations (AOs) requires a new methodological approach that takes into account the rise of online sources as well as the new ways in which people interact and participate in politics. This article aims to present and situate in the related literature such an approach, which was recently created and applied in two European Commission funded research projects, LIVEWHAT and TransSOL, across nine and eight countries respectively. Moving beyond recent studies using online sources, our research used a hubs website based approach to study alternative action organizations (AAOs) in the LIVEWHAT project and transnational solidarity AOs in the TransSOL project. The hubs and subhubs websites that aggregate data on AOs in multiple regions were scraped to identify national samples that offer advanced coverage of the repertoire of AO activities, as defined by the teams. These nodal websites were used as sources, similar to the way in which newspapers are treated in protest event analysis. The article situates and compares the new action organization analysis approach against its foundational protest event, protest case, and political claims analyses, as well as other approaches offering data on online activism. It outlines its main features and the related data construction process, while showcasing its application in the two European Commission cross-national projects. Finally, its merits and limitations are discussed, including a reference to how it can be used as a foundation for a mixed-methods approach.

Social Structure of Regional Entrepreneurship: The Impacts of Collective Action of Incumbents on De Novo Entrants

The literature has posited that agglomeration economies and the formation of social relationships resulting from the geographic concentration of incumbents constitute the forces that “pull” new entrants into industry clusters. However, this proposition overlooks how the collective action of incumbents in pursuit of their own benefits affects new entrants. This study examines how business associations as collective action organizations established by incumbents to promote and safeguard group-wide interests contribute to de novo entrants. The empirical evidence from Canada’s telecommunication equipment manufacturing industry between 1995 and 2005 reveals that the prevalence of local business associations encourages de novo entrants. However, the impact is curvilinear such that excessive collective action on the part of local fellow incumbents can create a clubby environment and “push” new entrants away.

A blueprint towards accounting for the management of ecosystems

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a new ecological-issues-centered accounting research agenda, at the crossroads of accounting research and conservation science.Design/methodology/approachBased on a case study of the Natural Capital Project, the research examines the efforts and challenges of conservation practitioners regarding the use of evaluative information systems for conservation (EISC) in complex social and ecological contexts. It discusses why and how, to address these challenges, EISC promoters would benefit from theoretical and empirical insights coming from accounting research.FindingsThe paper suggests that the use of new information systems centered on organized collective action for biodiversity conservation should be regarded as a new type of accounting for the management of ecosystems, complementary to organization-centered biodiversity accounting and to ecosystem accounting at the national scale. A research agenda inspired by critical accounting should be developed for EISC design and use by: critically analyzing the organizational models currently underlying the use of new calculative practices for ecosystems; and developing new analytical and practical avenues on the basis of more explicit and powerful theories adapted to collective action for conservation perimeters.Originality/valueThe paper shows the importance of combining three domains of research and practice that are usually disconnected: the design and use of innovative information systems in biodiversity conservation research and practice; accounting research; and theories and conceptual models of collective action to resolve ecological challenges.

Collective Action Recruitment in a Digital Age: Applying Signaling Theory to Filtering Behaviors

The ways in which various groups use affordable Internet-based tools to expand the scope and variety of their members is well documented. We focus on the means they develop for identifying “suitable” members. Drawing on signaling theory, we offer a framework for analyzing recruitment practices in a digital media environment. We demonstrate that despite the differences among groups, a common logic guiding filtering behavior is the search for cost-discriminating signs of trustworthiness, that is, signals attesting to the candidates' characteristics that are too costly for mimics to fake, but affordable for the genuinely trustworthy recruit. Focusing on collective action organizations, we propose a typology of organizations and trace the filtering tactics they develop for identifying members who manifest desired attributes.

Redes sociales, acción colectiva y elecciones: los usos de Facebook por el movimiento estudiantil chileno durante la campaña electoral de 2013

Recent studies on digital social networks have analyzed their role as part of collective action and their use during electoral campaigns. Based on a study of the Chilean student movement during the 2013 electoral campaign in that country, the article offers an analysis of how Facebook is used by the three student federations that make up the movement. The results suggest informative and organizational aspects take priority in the use of social networks in that context. This trend is mediated by the peculiarities of the movement – the presence of traditional student organizations – and by and the complexity of the relationship with institutional policy, particularly the defense of autonomy against the risks of cooptation, increased by the passage of former leaders of the movement to the latter. The inclination for these spaces to be used more and more at times of increased social mobilization is confirmed, and the tensions between their use by organized collective action (student federations) and by the individuals participating in that action are shown.DOI: 10.5294/pacla.2016.19.3.6

Disorganized Popular Contention and Local Institutional Building in China: a case study in Guangdong

Concurring with the approach stressing the role of contentious politics in (re)shaping state institutions, this study explores how disorganized popular contentions configure local institutional building in China. As Chinese citizens are not legally allowed to take organized collective action to express their grievances and demands, popular contentions, despite their common origins, similar claims and identical targets, break out here and there in large numbers without clear organizational shape. This compels the government to build institutions able to map scattered conflicts, detect potential problems and defuse them on a case-by-case basis in a timely fashion. Such a dissipative approach is distinguished, by its purpose, format and mechanism, from two common types of state responses to popular contentions—incorporation and repression—which are typically linked to democracies and authoritarian developing states where popular contentions are often organized in various ways.

The Culture of Private Law

The chief goal of private law is to guide and facilitate interpersonal conduct. In fields such as contracts, property, and corporate governance, lawmakers have an essential normative role of envisioning ideal types of collective action and designing legal and organizational mechanisms that will streamline these types of action, while also giving parties substantial leeway to tailor their interpersonal legal relations. This Article argues that for such a legal design to be effective, regardless of the substantive content of its underlying normative values, lawmakers must consider the actual congruence between the ideal types of collective action envisioned by private law norms and the prevailing cultural orientations, values, and beliefs that practically guide everyday interactions in a certain society or group. To the extent that a private law reform wishes to promote a new type of collective action that is not initially supported by such grassroots forces, it must find ways to enable at least an incremental shift in the relevant cultural traits to facilitate the desired modes of interpersonal collaboration. Rejecting an all-or-nothing approach to cultural change, this Article underscores the key role of collective-action organizations, such as business corporations or homeowner associations, in mediating between private law reforms and incremental cultural shifts.