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Robert Michels' famous "iron law of oligarchy" has come under criticism from scholars that question assumptions regarding the concentration of power within social movement organizations (SMOs). Despite such concerns, Michels' broader interests in organizational structure and power continue to be relevant for analyzing the goals and strategies of SMOs. The recent revitalization of the American labor movement presents a unique opportunity to explore these topics within the context of union organizing efforts. Findings based on the organizing activities of 70 local unions measured from 1990-2001 indicate that the distribution of authority has clear effects on the allocation of resources for organizing, the type of repertoire selected to recruit new members, and, to a lesser extent, the outcome of the organizing drive. Although the analysis provides insight into unions today, the conceptualization of authority and outcomes explored have wider implications for research on formal organizations. (Contains 5 tables and 11 notes.)

The target a social movement selects is important for the type of tactic employed. Research suggests the state can use both a carrot (access) and stick (repression) to encourage conventional protest. Although corporations are more vulnerable to disruptive protest than the state, we suspect that historical developments, both in terms of the overall institutionalization of protest and the growing power of businesses, may encourage greater routinization of anti-business protest as well. Analyses from a dataset of over 7,000 events directed at state and business targets from 1960 to 1995 show that anti-business protests became increasingly routinized in the late twentieth century and provide suggestive evidence that businesses employ similar carrot and stick measures to channel dissent. Given more recent changes in the political economy of the United States, we suspect that these trends have only become more pronounced in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Movement scholars have become increasingly interested in the way in which social movement actors target non-state entities, particularly corporations. The reason for this is quite simple: globalization, neoliberal policies adopted by the state, and new legal protections via court rulings have allowed businesses to exert considerable influence across all facets of society. In light of these changes, movements have found targeting the state less effective than directly pressuring business interests. Scholarship suggests that one of the most effective ways to ensure that corporations attend to movement concerns is through market pressures. While negatively impacting stock returns is perhaps the most effective means of achieving such pressure, there is surprisingly little empirical research linking stock price outcomes to movement success. Here, we use Qualitative Comparative Analysis and examine 35 labor strikes to determine if the ability of the union to negatively impact stock price affected their ability to win new gains for members (or, to prevent concessions). Our findings reveal that it is the characteristics of the targeted firm, not the actions of the unions themselves, that is most closely associated with success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From corporate social responsibility initiatives to the adoption of domestic partner benefits in large firms, there is mounting evidence of the impact of activism on corporate behavior. This study advances the understanding of these outside challenges by identifying the multiple and context-dependent ways that movements matter for corporate change. Drawing from data on wide-ranging "corporate campaigns" waged by social movement organizations against corporate targets in the 1990s and early 2000s, our Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of corporate change outcomes support political and market mediation approaches to anticorporate activism. Far-reaching protest efforts benefited activists when targeting highly visible firms and when coupled with supportive state action or significant media scrutiny. The findings also reveal multiple pathways to both social movement successes and more firmfriendly outcomes, underscoring the need to consider the diverse response options of firms in the face of protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weber’s ideal typical model of bureaucracy constitutes the starting point for most scholarship on organizations. Much organizational behaviour, however occurs outside this formalized model. It is thus somewhat surprising that behaviours outside the formal-rational model are, more often than not, treated as aberrations. In contrast, the emerging critical literature on ‘inhabited institutions’ has identified such gaps in our theoretical understanding as foundational, warranting a more agentic conception of organizational life—a conception more fully acknowledging of and sensitive to the dynamics of power in organizational life. In this regard, we highlight four prevalent (though seldom theoretically incorporated) features of contemporary bureaucracies—divergent goals, patrimonialism, unwritten rules and chaos. These features, which we contend are no less critical to organizational functioning than those identified by Weber, constitute an organizational logic more compatible with a Kafkan vision of bureaucracy than with a Weberian one. Theorizing such attributes allows us to explore elements of bureaucratic life that the formal-rational model of bureaucracy renders largely invisible and is conceptually and empirically ill equipped to incorporate. An illustrative analysis, drawing on narrative data drawn from the population of organizational ethnographies (n = 162) (1) demonstrates the prominence of such dynamics in organizational life; and (2) highlights their implications for rule breaking as a relatively common yet under-theorized occurrence. A core implication of our analysis and critique is that the social sciences need a fundamentally revised theory of bureaucracy capable of understanding bureaucracy’s power laden and often dystrophic features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bureaucratization of many social movements has generated controversy among scholars and activists alike. While there is considerable evidence that formalized social movement organizations (SMOs) tend to be successful, critics maintain that such actors invariably shift resources away from protest, reducing their disruptive potential. The current research seeks to reorient this debate by introducing the concept of threat as an integral, but overlooked, dimension of protest. Specifically. I hypothesize that the costs associated with collective action will motivate formalized SMOs to leverage the threat of protest to achieve new gains. The empirical case is made using data from a sample of labor unions and their strike activity from 1990-2001, a period of growing acrimony between organized labor and firms that is particularly well suited for analyzing threat. The findings highlight the role of threat in movement challenges and how it interacts with the broader environment within which the SMO is embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the selection bias of movement publications and how it was framed by the movements. It analyzes the United Steelworker's publication during the 1990s, the "Steelabor," which focuses on strikes and organizing drives, to explore the reporting patterns. It suggests that movements use publications to construct a positive image and call attention to specific events. It notes that movement publications provide opportunity for scholars to examine the dynamics of social movements.

The article presents a comparative analysis of protest coverage including strikes by mass audience newspapers. It specifically compares coverage of protests explicitly strikes, which were earlier ignored by the New York Times (NYT), and the Daily Labor Report (DLR), a newspaper which targets industry and labor leaders. The reason behind choosing the NYT and the DLR for the analysis is both of these newspapers are the leading source of news in the United States. The NYT represents the most prominent and well-respected mass audience daily newspaper in the United States, and the DLR the leading source of news on industrial relations in the United States. The DLR is operated by the U.S. Bureau of National Affairs. Following the investigation of a series of well-conceived testable hypothesis, the article finds that both the newspapers selected strikes for coverage in ways quite similar to how other forms of protest, like demonstrations, marches, rallies, and vigils, are mostly covered by mainstream, mass audience papers.