National Union Effectiveness in Organizing: Measures and Influences

Fiorito, Jack; Jarley, Paul; Delaney, John Thomas

doi:10.2307/2524347

Cited by 52 publications

(76 citation statements)

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“…5 In particular, the use of an "aggressive rank-and-file intensive campaign" (including worker participation through committee structures, house calls, and the use of rankand-file volunteers; solidarity actions; highlighting issues such as dignity and justice; and creating community-labor coalitions) was associated with win rates 10-30 percentage points higher than those of campaigns that did not employ these tactics. When used together, these tactics were associated with a 67% win rate, compared to only a 38% win rate in campaigns using fewer than five tactics (Bronfenbrenner and Juravich 1998). recruiting members-including formerly excluded minority and gender groups-than unions that do not (Fiorito, Jarley, and Delaney 1995;Sherman and Voss 2000).…”

Section: Labor Movement Revitalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most recent studies of organizational change and innovation have been quantitative (Minkoff 1999;Delaney et al 1996;Bronfenbrenner 1993;Juravich 1994, 1998;Fiorito et al 1995;Fligstein 1985;Singh et al 1991). Although statistical methods allow researchers to make broad claims substantiated by large numbers of cases, the lack of detail about individual cases often obscures an understanding of how 6 As a rule, local unions undertake the day-to-day servicing and representation of members, while international unions with which locals are affiliated supervise broad national-level planning, institutional political activities such as endorsements and lobbying, and coordination of the union with the AFL-CIO.…”

Section: Labor Movement Revitalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Union Revitalization in the American Labor Movement

Voss

Sherman²

2000

American Journal of Sociology

517

434

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Section: Labor Movement Revitalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Labor Movement Revitalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Union Revitalization in the American Labor Movement

Voss

Sherman²

2000

American Journal of Sociology

517

434

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“…Unlike most work that uses union--representation election data (e.g., Heneman and Sandver 1983;Maranto and Fiorito 1987;Fiorito, Jarley, and Delaney 1995;Bronfenbrenner 1997;Riddell 2004;Ferguson 2008), I do not try to predict or model the success of particular campaigns. Quite the opposite: I focus on very close elections, those where success is least predictable.…”

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Control of Managerial Discretion: Evidence from Unionization’s Impact on Employment Segregation

Ferguson

2015

American Journal of Sociology

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Does limiting managers' discretion limit organizations' scope for discrimination? Social--psychological research argues that it limits opportunities to exercise cognitive biases. Organizational research has found that formal personnel practices that establish accountability for workplace diversity have increased women and minority representation in management. However, drawing causal inferences from such studies is complicated because adopting such policies may be endogenous to the firm's wish to hire and promote women and minorities. This study uses unionization elections to conduct a regression--discontinuity test from which stronger causal inferences can be made. I find that while unionization is associated with more representative workplaces and more women and minorities in management, these effects disappear close to the discontinuity threshold. Most of the effects of unionization on workforce diversity may be attributable to the unobserved drivers of selection into unionization. This has similar implications for the causal effects of diversity policies adopted by managers. Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Emilio Castilla, Roberto Fernandez, Aruna Ranganathan, Susan Silbey, Jesper Sørensen, and seminar participants at Stanford GSB, Berkeley--Haas, MIT--Sloan, INSEAD, and the 30 th EGOS Colloquium for comments on the manuscript. Sheldon Friedman, Alfonso Nevárez, and Gordon Pavy at the NLRB and Bliss Cartwright and Ronald Edwards at the EEOC gave invaluable support with the data. Direct correspondence to John--Paul Ferguson, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Email: jpferg@stanford.edu. suggests that it does. This work situates much employment discrimination not in the conscious actions of bigoted managers but in the unconscious impact of cognitive biases, deployed through personnel policies that fail to take such biases into account. As one classic review of the subject summarized, "We cannot rid work organizations of discrimination until we recognize both that much employment discrimination originates in automatic cognitive processes, and that it occurs because of work organizations' personnel practices" (Reskin 2000, p. 321).This social--psychological approach to discrimination reinforces an older organizational perspective on the subject. Organizational research has long emphasized the existence of informal social structures within formal organizations (Mayo 1984;Dalton 1959;Scott and Davis 2006) and recognized that, in the absence of formal structures, informal processes like ascriptive homophily will shape organizational careers and rewards. This is why, in his unromantic defense of complex organizations, Perrow (1986, p. 6) emphasizes the importance of rules that limit managers' discretion in "Purging Particularism":Particularism means that criteria irrelevant for efficient production (e.g., only relatives of the boss have a chance at top positions), in contrast to universalistic criteria (e.g., competence is all that counts), are used to choose employees. The criteria of eff...

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“…They are both representative and administrative organizations and the relationship between administrative and representative logics appears strongly to influence effectiveness measures (Child et al, 1973;Fiorito et al, 1995). The tension between administrative and representative rationales is a central theme in many discussions of union democracy.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for collective action: resource acquisition and mobilization in British unions

Willman¹,

Bryson²

2009

Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations

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The paper uses two data sources to map trends in resource availability for trade unions in Britain. Union resources exist on the one hand in the form of subscription income and accumulated assets shown in union accounts and, on the other, establishment level resources provided by employers and union members. The paper documents a substantial decline in both forms of resource across the period 1990 -2004 and attempts to explain both the reasons for this decline and its consequences for employee representation in Britain.

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National Union Effectiveness in Organizing: Measures and Influences

Cited by 52 publications

References 0 publications

Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Union Revitalization in the American Labor Movement

Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Union Revitalization in the American Labor Movement

The Control of Managerial Discretion: Evidence from Unionization’s Impact on Employment Segregation

Accounting for collective action: resource acquisition and mobilization in British unions

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