Collective Action in Organizations: Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change

by Bruce Bimber , Andrew Flanagin , Cynthia Stohl

• ISBN13: 9780521139632
• ISBN10: 0521139635
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-02-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book offers a new theory of collective action for the age of digital media, attesting to the continued relevance of formal organizations in a time when digital media can make it seem that organizations are outdated. The authors examine the dynamics of membership in three distinctive organizations: The American Legion, AARP, and MoveOn. They develop the theory of Collective Action Space to demonstrate the important dimensions of membership and use survey and interview data to explore commonalities across the organizations, each of which exhibits four 'participatory styles'. The book shows that predictors of participation vary greatly across participatory styles and rather little across organizations. The book wrestles with a crucial feature of contemporary collective action, wherein technology does not necessarily make people participate more, but people consistently use technology when they participate. The result is a theoretically rich and empirically fresh portrait of collective action, organization and technology.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	p. viii
Preface	p. xi
Involvement in Organizational Collective Action in an Era of Technological Change	p. 1
The Contemporary Media Environment and the Evolution of Boundaries in Organization-based Collective Action	p. 37
The Collective Action Space	p. 74
The American Legion, AARP, and MoveOn in Collective Action Space	p. 106
Exploring Collective Action Space	p. 140
Participatory Styles, the Individual, and the Contemporary Organization	p. 165
Interaction and Engagement	p. 189
Predicting Contribution, Identification, and Trust by Organization	p. 195
Descriptive Statistics for the Participatory Styles	p. 200
References	p. 205
Index	p. 217
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