collective action and organization theory – a syllabus
I’m co-teaching a short and quite eclectic doctoral seminar on “collective action and organization theory” with Henri Schildt here at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki.
The class readings list is rather exploratory. We’ll only meet four times, so there isn’t room for a whole lot. We picked a set of readings that sounded fun and interesting (some classics as well as recent stuff). At the risk of public ridicule – here’s a draft of the syllabus. If you have any thoughts or feedback (additions etc), feel free to leave a comment.
Written by teppo
April 29, 2011 at 10:06 pm
Posted in education, social movements, strategy, teppo
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Very nice syllabus. I wish I were sitting in the class.
I’m surprised you don’t have anything about the “collective action problem” a la Mancur Olson. Olson’s work is the classic statement about the problems inherent in group organizing, and it’s right up your alley since it’s all about incentives. If you’re going down that road, I’d also add at least one of the articles about “critical mass theory” written by Pamela Oliver and Gerald Marwell in the 1980s. Again, really nice examinations of the dynamics of collective action and group/organizational size from a rational choice angle.
You might also consider adding something from the late, great Roger Gould. I especially like his work on neighborhood networks and mobilization in the Paris commune, but you might like his paper about network effects and individual contributions to collective action, which uses simulation models.
brayden king
April 30, 2011 at 1:43 am
[...] collective action and organization theory – a syllabus [...]
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April 30, 2011 at 2:02 am
“collective action problem” – some of that gets covered in the Ostrom JEP piece. Though more could be included.
Here are some things that may still show up in the syllabus (related to points that you make):
Heckathorn, D. 1993. Collective action and group heterogeneity: Voluntary provision versus selective incentives, ASR.
Oliver, P. 1993. Formal models of collective action. ARS.
Also thinking about adding something different like Schelling or Hayek, some of the spontaneous order intuition that relates to these issues.
teppo
April 30, 2011 at 5:43 am
Beyond my level, so I have no criticisms pro or con, but I did put the syllabus in the folder from my Complex Organizations class (Ron Westrum). The reading list may be helpful later. It is always nice to have an expert map a field. Free though the ride may be, I appreciate it nonetheless.
Michael E. Marotta
April 30, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Now that you brought it up, I clearly see we probably should have had a fifth session. Network-inspired approaches might be too broad a literature and conceptually too distant to be simply accommodated into the already diverse sessions by adding one or two articles.
Networks & agency session should include at least Emirbayer & Goodwin 1994 “Network Analysis, Culture, & Problem of Agency” along with a selection of the different network-inspired approaches to agency & collective action (incl. Gould papers you mention — I hadn’t read them). Maybe we should have even included a brief paper by Latour (e.g. the hotel keys one).
Henri
May 1, 2011 at 5:35 pm