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- Title
National Union Governance: An Empirically-Grounded Systems Approach.
- Authors
JARLEY, PAUL; FIORITO, JACK; DELANEY, JOHN T.
- Abstract
The article focuses on national union governance. The literature on union governance has been dominated by efforts to assess and critique the degree of democracy in labor organizations for more than a century. Because democracy is assumed to be in the interest of both the organization and its members, and because governance structures are seen as static and largely homogenous, departures from ideal practice tend to be attributed to insidious forces. There is a well-known thesis, which argues that democracy inevitably becomes a casualty of leader opportunism and negative externalities associated with staff professionalization and bureaucracy. Much empirical literature on union governance can be characterized as a referendum on the validity of the hypothesis. Some see oligarchy as the norm, while others insist that democracy is alive and well. Many factors contribute to the inconclusive nature of this work, but the core problem is the elusive nature of democracy. Differing views about the most salient features and functions of democratic systems have spawned conceptual ambiguity and a variety of measures that rarely tap more than a part of the concept's likely domain. Sometimes a single "item" is used to classify unions as democratic or undemocratic.
- Subjects
INDUSTRIAL relations; LABOR unions; LABOR union democracy; POLITICAL doctrines; ORGANIZATIONAL sociology; DEMOCRACY
- Publication
Journal of Labor Research, 2000, Vol 21, Issue 2, p227
- ISSN
0195-3613
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s12122-000-1045-9