Organizational Diversity, Vitality and Outcomes in the Civil Rights Movement

Abstract

Sociologists often assert, but rarely test, the claim that organizational diversity benefits social movements by invigorating movement vitality and facilitating success. Our analysis of black civil rights organizations shows that goal and tactical diversity of a social movement is largely afunction of organizational density, level of resources available to the movement, and the number ofprotests initiated by the movement. Goal diversity increases the rate of protest, whereas tactical diversity increases the likelihood of achieving a desired policy outcome. These findings advance our understanding of social movements and organizations by illuminating how organizational dynamics of a social movement might change over time, and in turn how this change might affect the vitality and desired outcomes of social movements.

Replacing Members with Managers? Mutualism among Membership and Nonmembership Advocacy Organizations in the United States

“…A key theoretical issue in understanding these macro-organizational dynamics regards mutual cooperation and division of labor within diverse organizational populations (Minkoff 1995(Minkoff , 1997Olzak and Ryo 2007;Soule and King 2008). As Levitsky (2007) points out, while organizational theorists have recognized the potential for organizational populations to have either competitive or cooperative interorganizational relations, scholars of social movements and advocacy have often overlooked the mutual support that diverse organizations provide to one another, focusing instead on how organizations compete over such scarce resources as funding, constituent support and effort, and public attention.…”

Unintended Consequences of Repression: Alliance Formation in South Korea's Democracy Movement (1970-1979)

“…1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 Source: Stanford Korea Democracy Project Events Dataset (1970Dataset ( -1979 Control Variables In addition to variables measuring institutional and situational repression, the models control for the number of social groups participating in protest events through a diversity measure: DIVERSITY_GROUP. The diversity of social groups participating in protest is calculated using the Simpson Diversity Index (Olzak and Ryo 2007). It is a proportional statistic and values range between 0 (no diversity, only one group participating in that month) and 1 (only a theoretical possibility of complete diversity).…”

How Do Voluntary Organizations Foster Protest? The Role of Organizational Involvement on Individual Protest Participation

“…I study participation in collective protest—that is, marches or demonstrations in public places—because protest, “the classical modular form of collective action” (Tarrow [1994] 1998:100), is central for understanding contemporary movements pursuing very diverse goals and ideologies (McCarthy and McPhail 1998; Walgrave and Verhulst 2009). As Olzak and Ryo (2007:1566) assert, “Protest ensures continued public attention on issues that concern the movement's constituents, and thus it constitutes an important indicator of movement strength.” Next I define four dimensions of organizational involvement and discuss how they could affect members' protest participation chances. These dimensions appear in the social movement and civic engagement literature, but typically not as connected dimensions within a single framework—as I do here.…”