Resources and Resourcefulness: Strategic Capacity in the Unionization of California Agriculture, 1959-1966
Open accessAbstract
Why did the insurgent United Farm Workers (UFW) succeed while its better-resourced rival-the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO (AWOC)-failed? Explanations relying on altered political opportunity structures or resources, accounts of Cesar Chavez's charismatic leadership, or descriptions of UFW strategy fail to identify mechanisms for creating effective strategy. By analyzing leadership, organizational influences on actors' choices, and their interaction within the environment, this study shows that greater access to salient information, heuristic facility, and motivation generated more effective strategy. Differences in "strategic capacity" can explain how resourcefulness can compensate for lack of resources, why some new organizations can overcome the "liability of newness," and how reorganizational "focal" moments may lead to a social movement.
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Highly committed activists play a critical role in volunteer-led organizations.
“Highlycommitted activists play a critical role in volunteer-led organizations (McCarthy and Wolfson 1996;Ganz 2000;Smith 2000;Andrews 2004).”
From Leadership, Membership, and Voice: Civic Associations That Work (2010) · cites this paper as Ganz 2000
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References 148 · Cited by 799
- Authors
- Ganz, M.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Ganz, Marshall
- Venue
- American Journal of Sociology
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2000-01
- Volume
- 105
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1003-1062
- ISSN
- 0002-9602 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5390
- OpenAlex
- W1815794044
- Cited by
- 799
- References
- 148
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 32 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 52 · 2022: 58 · 2021: 39 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 55 · 2018: 41 · 2017: 29 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 34 · 2014: 30 · 2013: 42 · 2012: 39
- FWCI
- 72.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- nrs.harvard.edu
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- American Journal of Sociology (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Labor Movements and Unions
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management and Organizational Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Movements and Cultural Identity
- Keywords
- United Farm Workers, labor unionization, strategic capacity, resourcefulness, California agriculture, Cesar Chavez, political opportunity structure, social movements, organizational strategy, access to information, motivation, liability of newness, restructuring
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