HEY, WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO …

Let’s apply a positivist twist to a federalist claim.  That is, let us take one of federation theory’s tenets, derive a hypothesis from it, and see if in reality – the real world – the hypothesis is true.  Well, I am going to hedge a bit.  My experiment will not be well controlled, but the general gist of an experiment will be present.  And, it’s not my experiment; it’s Hahric Han’s.[1]  Actually, Han’s work is not an experiment at all; it’s a qualitative study in which she conducted extensive observations and interviews within an array of formal organizations, generally professional and environmental ones.  Her specific interest was to compare the relative success in eliciting activism among these organizations’ members.  She wanted to see the ability of these organizations to get members to participate in the different organizational processes that constitute the activities of the organization, such as working phone banks or soliciting membership.

Han began by dividing general strategies of these organizations into two types.  These types were transactional mobilizing and transformational organizing.  Generally, each type views soliciting activism fundamentally different in that transactional mobilizing counts on actively identifying latent talent among the membership and approaching the members so identified to take on organizational roles – a targeted approach – and transformational organizing casts a wide net, encouraging as many members to take on roles and then spending time and resources to develop the talents of those members once they are “on the job.”  The first is more exclusive in its approach and the latter is more inclusive.  The first relies on fewer resources of time and effort while the second has relatively high upfront costs.  The hypothesis would be, following the claims of federation theory, that the second approach would, in the long run, accrue higher returns for the organization than the first.  You would have more active members, members who, in fulfilling organizational roles, perform their roles in line with organizational expectations, and an overall more vibrant organization better able to fulfill its aims and goals.  What did Han discover?

While transactional mobilizing was better in matching roles to pre-held desires of members, transformational organizers were about transforming member desires and, through the personal interaction entailed in the “training,” developed more social interaction among the membership.  Transformational organizing was characterized by many person-to-person exchanges in the form of training sessions and meetings.  This was distinguishable from the transactional mobilizing approach that left engaged members more alone in doing their jobs.  By and large, these transactional settings were in organizations more prone to having less engaged memberships, while the transformational organizing ones experienced higher engaged memberships.  Higher engagement meant higher cognitive, emotional, interdependency styled work, but did not do away with autonomous efforts strategically pursued (how federal can this get?).  A result for the organizations that adopted the transformational organizing strategy was an organization more prone to enjoy many positive qualities such as a membership sharing more leadership skills and an atmosphere more conducive to engage in collective action.  Federation theory passed this “experiment.”

How generalizable are these results?  Well, as is often the case, more work needs to be done.  This study was limited to fairly professional organizations composed of middle to upper middle income subjects.  In terms of other demographic limitations, the observations and interviews were mostly of a white sample.  And of course, if further study were to conduct a truly experimental design, then many more controls would have to be in place.  Perhaps such a study would be impractical to conduct and the more qualitative protocol employed by Han would be the way to go with a more inclusive set of organizations.  But the path of research opened by Han is worth pursuing and it would be useful to see if the insights derived, assuming they mirror this initial study, further bolster the claims of federation theory.

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[1] Han, H.  (2014).  How organizations develop activists:  Civic associations and leadership in the 21^st century.  New York, NY:  Oxford University Press.  Information reported in this posting derived from a book review by Melissa R. Michelson found in Political Science Quarterly, fall, 2015, issue.