PALGRAVE HANDBOOK OF VOLUNTEERING, CIVIC PARTICIPATION, AND NONPROFIT ASSOCIATIONS-2016
Editors-in-Chief: Prof. David Horton Smith, Boston College, USA;
National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Russia;
University of East Anglia, UK; Tsinghua University, China.
Prof. Robert A. Stebbins, University of Calgary, Canada.
Managing Editor: Dr. Jurgen Grotz, University of East Anglia, UK.]
Chapter 2: Theories of Associations and Volunteering
David Horton Smith (USA), with Stijn Van Puyvelde (Belgium).
A. INTRODUCTION
This chapter reviews key theories relevant to the other chapters. We distinguish among Macro-Theories that deal with the nature of the nonprofit sector as a whole, Meso-Theories that explain aspects of nonprofit associations as organizations, and Micro-Theories that explain membership and participation by individuals as volunteers or that explain pro-social behavior more generally. We discuss (I) the nonprofit sector and the incidence-prevalence of associations within it; (II) conventional all-volunteer associations, distinguishing local (grassroots) associations from supra-local associations (state/province, regional, national, and transnational associations); (III) conventional paid-staff associations; (IV) deviant voluntary associations (DVAs); (V) membership, civic participation, and volunteering by individuals; (VI) general human behavior by individuals, with applications to sociality and association volunteering; and (VII) prospects of developing a general theory of nonprofit sector phenomena.
B. DEFINITIONS
This chapter accepts the definitions of concepts and terms in the Handbook Appendix. The key definition for the entire Handbook is that an association is “A relatively formally structured nonprofit group that depends mainly on volunteer members for participation and activity and that primarily seeks member benefits, even if it may also seek some public benefits” (see Appendix, pp. 2384-2385). In addition, associations use the associational form of organization, defined (ibid. pp. 2385-2386) as “a manner of operating a group that usually involves having official members who are mostly volunteers, some elected formal nonprofit leaders, often a board of directors with policy control, financial support mainly from required annual dues (but may also include donations, fees and occasionally grants), often one or more committees as part of the leadership, and regular face-to-face meetings attended by active official members and informal participants.”
In large, supra-local associations, the face-to-face meetings may be infrequent, as in annual conferences or less frequent meetings. Telephone and computer-mediated conference calls as virtual meetings are increasingly replacing face-to-face (in-person, real) meetings, especially for leaders of supra-local associations.
In addition, we note that when analyzing nonprofit associations, one must distinguish all-volunteer associations from paid-staff associations, where the latter involve one or more paid staff individuals. Local all-volunteer associations, also known as grassroots association s, are locally based, significantly autonomous, volunteer-run, formal nonprofit groups that use the associational form of organization (Smith 2000:ix). Supra-local all-volunteer associations are similar to grassroots associations, except for having a larger territorial base or scope. Such associations are one kind of supra-local nonprofit group, defined by Smith, Stebbins, and Dover (2006:223) as a “nonprofit group that serves a territory larger than a local community, such as a state, province, region, or nation” or a world region or the whole world.
We further distinguish conventional, mainstream associations from unconventional, fundamentally deviant association s. Deviant voluntary associations (DVAs) are defined as local or supra-local voluntary associations having one or more goals, or normative means of achieving one or more goals, that violate current moral standards and norms of the surrounding society. For additional definitions of terms and concepts, see the Handbook Appendix and Smith et al. (2006).
In addition, voluntary associations need to be distinguished carefully from Volunteer Service Programs (SVPs; Smith 2015b; see also Handbook Chapter 15). Where associations are relatively or completely independent collective entities (groups or organizations), VSPs as collective entities are always dependent on some larger, parent organization, which effectively owns them. Where associations are nearly always parts of the nonprofit sector, VSPs by contrast are usually parts of that sector but may instead be parts (actually departments) of businesses (e.g., a volunteer program in a for-profit hospital) or government agencies (e.g., a volunteer program in a government operated and owned national park). This distinction between associations and VSPs becomes especially important when we consider volunteering and volunteers, who can participate in either kind of context. Although there are similarities between associational and service program volunteers, there are also important differences (see Chapters 15 and 16).
Volunteering is defined in the Appendix, based on Smith et al. (2006), but here is a more recent, alternative definition by Smith (2016a), based partly on Cnaan (2004) and Cnaan and Park (2016). “Volunteering is (a) a noncompulsory, voluntary (free will) activity or effort that is (b) directed by an individual toward a person, people, or situations outside one’s household or close family that is (c) intended to be beneficial to another person or persons, group/organization, the local community, the larger society, and/or the ecosystem at some scale of magnitude, (d) with the activity being unpaid (unremunerated) financially or in-kind to the full, current, market value of the activity performed, leaving a net cost to the volunteer.”
Definitions of terms and concepts are an important part of theory. There have been very few published attempts to define the full range of terms and concepts in the field of voluntaristics or altruistics (see Smith 2013 for the introduction of these terms), as a new way to refer to the entire field of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Research using a single word, as for nearly all academic disciplines. Salamon (1997) made a relatively early attempt at defining terms, but we do not know how many terms/concepts were defined there. The next major attempt was by the Donors Forum of Chicago, published in Volume 2 of the three-volume encyclopedia edited by Burlingame (2004:533-541). This set of 96 concepts/terms focuses entirely on philanthropy and foundations. Hence, terms like associations, volunteer, and volunteering are excluded.
Anheier and List (2005) made a more comprehensive attempt the next year. This volume had extensive inputs from advisory committees and contributors from many nations (see pages vii to x). The resulting Dictionary defined “about 348 conceptual terms” (page xiv). Nevertheless, no references are given to lodge the definitions in the research and theory of our field. Instead, a brief, select bibliography of 43 items is presented at the end of the book.
By far the most comprehensive document is A Dictionary of Nonprofit Terms & Concepts (Smith et al. 2006). This reference work defines 1,212 terms and concepts found to be useful in past research and theory on the nonprofit sector, with cross-references to an additional 555 terms (for a total of 1,767 terms included). The entries reflect the importance of associations, citizen participation, philanthropy, voluntary action, nonprofit management, volunteering, volunteer administration, leisure, and political activities of nonprofits. They also reflect a concern for the wider range of useful general concepts in theory and research that bear on the nonprofit sector and its manifestations in the United States and elsewhere. This dictionary supplies some of the necessary foundational work needed for a general theory of the nonprofit sector (see the book review by Jeavons 2008).
C. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The relevant theories of associations, civic participation, and volunteering have generally been recent in historical origin. Those discussed here have all been constructed since approximately 1950, and most have appeared only in the past couple of decades. By theory, we mean more than just general or specific talk or writing about a subject. We refer to a clear set of five or more propositions about how some phenomenon occurs or operates. Similar but smaller sets of propositions (one to four) we will term models.
D. KEY ISSUES:
(I) MACRO-THEORIES: THE NONPROFIT SECTOR AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS
1. Nonprofit sector nature, origins, and structure:
Anheier (2005) offers an overview of various economic, sociological, and political science approaches that address the origins of the nonprofit sector. From an economic perspective, a number of demand and supply theories have been developed to explain the existence of nonprofit organizations in general, including the contract or market failure theory, the public goods or government failure theory, entrepreneurship theories, and stakeholder theories (see also, Anheier and Ben-Ner 2003). In contrast to these economic approaches, the interdependence or voluntary failure theory developed by Salamon (1987, 1995) argues that the relationship between the nonprofit sector and the government is not one of conflict or competition, but rather one of partnerships and extensive government support to nonprofit organizations. More specifically, given that voluntary action may be limited, sporadic, unorganized, and inefficient, there also exists ‘voluntary failure’ besides market and governmental failure. As a consequence the government may intervene by providing, for example, a more stable stream of resources.
In addition, the social origins theory, developed by Salamon and Anheier (1998), argues that cross-national variations in size and composition of the nonprofit sector actually depend on the type of nonprofit regime in each nation. In particular, they distinguish four types of nonprofit regimes (liberal, social democratic, corporatist, and statist) based on two key dimensions: extent of governmental social welfare spending and economic scale of the nonprofit sector. Each type reflects a particular constellation of social factors, policies, and policy-making, which leads to the development of a certain form of nonprofit sector. In sum, by taking a comparative-historical approach, the authors move away from the emphasis on microeconomic models and identify circumstances in which cooperative nonprofit-state relationships are most likely to emerge (Anheier 2005).
Finally, Smith has been developing and testing for 40 years a theory of association prevalence across territories using different data sets and territorial levels of analysis (Smith 1973, 2011, 2013a; Smith and Baldwin 1983, 1990; Smith and Shen 2002). Each of these publications reports analyses that explain substantial amounts of the variance in association prevalence, unlike many other theories, including that of Salamon and Anheier (1998) who provide no results from a multiple regression analysis. The most succinct version of Smith’s general theory of voluntary association prevalence (Smith and Shen 2002) sets out three broad types of societal factors: (1) societal background factors (greater population size and more favorable historical-cultural-environmental interface), (2) aspects of basic societal structure (more permissive political control, greater modernization, more developed organizational field, and greater ethno-religious heterogeneity), and (3) societal mobilization factors (aggregate resource mobilization for associations and aggregate social cohesion). Schofer and Longhofer (2011) later developed and tested a similar theory (they added some variables and omitted others). Both the latter research and that of Smith and Shen (2002) explained from 70 to 89 percent of the variance in association prevalence. None of the other theories mentioned above even comes close to this level of successful explanation/prediction.
2. Nonprofit sector’s relationship to the other sectors in society:
The relationship of the nonprofit sector to other societal sectors has been studied and discussed by various scholars. First of all, Smith (1991) suggested that the nonprofit sector really consists of two distinct subsectors, or that these two subsectors can be seen as the fourth and fifth sectors of society: (1) the member-benefit sector and (2) the non-member benefit sector. The member-benefit sector consists mainly of nonprofit associations (Smith 2015a), while the non-member-benefit sector consists mainly of nonprofit agencies (Smith 2015b). Smith argues that these two sectors operate very differently, with their constituent groups/organizations usually having internally focused vs. externally focused goals.
Chapter 46 of this Handbook, by Wiarda et al.,discusses at length the relationship of the nonprofit sector, particularly associations, to the larger political regime structure of a society (the government, public, or statutory sector). Pluralism, corporatism, and authoritarianism are three principal types of such relationships. In Chapter 8, Billis discusses differences among three sectors he identifies, including the associational sector and their interrelationships.
Non-Profit Organization (NPO) Incidence-Prevalence-Exit Rates
(a) Major perspectives on NPO prevalence:
Three broad theoretical perspectives have been used to explain the existence of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in general and the variations in size of the nonprofit sector across different geographical areas: demand theories, supply theories, and theories of social structure.
(i) Demand theories suggest that nonprofit organizations arise in the economy to correct market and governmental failures. In brief, demand for nonprofit organizations exists because they can be entrusted to provide collective goods in case of demand heterogeneity and limited governmental supply and to guarantee the quality of services in case of information asymmetry (Anheier 2005; Hansmann 1987).
(ii) Supply theories argue that nonprofit organizations are typically formed by entrepreneurs who want to exercise control over the organization and maximize non-monetary returns (Anheier 2005; Badelt 1997).
(iii) Social structure theories suggest that variations in nonprofit sector size can be explained by factors such as population size, employment structure, political culture, and social cohesion (Corbin 1999; Grønbjerg and Paarlberg 2001; Smith and Baldwin 1983).
(b) Complications in NPO prevalence explanations:
As consumers may demand goods and services from nonprofit organizations for the same reason that entrepreneurs form a nonprofit firm, it may be necessary, when examining differences in nonprofit sector size, to analyze demand and supply factors simultaneously (Ben-Ner and Van Hoomissen 1991; Marcuello 1998). Socio-economic characteristics that may simultaneously affect demand for and supply of nonprofit organizations include income, education, and population heterogeneity (poverty, unemployment, and racial and religious diversity in the population). For example, a higher income and higher level of education may not only imply less demand for nonprofit organizations (higher capability to choose a reliable for-profit provider in case of information asymmetry), but also greater supply of nonprofit organizations (higher capability to create a nonprofit firm).
4. Association Incidence-Prevalence-Exit Rates
A detailed discussion of the topic of this sub-section is available in Chapter 50, which is mainly concerned with this issue. Theoretical and empirical literature on voluntary association prevalence has mainly focused on societal factors to explain differences in prevalence rates. The simplest summary is the following: Two key and substantially overlapping theories of association prevalence have been tested on data for one-third to two-thirds of the nations in the world (Schofer and Longhofer 2011; Smith and Shen 2002). Key factors leading to greater association prevalence in a nation were population size, educational levels, wealth levels (GDP per capita), civil liberties/democracy, non-associational organizational field, resource organizations/mobilization for associations, historical interface/momentum, state expansion, and political instability, Both were able to explain large amounts of the variance (70-89 percent of the R2) in prevalence, adjusting for statistical degrees of freedom. Other studies by Smith and associates at the societal and territorial levels (states/provinces, municipalities) have also born fruit (Smith 1973, 2011, 2013a; Smith and Baldwin 1983, 1990), as have studies by others at the county and municipality levels (e.g., Lincoln 1977; Wollebæk 2010). Nonetheless, there are few models or theories of association incidence (formation) or exit (death) rates.
(II) MESO-THEORIES: ALL-VOLUNTEER CONVENTIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
Organization theorists and researchers have largely ignored voluntary associations. The extensive review of the organizational research literature by Tolbert and Hall (2010) continues in its 10th edition to virtually ignore about 50 million associations in the world, as estimated by Smith (2014b) from many empirical studies. In addition, handbooks and encyclopedias on nonprofit organization theory and research have only devoted a tiny amount of their space to nonprofit associations (Anheier 2005; Anheier, Toepler, and List 2010; Burlingame 2004; Powell and Steinberg 2006). Although some general theory about associations exists (Knoke 1990; Smith 2000; Smith 2016b, 2016d), a review of the research literature on membership associations (Tschirhart 2006) concluded that association research remains a largely unintegrated set of findings needing a more comprehensive theory.
Therefore, in this section, we discuss some economic theories of non-profit organizations (see, for example, Hansmann 1987) to determine whether the propositions and empirical findings of these theories can be useful in analyses of non-profit associations. In particular, we investigate how theories about the objectives, formation, and prevalence of voluntary associations fit the broader economic theories of non-profit organizations.
The topic of this sub-section is dealt with at length in Handbook Chapter 37. In summary here we may say that there has been only a modest amount of research on this subject and few attempts to develop related theories.
In his book Grassroots Associations, Smith (2000; see also Smith 2004, 2010a, 2010b, 2015a) constructed the first comprehensive general theory of associations, with a central focus on Grassroots Associations (GAs). Smith’s theory is the first to fill the large theory gap identified by Knoke (1986:2) in his review of research and theory on associations: “Put bluntly, association research remains a largely unintegrated set of disparate findings, in dire need of a compelling theory to force greater coherence upon the enterprise.” Tschirhart (2006:536) has erroneously stated that, “such earlier assessments still hold today.” Her review of research on associations was not comprehnsive in its coverage and depth of understanding of the solid theoretical progress made in the past few decades.
Smith’s (2000) theory of Grassroots Associations (GAs) covers several major areas of structure and process presented here as selected propositions from each chapter of Part II. Smith derived the theory inductively by reading about 2,000 published books and articles and citing 948. He also drew on 60 years of participant observation experience in a wide variety of GAs in his life.
(a) Founder choices
Table 3.1(Smith 2000:89) indicates that GAs (and hence all-volunteer associations in general) tend to have the following characteristics:
· located in the Voluntary Nonprofit Sector (VNPS),
· mostly focus on member benefits in their goals,
· have an informal group style of operation and structure,
· are high in operational autonomy relative to external organizations,
· are moderate in their local territorial scope of activity and membership base (supra-local associations would have correspondingly different and larger territorial scope),
· have diffuse goals,
· have conventional (not unconventional, deviant) goals,
· use conventional means to achieve them, and
· have some socio-demographic membership criteria (requirements for entry).
(b) Ideology and incentives:
Table 4.1 (Smith 2000:105) indicates that GAs (and hence all-volunteer associations in general)tend to have the following characteristics:
· moderate conventional ideology (while DVAs tend to have strong ideologies),
· strong sociability incentives for members,
· similarly strong purposive incentives (satisfactions from pursing valued goals),
· similarly strong service incentives (satisfactions from helping others),
· moderate informational incentives (learning new information),
· moderate developmental incentives (personal growth),
· sometimes strong other incentives for members, but
· usually weak utilitarian (economic) incentives and
· weak other work organization incentives.
(c) Structure
Table 5.1 (Smith 2000:124) indicates that GAs (and hence all-volunteer associations in general) tend to have the following characteristics:
· a small locality base/territory (or a larger one, in Supra-Local All-Volunteer Associations),
· substantial autonomy in their structure,
· operate mainly with volunteer work/labor (no paid employees),
· have mainly informal tax exemptions (not registered with the national Internal Revenue Service in the USA, for example),
· are only informally organized (not incorporated with the government as legal persons),
· practice significant internal democracy (members elect top leaders),
· have mainly member-benefit goals (rather than goals to benefit non-members and/or the general public),
· are more likely to be polymorphic (branches of some larger association),
· have substantial socio-demographic homogeneity of members, and
· have few economic resources of money or personnel.
(d) Processes and operations
Table 6.1 (Smith 2000:147) indicates that GAs (and hence all-volunteer associations in general) tend to have the following characteristics:
· evening and weekend timing of meetings, events, and other activities;
· intermittent activities (not continuous activities, such as daily activity from 9AM to 5PM Monday through Friday in the USA);
· low professionalism of both leaders and members;
· low [usually no] external funding from major gifts/donors, grants, or contracts;
· broad, intermittent political activity, if any [unless they have explicit political goals];
· low external power in their communities;
· only low to moderate prestige locally as groups/organizations;
· more likely to be fundamentally deviant or to have deviant leaders/members temporarily;
· distinctive group action norms;
· do mainly informal (personal) recruitment;
· do informal socialization of new members (not formal training);
· members leave mainly by voluntary termination (not ejected or fired/sacked by the group);
· do low or moderate horizontal collaboration with external groups/organizations, if any;
· younger age as groups (low in longevity or life span of group).
(e) Leadership and group environment
Table 7.1 (Smith 2000:165) indicates that GAs (and hence all-volunteer associations in general) tend to have the following characteristics:
· require leadership as essential to their existence, even if collective/egalitarian leadership,
· elect their top leaders (rather than appointing them, except for lower level leaders like committee chairs and committee members),
· volunteer (not paid) leaders,
· leaders who practice low professionalism (enjoying their leisure, rather than making a job of it),
· higher status males as leaders in all-male or mixed gender groups,
· leaders who emphasize consideration (personal relationships and kindness),
· leaders who do not supervise their followers or sub-leaders closely (instrumental accomplishments are usually secondary to positive and close interpersonal relationships),
· do only loose and vague priority setting for the group,
· acquire funds and new members in a routine manner (rather than pursue these strategically),
· obtain leaders only from among existing members (not selected from outside the group),
· low levels of selectivity for leaders (few requirements, beyond willingness to serve and significant time spent in the group,
· more leader quality problems (because of low leader selectivity), and
· few [or no] relations with the government at any territorial level, especially for local (vs. supra-local) associations.
(f) Life cycle changes
The Conclusion of Chapter 8 (Smith 2000:192-193) indicates that, as GAs (and hence all-volunteer associations in general) get older and pass through their life cycle, they tend to have the following characteristics:
· increase in size and complexity, but
· still often resist increasing complexity (see Handbook Chapter 40),
· a greater number and proportion of leaders,
· acquire paid staff with age (may become paid-staff associations),
· acquire greater assets and income/revenue,
· achieve greater good will and public recognition,
· more collaboration and have more other relationships with other groups/organizations,
· more external fund-raising (seek large donations/gifts, grants, and contracts from external persons and organizations),
· more likely to change their group goals (goal succession),
· more likely to displace their original goals in favor of sheer group maintenance/ survival/ growth (goal displacement), and
· more likely to survive (be active) at any subsequent time as they continue to live.
(g) Impact and effectiveness
Table 9.1 ((Smith 2000:212) indicates that GAs (and hence all-volunteer associations in general) tend to have the following characteristics:
· to provide their members with a high level of felt social support,
· provide members with high levels of felt information gained,
· provide members with high levels of felt socio-political activation,
· provide only moderate external political influence (if any),
· provide members with more economically valuable contacts (social capital),
· provide members with greater happiness/satisfaction,
· provide members with better health, and
· support the economic system of their society.
Smith has also written several other articles that analyze empirical data, or theorize based on literature reviews, the aspects/factors for GAs (and hence All-Volunteer Associations in general) that promote greater impact and effectiveness (Smith 1985, 1986, 1990, 1997a, 1997b, 1999a, 1999b, 2015a; Smith, with Eng and Albertson 2015; Smith and Shen 1996; Smith and Smith 1979a, 1979b, 1979c).
III. MESO-THEORIES: PAID-STAFF CONVENTIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
In this section we discuss the paid-staff association, which is a special form of nonprofit organization that has natural persons or organizational representatives as members, uses the associational form of organization, and relies on both volunteers and paid staff to reach organizational goals (Smith 2010b). However, the theoretical literature on structures and processes in this type of associations is most limited, compared with that on general nonprofit organizations (meaning nonprofit agencies) and voluntary associations. The main goal of this sub-section is therefore to identify the key governance issues, tensions, structures, and processes in paid-staff associations. For a detailed discussion of internal structures and processes in all association types and a multi-theoretical approach to associational governance, including the governance of paid-staff associations and association leadership, see Handbook Chapters 35 and 36.
By reviewing some main theoretical perspectives on corporate governance and discussing how they can be usefully extended to analyze association governance, Cornforth (2004) identifies three governance tensions that boards of membership associations face. First, tension exists between representative and expert boards. Should board members act as representatives for particular membership groups or as experts that use their professional expertise and skills to improve the performance of the association? Second, tension arises over conformance and performance board roles. Whereas the conformance role accentuates the importance of monitoring associational performance and being accountable to external stakeholders, the performance role emphasizes the importance of board involvement in the association’s strategy and top management decisions. Since these roles require board members to behave in different ways, how much attention should boards of associations pay to these contrasting roles?
Moreover, is it possible to combine these roles without experiencing difficulties or compromising one of them? Third, there is also a tension between monitoring and controlling managers, on the one hand, and acting as a partner to them and supporting them, on the other hand. For example, if control is excessive, intrinsic motivation may be crowded out. Too little control, however, may increased opportunism. Since boards of associations may experience pressure to simultaneously control and coach their managers, to what extent should they perform each function to improve associational performance?
Although association board members are typically elected from within the membership, boards of associations are not without means to mitigate the aforementioned governance tensions (Cornforth 2004:21-26). In sum, boards can
(1) improve the board’s competency by improving the quality of training and support available to both current and potential board members, and by using co-options to fill gaps in skills and experience among current board members,
(2) focus their attention on important board processes, such as the way in which longer-term issues are given priority on the board’s agenda, and
(3) regularly review their relationships with the management of the association by discussing and negotiating roles and responsibilities and by analyzing how well they are working together to improve the performance of the association. As such, governance issues related to board composition, board roles, and internal structures and processes in paid-staff associations may at least be partially resolved.
Spear (2004), in contrast, investigates member influence and managerial power in membership associations. First, in examining the extent of member influence over the board, he considers five issues: (1) proportion of users/consumers with member rights, (2) member participation, (3) effects of association size and age on member participation, (4) coalition formation among members, and (5) board functioning. Second, in exploring managerial power in membership associations, he analyzes a number of internal factors (reward structures, information systems, and monitoring), and a number of external factors (market for corporate control, legislation and regulatory frameworks protecting members’ interests, and the professionalization of the managerial labor market) that influence associational governance. In sum, he finds that low member participation, lack of coalition formation, and insufficient board control result in weak member control. This situation is exacerbated by the absence of an external market for corporate control and weak legislation for protecting member rights, although the latter may vary from country to country. Consequently, he argues that (a) there are serious questions about the extent to which board members of paid-staff associations may be considered representative, and that (b) the managers of paid-staff associations may have more power than their counterparts in similar-sized private sector organizations. To improve this situation, a number of countervailing measures are provided that reduce managerial power and develop good board practices in nonprofit associations. These include (1) regulation or voluntary self-regulation to improve governance standards, (2) improving the board’s competency through increased member participation and training of board members, and (3) using effective incentive structures for managers (Spear 2004:54-55).
IV. MESO-THEORIES: DEVIANT VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS (DVAs)
The general study of DVAs is in its infancy, particularly in regard to theory, but also in regard to systematic comparative study. There are many case studies of DVAs (see references in Smith 2015a; Smith and Stebbins 2015a) by historians, anthropologists, and other social scientists. However, there have been very few attempts to develop theories or models explaining how DVAs of specific types or DVAs in general function.
One exception to the foregoing generalization is theory about social movements and their constituent social movement organizations (SMOs), which are usually DVAs. Many scholars have developed with varying degrees of generality models and theories of social movements and SMOs in the past half-century (Buechler 2011; Gamson 1990; Laraña, Johnston, and Gusfield 1994; Lofland 1996; McAdam and Snow 1997; Morris and Mueller 1992; Snow, Soule, and Kriesi 2004; Zald and McCarthy 1987). We will consider only two examples here.
(a) Zald and Ash-Garner theory of SMOs:
Zald and Ash (1966; in slightly revised form as Zald and Garner 1987) presented a theory of SMO growth, decay, and change with 17 propositions. This was unusual, because it seems to be the first orderly and extensive set of propositions about SMOs as DVAs ever to be published. To give a flavor of their theory, consider these sample propositions:
(i) “Proposition 5: [SMOs] with relatively specific goals are more likely to vanish following success than [SMOs] with broad general goals” (Zald and Garner 1987:130).
(ii) “Proposition 8: A becalmed [SMO] is most likely to follow the Weber-Michels model [of goal displacement, oligarchy, and organizational maintenance] because its dependence on and control of material incentives allows oligarchization and conservatism to take place” (Zald and Garner 1987:131).
(iii) “Proposition 13: Exclusive [SMOs] are more likely than inclusive [SMOs] to be beset by schisms” (Zald and Garner 1987:135).
(b) Gamson theory of effective SMOs:
Gamson (1990[1975]) presented and tested a general theory of SMO effectiveness and impact, based on careful coding of published qualitative material describing a random sample of 53 U.S. SMOs from 1800 to 1945. He did not state all his propositions as such, but they can be inferred from hypotheses in his text and graphs reporting data testing them. For present purposes, we focus on his dependent variable new advantages as the outcome/impact criterion. Here are a few of the propositions, with statements of the propositions and numbering by the present first author. Note that all of these might be true of allDVAs and perhaps of all groups in general:
(i) Proposition 2: SMOs that focus mainly or solely on a single issue tend to achieve more new advantages than multiple-issue SMOs (Gamson 1990:46).
(ii) Proposition 8: SMOs that use selective incentives (special inducements or constraints for members only) to recruit and retain members tend to achieve more new advantages than SMOs that rely only on solidarity incentives, such as appeals to values or group loyalty (Gamson 1990:69).
(iii) Proposition 15: SMOs that have both more bureaucratic structure (written Constitution or equivalent, formal list of members, three or more levels of internal divisions/levels) and also greater centralization of power/authority tend to achieve more new advantages than SMOs that are less formally organized (Gamson 1990:91-95).
(iv) Proposition 17: SMOs that avoid factionalism (serious internal splits) tend to achieve more new advantages than SMOs that experience factionalism (Gamson 1990:105).
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