Social Movement Organizations: Growth, Decay and Change*

Abstract

The classical approach to the study of the transformation of social movements (here called the Weber-Michels model) predicts that a movement organization will become more conservative and that its goals will be displaced in favor of organizational maintenance. Using organizational and incentive analysis, the classical approach is subsumed under a more general set of concepts which lead to predictions about growth and change. The movement organization responds to the ebb and flow of sentiment in the larger society, to its relations with other movement organizations and to success or failure. Leadership and schismogenetic tendencies affect the nature and vicissitudes of its goals, and the recruitment and commitment of members. Neither greater conservatism nor organizational maintenance are iron laws.

*

This paper is a revised version of a paper originally read at the annual meeting of the Institute for Social Research, Chicago, May 1964. It grew out of courses taught jointly by the senior author with David Street and, at an earlier time, Arthur Stinchcombe. It also grew out of a study of change in the Young Men's Christian Association of Metropolitan Chicago supported by the National Institutes of Health (GM-10777) USPHS. We have benefited greatly from critical readings by Mike Muench, Norman Miller, Joseph Gusfield, Eugene Weinstein and Thomas Smith.