Social Movements in Organizations: Coup d'Etat, Insurgency, and Mass Movements

Organizational change and conflict are conceptualized in social movement terms. Using an analogy to social movements in the nation-state, a resource-mobilization approach is employed to examine the range of social movement phenomena in organizations. Three major forms are distinguished-the coup d'etat, bureaucratic insurgency, and mass movements-which differ in their breadth, location in the organizational social structure, goals, and tactics. Major attention is given to the occurrence of social movements in corporate hierarchical forms, although the approach is applicable also to social movement phenomena in federated and in voluntary associatins. A number of illustrative hypotheses are given.