The Organization of Survival: Women's and Racial-Ethnic Voluntarist and Activist Organizations, 1955-1985

Despite the centrality of formal organizations to efforts at social change, little is known about how survival prospects vary between different kinds of change-oriented organizations. In this article, I present an event-history analysis of the disbanding of national women's and minority membership organizations between 1955 and 1985. Emphasis is on differences in organizational strategy, goals, and formal structure. I argue that properties promoting organizational legitimacy confer “survival advantages” by improving potential resource acquisition. The results suggest that membership groups that follow an accepted course of action based on moderate objectives and targeted to nonpolitical arenas are relatively secure. Moreover, there is no significant difference between women's and minority organizations. As in other organizational fields, survival chances are affected by liabilities of smallness, “adolescence,” and “transformation.”