Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Is Group Size, a major determinant for Collective Action to succeed?

During periods of downturn when countable top giant bankers failed, they could collectively bargain with their respective federal governments and succeed with their objectives. The collective actions on large scale like French Revolution, American Revolution and Non co-operation Movement were also successful in bringing out the intended change. According to Oslon's logic of collective action, smaller groups will generally be more successful than large ones. So, does it mean that mass collective actions' results do not fulfill the original objectives?Is it only partially fulfilled?

S.Manikandan Sanjive (30037)

4 comments:

Shashvat Singh said...

You have cited the examples of successful French and American Revolutions and non co-operation movement in India. These movements were on a large scale and can be regarded as successful ones. So, it may not always be correct to say that smaller groups are more successful than the larger ones. What is important is their objectives must agree to aspirations of the majority.

SHASHVAT SINGH (30044)

Manikandan Sanjive S (30037) said...

@ shasvat:
yes shasvat, i agree with you and without objective collective action has no utility. What's my point of concern is the group size. Irrespective of the group size collective actions have become successful. So according to 'logic of collective action' more collective action occurs in smaller groups leading to success of the same. So does it mean that the magnitude of success of larger groups is low..? i could not make out.

S.Manikandan Sanjive (30037)

Rajnish 30096 said...

Every Collective action starts with a few people. Once people start visualising the benefits, more people join the collective action. This cycle keeps on going until the end result is achieved or people no longer see the benefit to join the collective action.
Success will not only depend on the size but can depend on many factors.
A good example may be the 1857 Sepoy Revolt which was not successful eventhough having the size advantage.

Surabhi (30049) said...

Continuing on Rajnish’s point, besides individualistic behavior, people also exhibit social behavior. They often join a collective because of the social pressure exerted, especially in case of close-knit communities when expectation from the larger group forces one to join a collective even if one isn’t keen or doesn’t see much benefit. This pressure on those outside the collective grows, as the collective grows and they growingly become a minority. Thus, these individuals, don’t contribute much and just add to the mismanagement associated with any large scale initiative facing diseconomies of scale. Thus, very large collectives may not work well. (30049)