Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women

Extract

Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women. By Maryann Barakso. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 192p. $49.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

This is a case study of the National Organization for Women that explains how NOW's governance structure shaped the organization's strategy from 1966 to 2003. “Strategy” is defined as NOW's “goals and tactics it uses to pursue them” (p. 2). The author contends that current conceptual approaches to explaining organizational behavior, such as the availability of resources, or political opportunities, or “collective belief systems,” can fall short in their predictive powers. There are times, for example, when organizations appear to be irrational and self-destructive as they ignore “obvious political opportunities” or invest “resources inefficiently” (p. 6). Analyzing organizational behavior from the perspective of its “governance structure” or “political system,” however, “resolves many of these apparent inconsistencies” (p. 6). Governance structure is “simply a political system described by a group's guiding principles (its goals and values) on the one hand and its formal decision-making process on the other” (p. 1).