Transcript Movements & Organizations

Movements & Organizations –
Unraveling the relationship
Srilatha Batliwala
Scholar Associate,
Building Feminist Movements and Organizations (BFEMO) Initiative,
AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development)
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What are organizations?
• At its simplest, an organization can be defined as a group of
people joining together intentionally and creating a
structure to accomplish a common set of goals.
• In business management language, organization is defined
as “A social unit of people, systematically structured and
managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals on a
continuing basis. All organizations have a … structure that
determines relationships between functions and positions,
and …. delgates roles, responsibilities, and authority to
carry out defined tasks. Organizations are open systems in
that they affect and are affected by the environment
beyond their boundaries.”
(see http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/organization.html)
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In the social movement context:
• Organizations have most of the above
characteristics, but in addition, must be seen as
sites from which movements are built, supported,
serviced and governed – and sometimes,
destroyed!
• They are also the structures in or through which
movement leaders, activists, and members are
organized, trained, capacitated, and protected to
pursue the transformational work of their
movement
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So to sum up, social movement
organizations are:
• Structures intentionally created by a group of
people to accomplish particular social change
goals
• Sites from which movements are built,
supported, serviced and governed – they are
essential infrastructure for movements
• Spaces in which movement leaders and
activists are located, trained, capacitated, and
protected while they perform the
transformational work of movements
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Some critical facts about organizations:
• Organizations are NOT rational entities, that are
invariably logical, equitable and efficient
• They are microcosms of the social / power relations
contexts in which they are created
• Consequently, they reflect and reproduce the power
relations (inequalities, discrimination, hierarchies) of
the societies in which they are located
• So gender-biased and socially-unequal societies
produce inequitable organizations, though these
imbalances are often hidden, in what is called the
“deep structure” (the invisible structure of the
organization )
• But organizations are also sites from which power
relations are challenged, internally an externally; they
are also the only way we know to organize our
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Assumptions about power in
feminist organizations
• Because we’re all women, we don’t have to worry about power in
our organization (yes we do)
• We don’t have any hierarchy (because you have a hidden / invisible
one)
• We are all equal here (no, we’re not – there are always hierarchies
of age, ability, experience, class, education, sexual orientation, etc.
etc.)
• Formalizing decision-making power and systems is patriarchal and
bureaucratic (no, it’s often more democratic, accountable and
transparent)
• I don’t have to be accountable to you because I am accountable to
“the movement” (Which one? Where? How?)
• If you are a feminist organization, you should allow me to get away
with murder (come to work at any time I please, not meet
deadlines, spend all my time on facebook or twitter, mope instead
of work because my personal life is a mess, etc. etc.)
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What are Organizational “Deep Structures”?
 Invisible / informal decision-making processes that
influence / lead to formal organizational decisions (think
of an example)
 Informal groupings, “cliques”, that become sites of
influence or hold/exercise informal power (think of an
example)
 How different work and roles are valued and measured
 The hidden vs formal work culture – working late hours,
weekends, etc.
 Sites of building / damaging people’s credibility,
reputation, etc. (gossip, smear campaigns, etc.)
 More positively, sites where conflict / tension gets
mediated or resolved informally
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Work culture /
informal norms
Cultural distance “walked”
from personal/informal biases
to formal organizational norms
Valued work /
behaviour
Positive
influences /
personalities
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Informal power /
influence groups
Informal / invisible
decision-making
processes
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Relationship of organizations to
movements
• Organizations are not Movements, but
movements are built, supported, managed,
and sometimes destroyed, by organizations
• Movements contain two types of
organizations:
– Formal organizations (legally constituted)
– Informal organizations – not legally constituted,
but often equally powerful, and can be highly
sophisticated and organized!
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Formal Organizations
Informal Organizations
 legal entities regulated by
laws and financial
accountability
 Can be external to
movements, or created
by them, and may be
focused on:
 Not legally constituted Networks, women’s
collectives, savings/credit /
self-help groups, etc.,
 Usually an organizing
structure within movements
 May exist alongside formal
structures such as
federations, unions, etc.
 Informal doesn’t mean
simple, disorganized, less
effective, or inferior to
formal organizations!
1. Building movements –
“movement-building
organizations”
2. Serving movements –
“movement-serving
organizations”
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Roles organizations play in
movements:
Services to movement members (education,
child care, health care, etc.)
Strategic Support : ideas, political and policy
analysis, strategic advice, convening spaces
Capacity-building: leadership development,
need-based training, organizational
development, advocacy skills
Advocacy
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Key types of movementorganization relationships
– i.e.,
organizations set up by movements to
promote visibility, democratic representation,
voice, and decision-making, manage services,
and to negotiate movement members’
interests and priorities with other actors
, which stand in relationship to
the movement, may even be taking or giving
direction to it, but not created by it;
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Key types of movementorganization relationships
- with greater or lesser levels of
grassroots / constituency base.
including political parties, academic /
research groups, feminist organizations of
various kinds, other NGOs, and even UN
agencies or donors
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Movement-Organization Relationship
Dynamics
 Can be of the following types:
 Equilateral / circular / symbiotic (existing for each other)
 Paternalistic / instrumentalist / clientelist (using,
leveraging, exploiting)
 Short-term, issue or goal-specific
 Long-term, agenda-related
 Can fall anywhere on a continuum of formal to
informal.
 Is based on the strength of the “glue” that binds the
relationship (loose coalitions, tighter networks,
tightly bound alliances, etc.)
 Is often also based on the financial relationship
between the two!
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Movements & organizations
– a relational view (hypothetical)
Service
providing NGO
(health, microcredit, child
care, etc.)
Grassroots women’s
movement
Grassroots
women’s
federation
(registered)
movementbuilding NGO
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grassroots
women’s informal
collectives
National women’s
federation
(registered)
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Int’l grassroots
women’s
federation
(informal network)
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A real case:
GROOTS
Movementbuilding &
supporting
NGOS
MINE
Europe
GROOTS
KENYA
GROOTS
International
COMITE
Honduras
GRASSROOTS
WOMENS
MOVEMENT
Community
Mothers
Centers
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Formal
International
network
organization
SSP India
KDVE
Turkey
Grassroots Women’s
Groups
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Exercise:
• Pick an organization (it could be your own, or
one you know well)
• Map / Analyze the organization’s relationship’s
to a movement or movements
• Which category does it fall into in terms of its
relationship to movement building?
• How would you advise that organization to
strengthen its role in movement building?
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