Exploring Conditions of Cooperation and Sacrifice in Political and Social Settings

左翼长岸工会成员放弃时间和金钱，为社会正义事业而战，他们不能指望从这些事业中获得个人物质回报。是什么信念和偏好指导着这些选择，它们是如何形成的？这项调查中的因变量是组织成员对他们将为之贡献金钱和时间的目标的种类以及他们愿意参与的行动的选择。他们选择了四组配对比较的工会当地人，他们的成员在加入之前看起来在社会人口统计特征和兴趣方面相似，但研究人员假设：(1)形成不同的偏好(2)作为组织文化的结果，这种文化产生了对领导力及其目标的一致同意。“列宁问题”是如何将狭隘的唯物主义，或所谓的“经济主义”偏好排序，转变为一种包含对社会正义和对他人(包括陌生人)改善的承诺的排名。从经济主义到阶级意识的转变在美国相对罕见，在其他先进的工业民主国家中，这种转变的可能性只略高一些(尽管可能性越来越小)。但当这种转变发生时，它提供了对个人如何改变他们的偏好排名或可能形成新偏好的洞察。工会是重要的集体行动组织，工会成员之间形成了道德互惠的认同和基础。它们在成员之间产生的偏好也有所不同。通过对工会的调查，可以探索“企业工会”导致经济偏好和“社会运动工会”阶级意识和意识形态承诺改善他人和自己物质福祉的机制。研究人员感兴趣的是组织文化是如何创建和维持的，它如何以及何时产生或有同意，以及组织文化和或有同意的结合使成员能够相互学习和领导，并在此过程中形成新的偏好排名、信念和目标的机制。人们的直觉是，民主制度和做法，特别是那些促进成员参与和让领导人负责的制度和做法，是解决“列宁问题”的关键。调查人员通过整合详细的案例研究和理性选择的描述来创建分析性叙述，以提供对论点的似是而非的因果解释和评估。智力优势：该项目承诺为那些致力于开发更强大、可测试和测试的合作和牺牲模式的广泛学科的人提供理论和经验上的进步。它还旨在改进分析叙事方法，这是定性、比较和历史研究越来越重要的工具。最后，它应该让人们更清楚地了解工会和其他跨国组织。通过参加多学科会议，并将他们的发现发表在期刊和书籍上，他们希望影响社会科学家如何理解理性的、但也受到伦理、意识形态、身份认同和背景因素驱动的行为。更广泛的影响：国际和平倡议与高级顾问之间的合作加强了国际影响。还将创建和传播新的数据库；将学生纳入研究性学习；以及潜在的政策影响。作者将通过开发网站以及将数据存放在相关档案中，广泛和迅速地分享数据。本科生和研究生研究助理将很好地融入研究工作，并在可行的情况下成为作者或合著者。私人助理和高级顾问已经参与了渴望从研究结果中学习的政策界。关于工会的工作将为当前关于工会的未来、工会的最佳宪法以及腐败和不民主做法的辩论提供信息。本文提出的研究及其对民族主义、宗教和政治团体的扩展将有助于理解组织文化及其治理结构如何影响行为的偏好和行为。

Left-wing long shore union members give up time and money to fight on behalf of social justice causes from which they can expect no personal material return. What beliefs and preferences guide those choices, and how are they formed? The dependent variables in this investigation are the choices organizational members make in regard to the kinds of goals to which they will contribute their money and time and the actions in which they are willing to engage. They have selected four sets of paired comparisons of union locals whose members appear similar in sociodemographic characteristics and interests before joining but, the researchers posit: (1) develop different preferences (2) as a consequence of an organizational culture that produces contingent consent with leadership and its goals. "The Lenin Problem" is how to transform narrowly materialist or, what are labeled "economistic" preference orderings into a ranking that includes commitments to social justice and the betterment of others-including strangers. The transformation from economism to class consciousness is relatively rare in the United States and only somewhat more likely (although decreasingly so) in other advanced industrial democracies. But when this transformation takes place, it offers insight into how individuals change their preference rankings or possibly develop new preferences. Labor unions are important collective action organizations with which members form identifications and grounds for ethical reciprocity. They also vary in terms of the preferences they engender among members. Investigations of unions permit exploration of the mechanisms by which "business unions" induce economistic preferences and "social movement unions" class consciousness and ideological commitments to improving the material well-being of others as well as themselves. The researchers are interested in how an organizational culture is created and maintained, how and when it produces contingent consent, and the mechanisms by which the combination of the organizational culture and contingent consent enable members to learn from each other and leaders and, in the process, develop new preference rankings, beliefs, and goals. The intuition is that democratic institutions and practices, particularly those that facilitate member participation and that make leaders accountable, are key to solving the "Lenin Problem". The investigators create analytic narratives by integrating detailed case research and rational choice accounts to provide causal explanation and assessments of the plausibility of the argument. Intellectual merit: The project promises theoretical and empirical advances for those in a wide range of disciplines concerned with developing a more powerful, testable, and tested model of cooperation and sacrifice. It also aims at improving the analytic narrative approach, an increasingly important tool for qualitative, comparative, and historical studies. Finally, it should offer a sharper grasp of labor unions and other organizations cross-nationally. By participating in multi-disciplinary conferences and by publishing their findings in journals and as a book, they hope to influence how social scientists understand actions that are rational but also motivated by ethical, ideological, identity, and contextual considerations. Broader impact: The collaboration between the PI and the senior consultant enhances the international impact. There will also be the creation and dissemination of new data bases; integration of students into research-based learning; and potential policy impacts. The authors will share the data widely and quickly by developing web-sites as well as by depositing the data in relevant archives. Undergraduate and graduate research assistants will be well integrated into the research effort and become authors or co-authors when feasible. The PI and the senior consultant are already involved with policy communities eager to learn from the results of the research. The work on labor unions will inform current debates about the future of unions, their optimal constitution, and corrupt and undemocratic practices. The research proposed here and its extensions to nationalist, religious, and political groups will contribute to understanding how organizational cultures and their governance structures affect the preferences and behavior of behavior.