Workplace Networks and the Dynamics of Worker Organizing

A rich literature has established the importance of social networks for explaining participation in contentious politics but has typically treated networks as existing outside the awareness or influence of movement actors themselves. A separate literature has long recognized the importance of “organizing” for successful collective action but has not conceived of organizing in relation to network structure. Bridging these literatures, we develop the concept of “network-driven organizing” (NDO), where organizers allocate relational activity based on perceived social network structure. Using the case of labor organizers in a campaign at Walmart, we analyze more than 80,000 unstructured organizer field notes from almost 120 store-level campaigns between 2010 and 2015 and find that our measure of NDO is positively and robustly correlated with campaign success; going from 0 to 1 on the measure of NDO more than doubles the number of cards signed. We discuss the implications of our results in light of sociological theories of action and the practice of movement organizing.