Collective Action and Leadership

 Trade union need a leader specially to enhanced the collectivity of the members.

Few questions:

1. What is leadership?
2. How to explain the implication of leadership towards trade union?

After read the paper written by Alexander (2010), we can concluded about  the different style of leadership will create different type of collective action based on the situation or the environment for the movement.

Please read this article:

Leadership and collective action in the Egyptian trade unions

Anne Alexander 

School of Oriental and African Studies, 

University of London

Abstract

This article explores leadership and collective action in the Egyptian workers’ movement since the 1940s, with a focus on the competition between different models of leadership. It argues that leadership is a dialogical process, and distinguishes between two models of leadership – bureaucratic and democratic – which sit at opposite ends of a spectrum of reciprocity between ‘leaders’ and ‘led’. Although such developments are as yet embryonic, the emergence of a democratic model of union leadership, rooted in the particular forms of collective action adopted by Egyptian workers during the post-2006 strike wave, presents the most significant challenge to the dominance of the bureaucratic model since the creation of the current union federation in the 1950s.

Source: Work, employment and society Copyright © The Author(s) 2010, Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav BSA Publications Ltd® Volume 24(2): 241–259 [DOI: 10.1177/0950017010362144

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