Do Union Mergers Affect the Members? Short- and Long-term Effects on Attitudes and Behaviour

Magnus Sverke, Gary N. Chaison and Anders Sjöberg
Additional contact information
Magnus Sverke: Stockholm University
Gary N. Chaison: Clark University, Massachusetts
Anders Sjöberg: Psykologiförlaget AB

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2004, vol. 25, issue 1, 103-124

Abstract: Although union mergers have occurred since the earliest stages of unionization, few attempts have been made to uncover the psychological effects of merger on member attitudes and behaviour. The literature suggests that the intended results of a merger (e.g. economies of scale, reduced jurisdictional disputes) can be accompanied by unintended consequences, such as lowered degrees of union commitment and membership participation. This study examined the effects of a union merger on members’ attitudes and participation in union activity using questionnaires. Baseline data from two merging unions and a comparison union were collected a year prior to the merger, and longitudinal follow-up surveys were administered twice. The results suggest that membership commitment, satisfaction and participation do not necessarily have to be sacrificed for the bene.t of building larger, more stable and powerful unions through mergers.

Keywords: merger; organizational change; Sweden; union attitudes; union participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X04040103 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:25:y:2004:i:1:p:103-124

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X04040103

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().