Individual vs Collective Action & Organizations

This presentation discusses the necessity of organizing collective action, differentiating between individual and collective actions, and exploring the concept of organizations. It covers resources, legal frameworks, and the transition from collective action to organized entities.

Chapter Objectives

The goals of this chapter are the following:

• Articulate the difference between individual and collective actions.
• Identify criteria and specificities that distinguish different types of organizations.
• Describe how to characterize a given organization.

Chapter Plan

1. Distinction Between Individual and Collective Action:
   • Individual actions contrast with collective efforts.
2. From Collective Action to Organization:
   • Explores how collective actions evolve into organizations.
3. Resources:
   • Discusses the various resources utilized by organizations.
4. Legal Framework:
   • Covers the legal aspects governing organizational activities.

Bases

The following terms are explained:

• Management: The techniques used to organize resources (financial, human, material, and immaterial) to manage an organization.
• Organization: A group of individuals who sustainably mobilize diverse resources within a specific legal framework to achieve common objectives.

Distinction Between Individual and Collective Action

• Action: Producing an effect or acting upon someone or something.
• Individual Action: Performed by a single person.
• Collective Action: Accomplished by a group with a common objective.
• Collective action can have constraints, including decision-making, task allocation, conflicts, and information flow.

Collective Action

The following are required to perform Collective Action:

• Decision making
• Task allocation
• Rules of operations
• Information sharing

Actions

• All human actions are not necessarily collective.
• Many actions are individual e.g. a sailor or painter.
• It is sometimes more efficient to associate in order to fulfill an objective.

Importance of Organization

• Superior to individual action, collective action must be organized to be efficient.
• Some collective actions are sums of individual actions with no link between those e.g. a crowd of people in a bus.
• Conflicts arise when individual and collective objectives diverge.

Types of Actions

1. Individual action (one person, personal objective).
2. Collective action (several people, common objective).

Collective vs Organised Collective Action

• Organized Collective Action: Involves interdependent individuals sharing a common goal, with hierarchical task and decision-making processes. It combines collective effort with structured task distribution and decision-making.
• Organization: Defined as a group of individuals sustainably pooling diverse resources under a precise legal structure to achieve shared objectives, ensuring duration and effectiveness through organized collective action, sustainability, and legal compliance.

Organizational Standards

1. A group of people (individual action is never part of an organization).
2. Durable group.
3. Use of human, financial, and material resources.
4. Adoption of a legal framework with a goal.
5. Having a common goal.
6. Structured task distribution.

Examples of Action

• Individual, collective, and organized collective actions are: three individuals co-founding a startup, the accounting service of a music company, friends having a drink, 30 people in a bus, students in STMG.

Definition of:

• Collective action
• Organization

Resources

• An organization is a collection of individuals that uses a range of resources for a shared objective.
• Organizations require human, financial, materials, immaterial, and technological resources.

Resources Description

• Human: Individuals who are contributing to the organization.
• Financial: Means to finance operations and investments.
• Material & Immaterial: Tangible goods such as lands, computers, or vehicles. Intangible goods are R&D, Brand image, and Patented rights.
• Technological: Tangible are computers and printers. Intangible are systems, applications, and softwares.

The Legal Framework

• Organizations operate within a legal framework, which includes the laws and regulations that govern their activities.
• Legal Status: Set of rules governing the organization and its activities, defining its operational rules.
• Organizations can be for profit (entreprise), public, or civil societies.