Renewing Union Narrative Resources: How Union Capabilities Make a Difference
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12002 |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
Renewing Union Narrative Resources:
How Union Capabilities Make
a Difference
Christian Lévesque and Gregor Murray
Abstract
This article explores the role of framing in mobilizing and transforming narra-
tive resources. It draws on in-depth studies of two different workplace unions
within the same multinational company in Canada. We conducted interviews
with managers and trade unionists at different levels over a number of years of
observation. Each of these workplace unions mobilizes new repertoires of action
to enhance its capacity to act. Yet they differ considerably in their capacity to
renew their narrative resources. Whereas one of the workplace unions still relies
on an exclusive and restrictive narrative, the other union has evolved towards a
more encompassing and inclusive narrative. This article argues that strategic
capabilities are a key variable in understanding the processes through which
narrative resources change and are mobilized.
1. Introduction
Any encounter with union activists releases a flood of stories that inform the
way they think. New activists are socialized into these stories, and their
actions must mobilize or contest such stories. They can be real stories, as they
were lived, or quasi-mythical incidents that have been told and retold, often
to the point that they no longer relate to any real event but can be just as
effective. These stories are a living organizational heritage that we label
narrative resources.
Narrative resources consist of the range of values, beliefs, shared under-
standings, stories and ideologies that aggregate identities and interests and
translate and inform motives. They are resources because they constitute
a body of interpretative and cognitive frames that can be mobilized to
Christian Lévesque is at HEC Montréal. Gregor Murray is at the Université de Montréal.
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British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12002
51:4 December 2013 0007–1080 pp. 777–796
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2012. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
explain new situations and new contexts. Voss (1996: 253) highlights the
importance of what she labels ‘fortifying myths’, namely ‘an ideological
element that allows activists to frame defeats so that they are understand-
able and so that belief in the efficacy of the movement can be sustained
until new political opportunities emerge’. In evoking feelings of efficacy
about actions undertaken, they can exert a powerful positive or negative
influence (Martinez and Fiorito 2009; Peetz 2006). A union’s stock of
narrative resources might evoke pyrrhic victories and inevitable defeats,
thereby closing down possibilities for collective action, or its stock of nar-
rative resources might fortify hope and thus reinforce pathways to collec-
tive action.
Be it in terms of reframing gender issues (Yates 2010) or climate
change and environmental sustainability (Snell and Fairbrother 2010) or
engagement in international alliances (Lévesque and Murray 2010a;
Turnbull 2006), many studies identify capabilities such as framing as
an important discriminating factor in understanding variations in union
capacity. Framing also appears to be an essential ingredient in enlarging
repertories of union action and contention (Fox Piven and Cloward 2000;
Ganz 2004; Tarrow 2005). Garud et al. (2007: 962) describe how framing is
used strategically by institutional entrepreneurs to justify new practices,
mobilize coalitions and generate collective action necessary for institutional
change.
To understand the transformative effects of narrative resources and to
explore the role of strategic capabilities in maintaining and mobilizing
narrative resources, this article draws on in-depth case studies of two
workplace unions (at two sites in Canada) within the same multinational
company. Each site is dealing with similar constraints where the survival of
the plant is periodically put into question, and management has taken
advantage of this situation to obtain concessions. Both workplace unions
have enlarged their repertoires of action to contend with the threat of plant
closure, and both were successful in safeguarding jobs. However, the
mobilization of new repertoires of collective action had contrasting
effects on their narrative resources. Whereas one of the workplace unions
still relies on an exclusive and restrictive narrative, the other union has
evolved towards a more encompassing and inclusive narrative. As such,
analysis of these two workplace unions provides insight into how the
mobilization of new action repertoires can trigger the renewal of narrative
resources.
This article is organized in five parts: an examination of the relationship
between collective action, narrative resources and strategic capabilities in the
construction of union power (Section 2); an overview of the two cases under
investigation (Section 3) and the threats and opportunities these two work-
place unions face (Section 4); the renewal process of action repertoires and
narrative resources in each union (Section 5); and finally, the variations in
strategic capabilities and their consequences for the potential renewal of
narrative resources (Section 6).
778 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2012.
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