| This is a participant observation extended single case study that looks at the United Child Care Union through the lens of strategic capacity, defined by Marshall Ganz. An organization's strategic capacity depends on its leadership teams—motivation, access to salient knowledge, and heuristic processes and organizational structures—deliberative processes, accountability mechanisms and resource flows. It is greater if leadership teams: include insiders and outsiders with both strong and weak ties to salient constituencies who have learned diverse repertoires of collective action; conduct regular, open, and authoritative deliberations; are accountable to multiple salient constituencies, and draw their resources from them. (Ganz, 2000, p iv) Autonomy and temporality are linked to strategic capacity as they guide an organization's patterns of interaction with its operating environment. I found that UCCU's leadership teams, organizational structure and form met Ganz conditions for strategic capacity. I argue that UCCU's strategic capacity was instrumental to its success. |
