A Study Of The Motivational Mechanism Of Collective Action

Since the reform and opening up, the social structure in China has undergoneprofound changes. The overall, monistic, homogeneous social pattern transits to theindependent, pluralistic, complex social patterns. Differentiation of social groups areincreased, a large gap between social subjects gradually pulled, social contradictionsand conflicts intensified, and social group events continue to unfold. Particularly, withstepping into the new millennium, the conflicts brought by the rapid socio-economicdevelopment have broken up in various fields, and collective actions continue to befound. Collective action comes into people’s horizon, and it becomes the routine meansto express dissatisfaction for the subjects and maintain their self-interests. In this thesiswill study a case of taxi strike by taking taxi industry as an example. Conflicts betweentaxi drivers and taxi companies as well as traffic management department have beenlong; drivers are very dissatisfied with the heavy load of "share fee”, the rampant chaosof black cars and abuse of enforcement. However, the taxi strike did not attract theattention of the community until at the end of2008the chain reaction triggered by theChongqing taxi strike completely exposed a variety of long-standing problems of taxiindustry.Scholars began to focus on the taxi industry strike event in several years ago.However, most of the scholars investigated strike event from the perspective of theeconomic or social management. This is why this paper discusses the strike event fromthe perspective of collective action. The academic study of collective action is mainlyfocused on two aspects. First, in the aspect of the theoretical study, academia sort outthe context of the development of the theory of collective action in the West, summarizethe theories of collective action of four schools, i.e. the psychologically oriented theoryof collective action, rationally orientated theory of collective action, structurallyoriented collective action theory, and culturally oriented collective action theory. Amongthem Collective actions triggered by emotional factors and those by rational factors arethe mainstreams. Second, based on the theory of collective action, this paper willinvestigate the motivations of collective action mechanism, that is, whether collective action is motivated by the emotional or rational calculation in the fundamental level.According to the Chinese scholars Liu Neng’s view, collective action motivated byemotional factors, rational calculation, the organization and mobilization of activists.It could be seen from the above that the previous study is mainly carried out in themacroscopic level. In this paper, it will study the evolutionary process of the T City taxistrike through the T city’s three strike events, with the motivational mechanism ofcollective action functioning as the analytical framework, and thereby form the its coreview: The collective action does not merely occur under the influence of the variants ofresentment, active participants and rational calculation, but also a overall effect by theorganic combination of active subject, organization and resource. Relying on thespontaneously formed organization, the rational agents of resentment take advantage ofuseful resources to take collective action and thereby form the new motivations of newcollective action.Man is the subjects of collective action. The members participating the collectiveactions are characterized by the following: first, they are of resentment; second, theyhave rational calculation. Under the situation of resentment accumulation, the agentsdecide to take part in the collective action through rational calculation.An organization is formed by the agents’s participation in the collective action.With definitive goal as its basis, an organization take the individuals into the orderedcollective action through determining rules and labor-division. The action of anindividual should be in accordance with organization, while the organization shouldprotect the interest of the individual.After the organization is spontaneously formed by agents, the effectivemobilization of resources is required to promote the development of collective action.Through this study it is discovered that in the course of constant collective action, theeffective use of resources gradually becomes the important impetus to promote thedevelopment of the collective action.