Nonprofit Management and Leadership
Volume 17, Issue 2 , Pages 145 - 161
Special Issue: The Centrality of Values, Passions, and Ethics in the Nonprofit Sector . Issue Edited by Joyce Rothschild, Carl Milofsky.
Published Online: 22 Dec 2006
© Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Volume 17, Issue 2 , Pages 145 - 161
Special Issue: The Centrality of Values, Passions, and Ethics in the Nonprofit Sector . Issue Edited by Joyce Rothschild, Carl Milofsky.
Published Online: 22 Dec 2006
© Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Research Article
Sharing experience, conveying hope: Egalitarian relations as the essential method of Alcoholics Anonymous
Thomasina Borkman
George Mason University
Abstract
The predictions of Max Weber's iron cage of bureaucracy and Michels's iron law of oligarchy failed to materialize in Alcoholics Anonymous.
AA has maintained an alternative form of collectivistic-democratic voluntary organization for more than seventy years. Its organizational form was developed within its first five years and articulated in its foundational text, Alcoholics Anonymous, published in 1939.
Based on detailed histories of its early years, an analysis of AA's crucial ingredients suggests that six factors interacted to avoid the temptations of power, money, and professionalization that would have resulted in a bureaucratic form of organization or oligarchic leadership.
In order to avoid death and to obtain or maintain abstinence, the desperate cofounders stumbled on the essential method: egalitarian peers share their lived experiences, conveying hope and strength to one another.
In the context of the essential method, the two cofounders, from the Midwest and New York City, held similar spiritual beliefs and practiced a self-re?exive mode of social experiential learning gained from the Oxford Group, a nondenominational group that advocated healing through personal spiritual change; they downplayed their charismatic authority in favor of consulting with and abiding by the consensus of the group.
Contributor: Don Phillips
