Collective Action

The dictionary notes that organisations are the fruit of human beings’ projects, plans, or intentions. However, academics have paid little attention to this idea, which seems to be somewhat obvious, in developing theories about business undertakings and collective action more generally. If we consider this to indeed be a flaw in academic thinking or if we intuitively recognise the importance of the collective project in thinking about what collective action is, its scope must be shown. That is the purpose of this book. It sets out to establish that collective action is born of a collective project and this project is expressed by rules and in forms of regulation that make up the collective actor itself. Collective action as a project-based community is understood to be a community of experienced rules, a learning community, on which the ability to take common action depends. Projective action is at play at both the individual and the collective level. This must be fully integrated in the effort to theorise about action.