Until very recently social scientists who studied complex or formal organizations and social scientists who studied collective action and social movements had little to do with each other and seemed to have little in common. Students of complex organizations such as corporations, government agencies, and the larger nonprofit organizations studied organizations that were large and had relatively clear boundaries, bureaucratic and formal procedures, and fairly well defined authority structures. By contrast, social movements and collective action were characterized as more spontaneous, fluid, and unorganized. To the extent that organizations played any role in social movements, they were thought to be small, ephemeral, and resource poor. Moreover, leaders of movements and collective action depended upon charisma and rhetoric, not formal-legal authority, to induce participation in their followers.

On both sides some early theorists and studies suggested that the sharp division of the fields of study overdrew the differences. Robert Michels's study of political parties (1962 [1911]) showed how parties that originated in social movements developed formal organization and authority structures that resembled those found in bureaucracies. Michels's “iron law of oligarchy” may have been overstated, but it nicely captured the transformation of what had been participatory and less bureaucratic organizations into formal organizations with hierarchic and self-reproducing authority structures. Social movements and collective action events that endure for any length of time are likely to develop some formal mechanisms for coordinating action and develop social movement organizations that are amenable to organizational analysis.