Research On Collective Action Of Commercial Autonomous Organizations

Self-governing commercial organizations are self-managing social organizations organized voluntarily by businessmen with the same or similar class status,aiming at safeguarding the legitimate rights of businessmen’s groups within the organizations and promoting the prosperity of industry and commerce.This paper draws lessons from Olson’s analysis of collective action,takes the political opportunity structure theory as the analysis framework,and selects Shanghai Malu Business Federation in the May 30 th Movement as a research case to study the collective action of commercial autonomous organizations,in order to explore the collective action dilemma of commercial autonomous organizations in the social conflict movement,and then clarify the existing problems and political significance of commercial autonomous organizations.After studying the Shanghai Road Business Federation(hereinafter referred to as "Business Federation")in the May 30 th Movement,this paper finds that the Business Federation participated in the May 30 th Movement by means of collective protest,resource mobilization and pressure from public opinion,but its actions were in trouble.The specific reasons for this phenomenon are limited access to resources,poor communication within the organization,and lack of incentive mechanism.The predicament of collective action of the Chamber of Commerce is not only related to the traditional historical factors,but also closely related to the limited development space of commercial autonomous organizations including the Chamber of Commerce under the infiltration of state power at that time.Obviously,the actual ability presented by commercial autonomous organizations can not fully meet the needs of the country in building society.In the interaction between commercial self-governing organizations and the government during the Republic of China,the state power played a dominant role,and the commercial self-governing organizations were firmly controlled in the government-led organizational system.In this case,the structure design,economic activities and functions of commercial autonomous organizations are all influenced by the government.Although the commercial self-governing organizations show the color of "autonomy" in form,they actually act as the executors of the government’s economic management functions,consciously or unconsciously implementing the will of the state,and become the extension of state power.Based on the above reasons,the vitality of commercial autonomous organizations is gradually reduced,the degree of organization is relatively loose,and the organizational strength is gradually weakened.In the implementation strategy of national construction in the Republic of China,the motivation of commercial autonomous organizations was insufficient,which caused the foundation of state power support to be limited to the elite;The contradiction between the autonomy of commercial autonomous organizations and state control leads to the low mobilization ability of commercial autonomous organizations;The collective system representing individual rights hinders the formation of civil rights and civil society.However,these insurmountable drawbacks finally weakened the grassroots mobilization ability and penetration ability in the process of nation-building during the Republic of China,and fell into the historical dilemma of building a modern nation-state.