Why David sometimes wins : leadership, organization, and strategy in the California farm worker movement /

This book is an excellent short history of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW) in the state of California. It is also a sociological treatise on the subject of the "strategic capacity" of an organization. Ganz, who worked for 16 years in the UFW and is now a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, explains strategic capacity as the ability of an organization to transform the opportunities it has into the power it needs. This ability leads an organization to make relevant, effective decisions in a changing environment. It is both a feed forward and a feedback communication system relying on a broad array of interactions and personalities. Ganz uses the organizing history of the farm workers as an example of this process. He recounts the UFW's formative years, confrontations/competition with the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters, ultimate accommodation with both unions, and eventual loss of effectiveness as populations changed and the organization became more rigid. This book contains copious notes, comprehensive references, and a useful index. It would make an excellent supplement to upper-level management, sociology, and labor relations classes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional audiences. C. J. Munson Western Technical College