Does Decertification Work? Outcome Analysis of the National Football Leagues Negotiated Order (1986-2008).

<p>For decades, union membership and activity has been declining in North America; employers have demanded greater flexibility and have successfully weakened workplace and worker protections. Modern workers increasingly use alternative strategies to negotiate conditions of employment with managers who have limited their discretionary power. Negotiated order theory provides a useful tool for analyzing the mesostructural arrangements of bargaining parties during labor disputes. This thesis applies negotiated order theory to explore how and why the National Football League (NFL) players have twice decertified their union and sought court intervention to challenge the legitimacy of the League's highly restrictive reserve system. An outcome-focused content analysis was designed as a preliminary investigation to ascertain why an alternative strategy was sought and if the strategy proved more effective in securing the players' preferred ends than conventional collective bargaining. The NFL case offers a fixed market from which to formulate a negotiation context of the interorganizational structures and bargaining interactions of its members.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

MA (Master of Arts)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis - unrestricted

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Bowers, Matthew

• Negotiated Order Theory
• Collective Bargaining
• Reserve System
• NFL
• Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Sociology
• Work, Economy and Organizations

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright by the authors.

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1350

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dc.etsu.edu:etd-2541