ABSTRACT
The day-to-day management of the campaign organization is different from most other professional organizations (Steinberg, 1976a, 1976b). Several elements make the campaign organization distinctive. First, it is generally temporary in nature: a group of individuals-some professionals and some volunteers-who are brought together for a relatively short amount of time with the goal of completing a task that will lead to the dissolution of their jobs within a few weeks or months. Second, that situation is fertile ground for conflict between the various consultants, the paid vs. volunteer workers, the idealists, and the “win-at-all-costs” advisers. Third, the managers of the campaign organization have remarkably little control or legitimate authority over the others in the organization. The manager can advise the candidate, but ultimate decisions for campaign activities are those of the candidate. The manager can issue orders to others in the organization, but many of those are other consultants (who are more used to giving orders than taking them) or volunteers who can walk away from the job with little or no penalty. Fourth, volunteers are often outside the normal channels of communication within the organization (Lewis, 1999), a situation that requires the development of communication channels created precisely for them. And fifth, the campaign organization has to have constant performance reviews; an annual performance review is simply not timely enough for an effective campaign.
