ABSTRACT
Current social movement literature on the management of social movement organizations is grounded in conceptual dualisms: professional/formal and entrepreneurial/informal approaches. Essentialists uncritically accept the idea that leadership style overlaps with organizational structure without explaining why that should be so, and what to do when it is not the case. The dualist perspective for theory creation has it that the analyst creates or develops a set of concepts and arranges them in some logical sequence, linking them to predictions about some aspect of social life. The pragmatist approach focuses on communicative processes and begins with Mead's insight regarding the development of the self. Social movement leaders mobilize resources to legitimize themselves and their organizations by way of administrative expertise and their competency in marshaling their community in a number of ways, but always in an effort to select a strategy appropriate to circumstance.
