ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the major approaches to the study of trade unions as organizations after a brief recapitulation of the salience of the structure of collective bargaining for trade union action and behaviour. More specifically, structural variations in the institutions of collective bargaining were identified as significant determinants of international differences in overall density of union membership, in union structure and government, in workplace organization, in strike propensity and in industrial democracy. The chapter highlights the gradual emergence of distinctively organizational theories of trade unionism. Among environmental factors, then, union-management relations and environmental uncertainty were both identified as possible influences on internal modes of government. The idea that the internal structures of trade unions may be defined by their functions was of course central to the structural-functionalist analysis. The chapter also focuses on the literature on trade unions based upon organizational perspectives.
