Volume 44, Issue 1 (Winter 2025)
By Michael M. Oswalt*
How might ambitious but inexperienced, low-resourced groups succeed where mature organizations have already failed? This Article considers that question through the lens of the U.S. labor movement. Between 2022 and 2023, workers at companies thought to be unorganizable launched seemingly quixotic do-it-yourself unionization campaigns—and sometimes won. A key factor may have been workers’ reliance on bricolage, an approach to formidable challenges shown to differentiate start-ups that fizzle from those that innovate to surpass richer, more established competitors.
