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Resource mobilization is the process of getting resource from resource provider, using different mechanisms, to implement the organization‘s work for achieving the pre-determined organizational goals.
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It deals in acquiring the needed resources in a timely-cost effective manner. Resource mobilization advocates upon having the right type of resource, at the right time, at right price with making right use of acquired resources thus ensuring optimum utilization of the same.
It is a major sociological theory in the study of social movements which emerged in the 1970s. It emphasizes the ability of a movement's members to 1) acquire resources and to 2) mobilize people towards accomplishing the movement's goals. In contrast to the traditional collective behaviour theory that views social movements as deviant and irrational, resource mobilization sees them as rational social institutions, created and populated by social actors with a goal of taking a political action.
The theory and its theorists
According to resource mobilization theory, a core, professional group in a social movement organization works towards bringing money, supporters, attention of the media, alliances with those in power, and refining the organizational structure. The theory revolves around the central notion of how messages of social change are spread from person to person and group to group. The conditions needed for a social movement are the notion that grievances shared by multiple individuals and organizations, ideologies about social causes and how to go about reducing those grievances.
This theory assumes that individuals are rational: individuals weigh the costs and benefits of movement participation and act only if benefits outweigh costs. When movement goals take the form of public goods, the free rider dilemma has to be taken into consideration.
Social movements are goal-oriented, but organization is more important than resources. Organization means the interactions and relations between social movement organizations (SMOs) and other organizations (other SMOs, businesses, governments, etc.). Efficiency of the organization infrastructure is a key resource in itself.
Resource mobilization theory can be divided into two camps:
The entrepreneurial model explains collective action as a result of economics factors and organization theory. It argues that grievances are not sufficient to explain creation of social movements. Instead access to and control over resources is the crucial factor. The laws of supply and demand explain the flow of resources to and from the movements, and that individual actions (or lack thereof) is accounted for by rational choice theory.
The political model focuses on the political struggle instead of economic factors.
In the 1980s, other theories of social movements such as social constructionism and new social movement theory challenged the resource mobilization framework.
Criticism
Critics point out that resource mobilization theory fails to explain social movement communities, which are large networks of individuals and other groups surrounding social movement organizations, and providing them with various services. Critics also argue that it fails to explain how groups with limited resources can succeed in bringing social change and that it does not assign sufficient weight to grievances, identity and culture as well as many macro-sociological issues.
Examples
MoveOn.org is a social movement organization to which resource mobilization theory can apply because it is a platform for people to either sign a petition or start a new petition. Coupled with political process theory, a social movement theory which posits that social movements either succeed or fail due to political opportunities, MoveOn.org has been a successful tool because of its accessibility, which would make people more likely to start a petition and move toward a common goal. In other words, resource mobilization applies to MoveOn.org because 1) the website itself is an existing resource that is accessible to consumers of the Internet which helps mobilize the goals of the organization and 2) that mobilization is essential to MoveOn.org's success. Also, resource mobilization applies because of the fact that the people who founded the organization knew how to utilize the resources available, which implies that anyone who uses the website to sign a petition or start a petition are rational social actors who act as utility maximizers, who weigh the costs and benefits before deciding to be a part of a social movement.
The Arab Spring is another example. Born in Tunisia in December 2010, growing unrest spread through several Arab countries in the Middle East, including Egypt, Syria and Yemen. Researchers studying resource mobilization through the Egyptian Revolution during the Arab Spring found a reliance on social media to spread social action messages while the governments worked to censor the media and cut off those countries from the rest of the world by severing the Internet. The activists in those countries were communicating with each other through social media platforms like Twitter to coordinate protests, keep tabs on each other and spread the social change messages. The researchers noted the Egyptian Revolution demonstrated the use of social media to rapidly spread messages of social change and mobilized large groups of people. Another group of researchers studying social movements in Tunisia during the Arab Spring found cyber activism sprang from grievances about increasing government restrictions on Internet use for political purposes coupled with lack of socio-economic opportunities.
Connection with other fields
Resource mobilization theory has been studied in conjunction with other fields, such as framing theory. Evidence has been found of an evolving relationship between framing processes and social movements. This relationship has led to the identification of two frames used in social movement stories: diagnostic, which involves identifying the sources of causality or blame for the situation, and prognostic, which lays out a plan of attack on how to create social change.