Can gurus wear blue collars? Samuel Gompers’ voluntarism as a management strategy

Purpose: This study aims to analyze Samuel Gompers’ use of innovative management practices involving authority and voluntarism at the American Federation of Labor (AFL) as a way of suggesting a role for a labor leader as a management guru. It is a case study attempt to insert a labor presence into the canon of management leaders whose accomplishments are taught in academic programs and appear in the field’s textbooks. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology involved close reading and dialogue with primary sources on Samuel Gompers and the AFL from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, along with more recent reviews and critiques of the union’s foundation period. Findings: The paper analyzes Gompers’ approach to nonhierarchical decision-making through his doctrine of voluntarism. The paper discusses jurisdictional disputes in the AFL in the early 20th century, exploring internal rebuffs Gompers originally received to his suggestion of voluntary solution building. The narrative recounts his tenacity in pursuing voluntarism and his use of sub-federative departments after 1907 to damp down jurisdictional disputes without fiat from himself or the AFL executive board. Originality/value: To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is one of the first in the management history literature to present a labor leader with blue-collar origins as a management guru, expanding the representativeness of the progenitors of the field.