The decentrialized voluntary organization : A case study of Amnesty International Sweden

The purpose of this study was to find an explanation for why Amnesty International in Sweden has seen an increasing number of members, while the number of participants at the national annual meeting has decreased. The method of the study was done with an inductive approach in which the problem has affected the choice of theory and empirical data. The empirical data has been collected through both qualitative and quantitative method in which the analysis was implemented with support by statistics and interviews. To strengthen the arguments in the paper, sociological theories on organizations are used and also theories about social movements. The conclusion of the study is that Amnesty International Sweden has undergone a transformation towards a decentralized organization because it is not longer relevant for people who are members to achieve the purpose of the organization to participate at the annual meeting. This because that these members accesses the recourses they want to achieve by working on a local level. The main conclusion of this study is that Amnesty has moved towards being an organization that to some extent are working as a social movement, where there is no longer any clear link between local work and the central board of Directors.