Drunk Driving Ethics

“Rules are the product of someone’s initiative, and we can think of the people who exhibit such enterprise as moral entrepreneurs. Two related species – rule creators and rule enforcers – will occupy our attention” (Becker, 1963) (Linden p. 361). A moral entrepreneur is someone who defines new rules and laws or who advocates stricter enforcement of existing laws. Moral entrepreneurship usually constructs an argument in order to convince communities that there is a deeper threat. They also enforce legislative rules that are applied to people who misbehave; such rules provide enforcers (police, security personnel). One good example of moral entrepreneurship is Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) founded by Candice Lightner in 1980. It is a non-profit
This paper will argue my theory that “even though some organizations can create rules instead of enforcing them, they can still be effective in terms of their efforts used by their leaders and resources available to them.” This argument will be based on the methods used and the results collected by scholars, and the evaluation of these results will determine whether or not this theory is true.
How activist leaders use their effort in opposing drinking and driving
Cassandra Dorius from the University of Michigan and John McCarthy from Pennsylvania State University conducted a research as to why some activist leader work harder than others. They began a survey concerning anti-drunk driving activist leaders of MADD and RID who existed since 1985. In 1986, a self-administered survey was carried out, asking questions about each organization, its members, activities, community involvement, and the leaders themselves. Of the 458 groups that received the survey, 370 responded and completed it, “comprising a 78% response rate. At the time of the survey 79% of the leaders were women with average tenure as president of a little less than two years” (Dorius and McCarthy p.
The methods and outcome were similar to what McCarthy gathered with Dorius; 370 out of 458 groups operating since 1985 completed the survey. With this data, they were able to compare the number of members, the finances the organizations were able to make, and hours of volunteer labor. Their first table of data described the statistics and comparisons between the MADD and RID organizations. The scholars discovered that both organizations are modest in membership number, financial resources, and mobilization of volunteer labor. Both organizations were near exclusively volunteer-based, since at the time of the survey, only two MADD groups and none of the RID groups reported having full-time staff (McCarthy and Wolfson p. 1076). The second table of data displayed the three features of mobilization with three attributes each for both MADD and RID groups. For agency, the scholars looked at the average hours a week for both the president and vice president, and the average number of public appearances per year. For strategy, they looked at legislative action, victim services and public awareness. For organizational structure, they looked at the average number of task committees, the average number of officer meetings per year, and the average number of membership meetings per year. In all the statistics, MADD showed more effort in their anti-drunk driving