2cernauta2 wrote:
....
Sociality can be very hard to manage, bust must be addressed by the
club's management. When fights and quarrelling are going on, and the
members feel they have to "choose which side they should stand", or
they struggle to keep themselves out of the fight, my experience is
that the club will loose about 10percent of its members. And most of
the rest are quite unhappy.
I expect that commercial operations might be less prone to this
problem. If the operator is customer-oriented, of course.

Regardless of orientation, commercial operators can fire problems - even
if the operator is wrong. At least the level of conflict is reduced and
that is more important than being right.

Clubs OTOH, have no real means of imposing discipline and conflict is
very hard to control. My wife, who lectures and researches in this area
tells me that it is actually a wonder that any voluntary association
survives for more than 5 years.

One feature of gliding clubs that helps them survive is the fixed assets
- buildings, site, aircraft, etc - which survive power struggles,
splits and personality conflicts. What changes are the people in
control. In our area, one club's splits have been the foundation of at
least three others which all prosper so there is a positive side!

GC