[ncallaway]

I think they’re typically targeting different changes and different outcomes in an organization.

Work-to-rule is most effective when you’re trying to highlight particularly bad individual rules, or arbitrary punishments, etc. The work to rule action serves to clearly highlight to management why the current status quo rules are broken. This is, naturally, the most effective when there are very specific problems that lead to pretty direct consequences.

Work-to-rule would be much less effective when used for the kinds of things a strike might be used (increased pay, improved benefits, etc).

Basically, they’re just different tactics that highlight different things, and are each best used to achieve different kinds of goals.