Let's talk about guilds! First, a heavy dose of disambiguation. There were trade guilds and craft guilds in "medieval times" (some on askhistorians take umbrage to that term, but I'm not a professional historian, so I know what you mean, and frankly, I use the term myself). Because you're talking about journeymen and masters, I take it you're talking about craft guilds, which more widely used those terms. Second, in continental Europe at that time, there was relatively little cross-border coordination between craft guilds, except AT the border (so, e.g., a French masonry guild in an area of France bordering Germany [as the line was drawn that particular day] would probably coordinate with the masonry guild on the German side of the border, but would have no contact with or concept of Italian masonry guilds). Trade guilds, predictably, had much more cross-border coordination, for reasons that are obvious. So, there isn't "one answer" to your question--a masonry guild in Italy may run itself very differently from one in France or one in Germany, and beyond that, the guild in Rome may run itself very differently than the one in Naples or Venice.

A third qualification: survivorship bias is a HUGE ISSUE for what you're asking. Our best primary sources today are, predictably, the records kept by the guilds themselves. And who usually kept the best records? Why, the large, well-organized, stratified guilds. And so a survey of the primary sources would lead one to believe that most or all guilds were tightly-run ships lead top-down by the Masters with all sorts of detailed internal rules, regulations, standards, and practices. But only because most of the smaller guilds didn't bother developing detailed rules or keeping detailed records--when there are 2-5 masters in your whole guild, you don't need a lengthy procedures manual to coordinate.

From the primary sources that have survived, we see that many large guilds were, indeed, very bureaucratic, with highly detailed rules and regulations and a fixed, clear structure. In guilds like these, the answers to your questions would most commonly be:

• The Masters were usually the sole voters, and were in charge of voting on any decisions not permanently devolved to a specific person or group. Thus, e.g., some guilds would have an apprentice board, who would be responsible for certifying/qualifying/testing apprentices, and whose "recommendations" to the Masters were usually just rubber-stamped. Other guilds had not devolved that power to a subgroup, and so the Masters would vote on each candidate.

• Guilds were democratic. The Masters were, usually, each owners of their own business. So they had a vested interest in having their voices heard. Now, to paraphrase Orwell, all Masters are equal, but some are more equal than others. If, as was occasionally the case, one Master controlled 50% of the work in the region, his voice (sorry, it was always a HIS for these guilds at this time) would obviously be heard more clearly and loudly than others, even if the guild was ostensibly a one-Master-one-vote guild.

• Yes, very large and successful guilds employed their own clerks to do the...well, clerical work, and they would not be craftsmen.

• Yes, there was OFTEN but NOT ALWAYS a guild head. Usually, that head either exercised only specific, devolved powers OR the head was merely the chairman of the Masters committee--it would be uncommon in a large and regimented guild to see the Head making large decisions on his own. Those would almost always be referred to the Masters committee for a vote. Heads were appointed any number of ways: a rotation through the various Masters for a fixed period of time, or they were elected.

Now, contrast all that to a small guild. And, remember: just like small businesses vs. IBM, there were many more small local guilds than there were giant, well-structured guilds in big cities. The problem is, they usually didn't leave a lot of records behind. So, we get mentions of them in the usual civic records, but not a lot of insight into their day-to-day management practices. Some things we can safely infer from the records that do exist:

• In a small guild, the Master overseeing an apprentice had either absolute or almost absolute power over certifying that apprentice. Because apprentices were cheap, that occasionally resulted in Masters wrongfully refusing to certify apprentices just to keep them in thrall for a few more years of cheap labor. Modern Ph.D. candidates will recognize a common thread.

• Masters in a small guild tried to come to consensus on policy decisions. Because, if there wasn't consensus, there could be problems. Often, small guilds lacked real enforcement mechanisms if one of the Masters decided not to adhere to a rule established by the guild.

• There was no real bureaucracy, because very small organizations don't need it.

• Even small guilds often had a Head, whose appointment would be done the same as large guilds. Per the previous note, that title would probably be even more hollow than for a large guild, because of the lack of intra-guild enforcement procedures.

So, what have we learned? Medieval guilds were a lot like businesses today: some were very large, well-run, hierarchical, and left a lot of data for historians to study (like IBM); some were small, run on an ad-hoc basis, and left very little data for historians to study (like your uncle's tile shop, whose bills he pays at the kitchen table on the last Sunday of the month). Most of what has been written about guilds concerns the large ones, because of the greater information available.

Good sources for all of this:

Basing, Patricia, Trades and Crafts in Medieval Manuscripts, 1990.

Epstein, S.A, Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe, 1991.

Jovinelly, Joann; Netelkos, Jason, The Crafts And Culture of a Medieval Guild, 2006.

Richardson, Gary, “Guilds, Laws, and Markets for Manufactured Merchandise in Late-Medieval England,” Explorations in Economic History vol. 41, 2004.

Thrupp, Sylvia, The Merchant Class of Medieval London 1300-1500, 1989.