SOC101 Short Notes Set 5

• Formal organizations are large, secondary groups that are organized to achieve their goals efficiently.

• Rationalization

Formal organizations are the product of rationalization of society which means the acceptance of rules, efficiency, and practical results as the right way to approach human affaires.

• As a result of rationality, formal organizations, secondary groups designed to achieve explicit objectives, have become central feature of contemporary society.
• Social relations in formal organizations are impersonal, formal, and planned.

• Types of formal organization :

1. Utilitarian Organizations
2. Normative Organizations
3. Coercive Organizations

• Just about everyone who works for income is member of utilitarian organization, which pays its members to perform the jobs for which they were hired.
• People join normative organizations not for income but to pursue goals they consider morally worthwhile.

• Coercive Organization:

These organizations have involuntary membership. Members are physically and socially separated from ‘outsiders’ or ‘civil society’.

• Bureaucracy:

It is an organizational model rationally designed to perform complex tasks efficiently.

• Characteristic of Ideal bureaucracy:

Broadly there are six characteristics.

1. Specialization:

Theree is a division of labor in the bureaucracy and each member has a specific task to fulfill.

2. Hierarchy of Offices

Bureaucracies arrange the personnel in a vertical ranking. Authority ranking. Usually with fewer people in higher positions, the structure takes the form of a bureaucratic “pyramid”. 3. Written rules and regulations.

Rationally enacted rules and regulations control not only the organization’s own functioning but also its larger environment. In general, the longer a bureaucracy exists and the larger it grows, the more written rules it has. 4. Technical competence. A bureaucratic organization expects its officials and staff to have the technical competence to carry out their duties, and regularly monitors worker performance. Evaluation is based on performance and not on favoritism.

5. Impersonality

. Rules take precedence over personal whims. Members of a bureaucracy owe allegiance to the office, not to a particular person. The impersonality ensures that the clients as well as workers are all treated uniformly. Each worker in bureaucracy becomes a small cog in a large machine. Each worker is a replaceable unit, for many others are available to fulfill each particular function. From this detached approach stems the notion of the “faceless bureaucrat”. 6. Formal, written communication.

Heart of bureaucracy is not people but paperwork. Rather than casual, verbal communication, bureaucracy relies on formal, written memos and reports. Over time, this correspondence accumulates into vast files.

Problems of bureaucracy

Bureaucracy can dehumanize and manipulate individuals. Bureaucracy poses threat to personal privacy and political democracy.

Bureaucratic Alienation

Efficiency vs. potential to dehumanize the people. The environment gives rise to alienation where human being is reduced to a part of big bureaucratic machinery.

Bureaucratic Inefficiency and Ritualism

Preoccupation with rules and regulations. Ritualism stifles individual’s creativity. The resultant corruption.

Bureaucratic Inertia

The tendency of the bureaucratic organizations to perpetuate themselves. Lesson # 9 :

Culture is the patterns of behavior and the products of patterns of behavior. Man made part of the environment. Culture includes the values, beliefs, behavior, language, norms, and material objects that constitute a people’s way of life. Non-humans guided by instincts. Biological programming. Humans guided by culture. Social programming

Specific Features of Culture:

Universality * Variability * Learned * Shared * Transmitted * Changing Culture: Shared way of life. Nation: A political entity within designated borders. Society: The organized interaction of people in a nation or within some other boundary. Lesson # 10 Values are culturally defined standards of desirability – what ought to be. Beliefs are specific statements that people hold to be true.

Examples of Values

Equal opportunity, Achievement and success, Material comfort, Activity and work, Science, Freedom, Physical fitness, Health, Punctuality, Wealth, Education, Competition, Merit, Honesty, Dignity of labor, Patriotism, Justice, Democracy, Environmental protection, Charity, Development. Values: inconsistency and conflict.

Norms

Rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members. Shared expectations. Proscriptive: Mandating what we should not do. Prescriptive: What we should do. Mores (More-ays) are society’s standards of proper moral conduct. Notions of right/wrong. Folkways are customs for routine, casual interaction. Proper dress, greetings. Ideal culture: Social patterns mandated by cultural values and norms. Ideal values and norms. Real Culture: Actual social patterns that only approximate cultural expectations.

Statistical norms Ideal culture:

Social patterns mandated by cultural values and norms. Ideal values and norms. Intangible: Non material aspects. Tangible: Material aspects. New information technology.

Cultural Diversity :

Acceptable forms of behavior vary widely from culture to culture. Lesson #11 High Culture: Cultural patterns of the elite. Popular Culture: Cultural patterns that are widespread. Culture of Poverty: Cultural patterns shared by the poor.