Organization. Defining formal organizations: What are they?

Organization
Sociologyindex	Books on Organization	Sociology Books 2008
Sociology has approached the study of organizations in a number of ways. Earlier studies stressed the formal features of organizations, and described their internal functioning and the relationships among participants within the bounds of the organization itself. Over the past twenty years or so, however, a new perspective has emerged, one that sees the organization in the context of its surrounding environment (Aldrich & Marsden, 1988). Organizations: Two Sociological Perspectives Much recent sociological work on the nature of organizations starts from the assumption that organizations are best studied and understood as parts of an environment. If organizations exist within a distinctive environment, then what aspects of that environment should be most closely examined? Sociologists have answered this question in two different ways: for some, the key features are the resources and information that may be used rationally within the organization or exchanged with other organizations within the environment; for others, the essential focus is on the cultural surround that determines and moderates the organization's possible courses of action in ways that are more subtle, less deterministic than the resources information perspective suggests. While there are many exceptions, it is probably fair to say that the resources-information approach has been more often used in analyses of commercial organizations, and the latter, cultural approach used in studies of public and non-profit organizations. - Stephen T. Kerr - Univ. of Washington Defining formal organizations: What are they? When we first begin to look at organizations, we need a framework within which we can understand them, hence the need to define what is and is not an organization. We may use these ideal type theoretical descriptions in comparison with real life, or look at them from various perspectives: the individual working in it as an employee or a boss, a structural analysis to look at how an organization wields its power within and then, later, from without, in the playing field with other formal organizations. What is left out in the definitions may then be pointed out. Defining formal organizations give shape to our understanding (no doubt, an initial understanding) of what they do, why they do it and how they do it. All of us have encountered organizations before and may exist within a few at any one point in time. Yet, because of their frequency, we may take it for granted that we are dealing with organizations, not singular people, and this complexity must not be ignored. - Lim Sin Kiao, Gwendoline Anne

A singular person may find it difficult to reach particular goals on his own and therefore seeks to do so through the power and control of an organization we can see formal organizations as the means to such an end. Defining organizations as activity systems that are goal oriented point to the need to organize a group of people to attain a common goal. Doing so requires the wielding of power and the continued hold of power requires legitimacy. The link between society and organizations is also crucial in understanding an organization's power to control anything for it is within society that organizations exist and it is at the same time true that organizations constitute society.

Defining organizations allows us to demarcate the boundaries so that we may study life within them. When we know what an organization is, we can then start to try to understand life in them , their workings, the relationships within them.

Because organizations want maximum control of power inside to get their goals, their structure is instrumental in the dissemination of this power. When we define bureaucracies in this first topic, we are aware of the external environment within which organizations exist, their need to overcome these ambiguities through dominance and the way they are structured to ensure this. Aldrich and Sinchcombe mention ambiguity out there which exists but is not within control. Here we learn that this does not matter because we do not know how to deal with it anyway.

The existence within a wider environment in Stinchcombe's definition also means that there is a need for organizations to gain control beyond individual organizational units. - http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/socsja/Organizations/Midterm99/TopicA.html

Social Organization - Resources on Social Organization. Full-Text Articles Key Links: http://www.indiana.edu/~iascp/social.html

Studies in formal organization from the University of Chicago - http://www.spc.uchicago.edu/ssr1/PRELIMS/orgs.html

Viking social structure conformed to the Indo-European pattern by dividing people into classes; the rulers, the free and the unfree. This situation prevailed through the Vendel and Viking periods and was only significantly altered in the 11th century with the advent of unified kingdoms in the Scandinavian homelands. http://www.regia.org/viking2.htm

Social organization and structure - patterns of human interdependence realized through the actions and decisions of a society's members. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth101/social_organization_and_structur.htm

Using Animal Societies as Models for Determining Basic Human Principles of Social Organization - http://www.sunysb.edu/sociology/lab/index2.html

The social organization of welfare - a research project of the University of Applied Sciences Solothurn Northwestern Switzerland - http://www.fhso.ch/_e/fue_e/sozarbeit_e/sozialhilfe_e.htm

Traditional Filipino society is based on social groupings rather than political ones, and the failure to develop real political units is an indication of the greater influence of Hindu culture than Chinese in the Philippines. - http://isis.csuhayward.edu/cesmith/virtmus/Philippines/Overall/Social_Organization.htm

Akan kinship and Social Organization - http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/index.html

Journal of Organizational Change Management - http://www.mcb.co.uk/cgi-bin/journal1/jocm

Electronic Journal of Radical Organisation Theory (EJROT) - Univ.of Waikato - The aim of the Journal is to stimulate leading edge discussion around radical ideas in the study and practice of organisation and management. - http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/

Organizational Behavior, Organizational Theory, and Strategy.- Mark's Org Theory Website - amadeus.management.mcgill.ca/~mark.mortensen/orgweb/home.shtml

Organization, Trust and Control: A Realist Analysis. - Author/s: Michael I. Reed - Abstract- This paper develops a critical realist analysis of trust/control relations within and between complex organizations. It suggests that trust/control relations are most usefully seen as structures of interrelated 'positioned-practices' which generate, shape and constrain the development of contrasting forms of expert power in a range of organizational contexts. The paper opens with a general overview of a number of currently influential theoretical perspectives on trust/control relations in social and organizational analysis. findarticles.com/cf_0/m4339/2_22/76668285/p1/article.jhtml?term=sociology

Efficiency and rationality in organizations. - Author/s: John Freeman - In "Taking Coase Seriously," Robert Gibbons considers the use of formal economic modeling in organizational research. He makes three claims: that internal organization is often imperfect; that such imperfections are consistent with both the utility-maximizing behavior of organization members and transaction cost economizing; and that modeling, especially economic modeling, can be applied to shed light on research issues pertaining to organizations that are not the subjects of common economic analysis. findarticles.com/cf_0/m4035/1_44/54482498/p1/article.jhtml?term=sociology

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION - How do people organize themselves beyond the family unit? In this section you will learn a little about the way Hopi and Navajo traditionally organize themselves. In the video "Seasons of a Navajo" you followed the lives of one family over the course of a year. You traveled to their different places of residence. In "Hopi: Songs of the Fourth World" you learned about the family structure for the Hopi. Consider the information contained here and in the videos and answer the questions below. - mc.maricopa.edu/~reffland/anthropology/anthro2003/navajohopi/socialorganiz.html

Systems of social organization as an element of culture: An introduction - One characteristic of human societies as they advance along the continuum of civilization is that they become increasingly organized. Small-scale systems -- or "micro-systems" -- of organzation might include such units as the family, a system which, arguably, is present even in some non-human societies. Other micro-systems might include living groups, work teams (eg. hunting parties), or communal groups which share tasks and products among themselves. wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/social-org/social-org-intro.html

Anthropologists tend to classify different societies according to the degree to which different groups within a society have unequal access to advantages such as resources, prestige or power. mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/learning/glues/societyintro.html

Hinduism - Social Organization
Social Organization. The Caste System. When the Aryans moved into northwest India, they imposed a caste system to organize the new society created by their arrival. They initially put together a hierarchy of four varnas (i.e., castes), which later was expanded to include a fifth category. The caste system initially served to maintain rigid social boundaries between the invaders and the previous inhabitants. Over the generations, the origins were forgotten and the system became the stratification of a single society. uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/religionet/er/hinduism/HORGS.HTM

Natural ecosystems share many features with human social systems in terms of their evolutionary origin, dynamic complexity, and control mechanisms. This paper reviews parallels between the organizational characteristics of natural and social systems that could be a model for the 21st century. bahai-library.org/conferences/ecology.html

Social Organization determined by incommunicability of insights : It is readily assumed that new understanding of problems and opportunities can be communicated comprehensibly. This is not the case. Any new insight is understood to different degrees by different people. The resulting situation can be clarified using the work of Ron Atkin (Multidimensional Man; can man live in 3-dimensional space?, 1981) on q-analysis, namely the theory and application of mathematical relations between finite sets. He has applied this to the analysis of communication patterns within complex organizations. uia.org/strategies/stratcom_bodies.php?kap=59

Florida's Native People were never organized as large political units (tribes). Rather they practiced chiefdomships; whereby the chief and individuals of several small villages chose an overall leader (usually the chief of the area's principal town). ancientnative.org/polsoc.htm

The Social Organization of Structural Stupidity. There is much of value and much at stake in the findings of those who research in the sociology of work. What is to be made; who is to get a job; the conditions of labor in the workplace; how profits are to be defined and to be shared out as well as the degree of social solidarity ...all are questions of great importance to workers, consumers, and society alike. In capitalist societies, owners and managers give most of the answers to questions such as these. csf.colorado.edu/mail/socgrad/feb96/0075.html

Center and Periphery in the Social Organization of Contemporary Nahuas of Mexico - Alan Sandstrom - poverty.worldbank.org/library/view/6024/

In this paper, the author examines the relationship between "post-industrialism" and patterns of social organization that may be observed among international migrants at the micro-level; more specifically, the connection between certain aspects of post-industrial technology such as innovations in telecommunications and transportation and the social organization of Caribbean immigrants, a subset of the New Immigrants to the United States. repositories.cdlib.org/issr/volume2/6/