Groups & Organizations

Chapter 6

Groups Social group: collection of people who interact frequently, share a sense of

belonging, and have a feeling of interdependence.  Primary group: small, less specialized group in which members engage in

face-to-face, emotion based interactions over an extended period of time. ..significant others.

Secondary groups a larger more specialized group in which the members engfage in more impersonal, goal-oriented relationships for a limited period of time. Size may vary. Secondary groups can turn into primary groups.

Aggregate: collection of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time but have little else in common.

  Category: a number of people who may never have met one another but

share a similar characteristic (education lebel, age, ethnicity, gender). Not social groups.

Formal organization: highly structured group formed for the purpose of achieving specific goals in the most efficient manner. Universities, factories, corporations, the military, government agencies.

Ingroups: a group to which a person belongs and with which the person feels a sense of identitiy.

  Outgroups: a group to which a person does not

belong and toward which the person may feel a sense of competitiveness or hostility.

  Discuss the positive and negative impacts

on ingroup and outgroup distinctions: encourage social cohesion, promote classism, racism, sexism, and ageism. Positive view of self, negative view of “other,” group superiority or ethnocentrism.

Reference groups: a group that strongly influences a person’s behavior and social attitudes, regardless of whether that individual is an actual member. Negative reference group: KKK, neo-Nazi’s.

Network: a web of social relationships that links one person with other people and through them, with other people those people know.

 

Small group: collectively small enough for all members to be acquainted with one another and to interact simultaneously.

  Dyad: two member group  

Triad: three member group

Conformity: process of maintain or changing behavior to comply with the norms established by a society, subculture, or other group.

Asch’s research: Swaying answers based on the majority / prominent answer is correct.

Groupthink: the process by which members of a cohesive group arrive at a decision that many individual members privately believe is unwise.

Bureaucracy:an organizational model characterized by a hierarchy of authority, a clear division of labour, explicit rules and procedures, and impersonality in personnel matters.

Examples of bureaucratic organizations. governments, armed forces, corporations,

hospitals, courts, ministries and schools.

Bureaucratic personality: those workers who are more concerned with following correct procedures then they are with getting the job done correctly.

Rationality: the process by which traditional methods of social organization, characterized by informality and spontaneity, are gradually replaced by efficiently administered formal rules and procedures.

What is an ideal type: an abstract model that describes the recurring characteristics of some phenomenon (such as bureaucracy). 

Highlight Weber’s model the features the organizational efficiency and productivity that bureaucracies strive for.

Modern bureaucracy required cultural and structural changes; i.e. creation of a middle class and authority based on conduct and credentials. Creation of rules designed with the purpose of achieving goals. Achieving goals by breaking down the production of the product(end goal) into specialized activities.  

 

Informal structure: composed of the day to day activities that ignore, bypass, or do not correspond with the official rules and procedures of the bureaucracy; ideologies, informal communications, and values that structure the workplace.

Goal displacement: when the rules become an end in themselves rather than a means to an end, and organizational survival becomes more important that achievement of goals…think education…how has education changes its rules? Why?

  

Oligarchy a form of power structure in which power

effectively rests with a small number of people.

Iron law of oligarchy: the tendency to become a bureaucracy ruled by the few…examples?

McDonalization. Fast food principled society: Efficiency: Assembly line, onus on the

individual. Calculability: Speed and quantity Predictability: Standardization Control: detailed procedures over

everything…do it “the right way” Irrationalities of rationality: dehumanizing