Transcript Groups & Organizations

Groups & Organizations
Chapter 6
Groups
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Social group: collection of people who interact frequently, share a sense of belonging, and
have a feeling of interdependence.
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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.
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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.
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Aggregate: collection of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time but
have little else in common.
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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.
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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.
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Ingroups: a group to which a person belongs and with
which the person feels a sense of identitiy.
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Outgroups: a group to which a person does not belong
and toward which the person may feel a sense of
competitiveness or hostility.
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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.
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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.
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Small group: collectively small
enough for all members to be
acquainted with one another
and to interact simultaneously.
Dyad: two
member group
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Triad: three member group
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Conformity: process of maintain or changing behavior
to comply with the norms established by a society,
subculture, or other group.
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Asch’s research: Swaying answers based on the majority
/ prominent answer is correct.
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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.
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Bureaucratic personality: those workers who are
more concerned with following correct procedures then
they are with getting the job done correctly.
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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.
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What is an ideal type: an abstract model that describes the recurring
characteristics of some phenomenon (such as bureaucracy).
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Highlight Weber’s model the features the organizational efficiency and
productivity that bureaucracies strive for.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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