**3.5 Groups/Organisations**

Formally-organised collective entities are a central component in our social experience.

Our society is an organisational society. We are born in organisations, educated by organisations, and most of us spend much of our lives working for organisations. We spend much of our leisure time paying, playing and praying in organisations. Most of us will die in an organisation, and when the time comes for burial, the largest organisation of them all -the State- must grant official permission (Etzioni 1964: ix).

The original impetus for the analysis of organisations emanated from Max Weber's (1947) World War 1 analysis. A major push for the recognition of collectivities has come from James Coleman. who has argued (1990) that there are two types of 'persons': natural and corporate. Corporate entities are further classified into primordial (e.g. the family) and constructed (e.g. corporations). Whereas primordial entities are composed of fixed positions occupied by unique persons, who are not interchangeable, the modern forms are a structure of positions which can be changed and in which the occupants can be changed. The key change is that the modern organisation is a legal entity, which can act on its own, distinct from its members. This social invention allows for innovations to be much more readily adopted.

But this flexibility is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, the often oppressive primordial structures are broken up and people are allowed more freedom, since they are now socially controlled only in respect of each of their various roles rather than their fixed familykinship position. On the other hand, since so many natural persons are employed by

markets which are apparently populated by a host of independent businesses. It has been




Another important idea is that of 'structural balance'. From examining triads of relations among three people (or nodes) it can be readily seen that some triads are balanced whereas others are unbalanced. For example, if A is dominant over B and B dominant over C, the triad is balanced, if then A is dominant over C. Indeed, one might expect this to occur naturally anyway, although empirically there are exceptions which are unbalanced. This type of analysis is interesting in providing predictions about the longer-term stability of

'Structural holes' (Burt 1992) are the gaps in a network pattern, and they provide entrepreneurial opportunities for those in the existing pattern to move into to exploit. This is part of a sociological contribution to understanding the links between firms in markets,

although such structural holes can occur in a wide variety of social structures.

Formally-organised collective entities are a central component in our social experience.

Our society is an organisational society. We are born in organisations, educated by organisations, and most of us spend much of our lives working for organisations. We spend much of our leisure time paying, playing and praying in organisations. Most of us will die in an organisation, and when the time comes for burial, the largest organisation of them all -the State- must grant official permission (Etzioni 1964: ix). The original impetus for the analysis of organisations emanated from Max Weber's (1947) World War 1 analysis. A major push for the recognition of collectivities has come from James Coleman. who has argued (1990) that there are two types of 'persons': natural and corporate. Corporate entities are further classified into primordial (e.g. the family) and constructed (e.g. corporations). Whereas primordial entities are composed of fixed positions occupied by unique persons, who are not interchangeable, the modern forms are a structure of positions which can be changed and in which the occupants can be changed. The key change is that the modern organisation is a legal entity, which can act on its own, distinct from its members. This social invention allows for innovations to be much more readily

But this flexibility is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, the often oppressive primordial structures are broken up and people are allowed more freedom, since they are now socially controlled only in respect of each of their various roles rather than their fixed familykinship position. On the other hand, since so many natural persons are employed by


Such links can be measured and their patterns modelled.

groups, based on the characteristics of their constituent triads.

shown that there are:

foundations;

companies; and

**3.5 Groups/Organisations** 

adopted.

collective organisations, their purposes in life are bent to the wishes of these structures. The intense web of face-to-face social linkages that formerly pertained is now reduced, and subject to severe intrusion from collective persons: e.g. schools, advertisers. The relation between collective entities and natural persons is asymmetrical. Organisations are obtrusive and intrusive, and difficult to gain information about or to control. Perhaps the final irony is, that to obtain some leverage over corporations, natural people may resort to agencies such as the state or to trade unions: but these too can be very distant from and unresponsive to citizens' or members' wishes.

There has been much discussion across many areas of sociology about how people loosely aggregated within social categories may become more tightly welded into collectivities or organisations. The classic discussion was that of Marx concerning the revolutionary consciousness of the working class. To enable collective revolutionary action, the working class requires:


Merton's views are more general (Crothers 1987: 97, Merton 1968). He distinguishes between categories, collectivities and groups. Members of categories share statuses, and thereby similar interests and values although not necessarily through shared interaction or a common and distinctive body of norms. Collectivities share norms and have a sense of solidarity, while members of groups interact with each other and share a common identity, which is also attributed to them by others. But he does not then go on to provide sociological explanation of how groupings might move up (or for that matter down) this hierarchy of levels.

Each organisation is in some part unique, but also shares similarities in its attributes with other organisations. They interact with other organisations and can bunch together to form further, higher-level (meta-) organisations. They persist, they change, they are born, they die. However, the metaphor does not carry over exactly, as unlike people, organisations can have major bits break off, or be added to, and can interact with people as well as other collectivities. A further, and central, discontinuity with this individualistic analogy is that organisations tend to be multi-layered. Any organisation can be a veritable 'Russian doll' of nested sub-organisations, and there can also be layers of people who are affected beyond the usual organisational boundaries. Social patterns can also crosscut the layers and boundaries of organisations.

In analysing an organisation, the major independent variables are the formal institutions in terms of which social conduct is organised: the division of labour, the hierarchy of offices, control and sanctioning mechanisms, production methods, official rules and regulations, personnel practises and so on. The major dependent variables are the results accomplished by operations and the attachment of its members to the organisation, as indicated by productive efficiency, changes effected in the community (say, a decline in crime rates), turnover, satisfaction with work, and various other effect criteria. To explain the relationship between these two sets of abstract variables, it is necessary to investigate the processes of social interaction and the interpersonal relations and group structures (Blau cited in Calhoun 1990:17).

Analysing Social Structures 27

market, the family/ household sector of society merely consists of endless numbers of small units with only the most occasional formal organisation claiming to represent the interests

Other conceptions which are used to understand environing 'fields' include studies of interorganisational relations and of markets. Inter-organisational relations has become a subjectarea in its own right. Many of these studies show how alliances of organisations can be mobilised to work together to shape broad areas of policy development or market operation. For example, the oil industry in USA organised to squash possible governmental flight regulations that would have then exposed commercially secret data on the paths of exploration flights. Another example concerns agricultural workers, stuck with low wage rates, who were able to mobilise their affiliates to put pressure on the networks of the employing super-company, which then eventually raised the wages. Much activity in social formations involves complex, shifting and often fragile relations amongst blocs of

Another key metaphor is that of the market. A market is a particular type of interorganisational framework which provides a mechanism through which the operations of the various units can be co-ordinated. This ideal-type model can also be held up against at least partially similar structural alternatives to examine differences in their mode of operation: e.g. command economies. A classic market is supposedly one where there is a range of different units of somewhat similar size, where each has little effect on other units and

Although the internal organisation of an institutional area may take the structure of being a market, this form is **particularly** appropriate only to the description of economies. Other institutional areas tend to have rather different internal arrangements. Another institutional environment which differs from economic markets is that centred on the government. This sector involves the ordinary public as 'citizens' rather than 'customers' and marches to the beat of rather different requirements. Of recent years, however, new right ideologists have increasingly attempted to subvert these differences and to remake the state sector along the lines of straight capitalism. As well as being an important area of society, a state can be a significant set of organisations leading many other areas of social activity. One important role the State often plays is in rule-setting and enforcement of these rules in the markets

Beyond the economy and polity lie other sectors. A third sector is the voluntary and nonprofit one, which operates according to yet a further set of rules, but which is also under siege from both governmental and especially capitalist modes of operation. The current 'mixed' operation of some voluntary sub-sectors has been described as a 'quasi-market'. Another institutional area is focused on the family and household operation within communities. There are a wide variety of other institutional areas which might also deserve

A useful distinction to invoke at this point is that contrasting 'public' and 'private' spheres. The working of some institutional areas are held to be the concern of many groups (although some are disenfranchised) and there is public discussion about them. But, in other spheres, they are not held to warrant much attention and discussion is suppressed or deflected into private nooks and crannies. In modern Western societies it has been held

which the various other social units are, in turn, embedded within.

of some particular fraction of households.

where there is a good flow of information.

organisations.

separate attention.

Sociologists of organisations have also developed a distinct vocabulary which identifies several further major features of organisations. They are seen as having goals, an internal structure, technology and resources, and a surrounding environment. In pursuit of their goals, they deploy their material and human resources to suit the key features of their technology and organisational framework in order to produce whatever goods and services is their purpose.

Many organisational analysts cleave to a view of organisations as being organised more-orless rationally: that their goals are provide clear guidance, that decisions are rationally made within the parameters set by the goals, and that the organisation is rationally organised in terms of its means for reaching these goals. This concern of organisations with rationality contrasts strongly with the considerable inefficiency of most other types of social entity. It provides a basis for expecting clearer patterns of similarity amongst organisations.

It has been found that organisations, far from being quite static in their pattern, have changed their practises of management over time. As a result, much of the recent effort in organisational studies has gone into the tracking of changes in organisational form.
