New medical imaging devices, such as the CT scanner, have begun to challenge traditional role relations among radiologists and radiological technologists. Under some conditions, these technologies may actually alter the organizational and occupational structure of radiological work. However, current theories of technology and organizational form are insensitive to the potential number of structural variations implicit in role-based change. This paper expands recent sociological thought on the link between institution and action to outline a theory of how technology might occasion different organizational structures by altering institutionalized roles and patterns of interaction. In so doing, technology is treated as a social rather than a physical object, and structure is conceptualized as a process rather than an entity. The implications of the theory are illustrated by showing how identical CT scanners occasioned similar structuring processes in two radiology departments and yet led to divergent forms of organization. The data suggest that to understand how technologies alter organizational structures researchers may need to integrate the study of social action and the study of social form.

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Technology as an occasion for structuring: evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments.

December 1978, volume 23 This article describes the deficiencies of positivist science for generating knowledge for use in solving problems that members of organizations face. Action research is introduced as a method for correcting these deficiencies. When action research is tested against the criteria of positivist science, action research is found not to meet its critical tests. The appropriateness of positivist science is questioned as a basis for judging the scientific merits of action research. Action research can base its legitimacy as science in philosophical traditions that are different from those which legitimate positivist science. Criteria and methods of science appropriate to action research are offered.

An Assessment of the Scientific Merits of Action Research.

Theoretical Perspectives for Strategic Human Resource Management

The article presents an overview of the longitudinal-processual theory of organizational formation. The ideological underpinnings of the method are described, highlighting its central focus on the factors and elements of an organization's creation and formation rather than its existent structures or practices. Speculative discussion is given regarding the processes involved in organizational culture, based off of an empirical school administration case study. Additional topics discussed include the influence of "dramatic" events which broadly change the social structure of the environment, the influence of social entrepreneurs, and the specific definition of organizational culture as an entity.

On Studying Organizational Cultures

Debates regarding research methods in the social sciences are linked directly to assumptions about ontology, epistemology, and human nature. After reviewing a range of positions relating to these assumptions, we argue that the dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative methods is a rough and oversimplified one. Contemporary social science is dominated by commitments to research methods almost as ends in themselves, resulting in abstracted modes of empiricism based on both quantitative and qualitative methods. Qualitative research is an approach rather than a particular set of techniques, and its appropriateness derives from the nature of the social phenomena to be explored.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/257453.pdf

The Case for Qualitative Research

The Theory of Organizations.

Social Organization :A General Systems and Role Theory Perspective , Social Organization :A General Systems and Role Theory Perspective , کتابخانه مرکزی دانشگاه علوم پزشکی تهران

Social organization : a general systems and role theory perspective

School Attendance and Attainment: Function and Dysfunction of School and Family Social Systems

To a large extent, the adequacy of physical conditions of housing is considered to be associated with the consumer's preferences for alternative consumption items and various socioeconomic characteristics of that consumer. The relationships of housing adequacy to race, town, tenure, wife's education, occupational prestige of the head of household, family income, and preferences for long- and short-range alternatives to housing were analyzed to determine which socioeconomic conditions and preferences were related to housing adequacy.



The sample consisted of 361 females in two culturally different, small Louisiana communities with less than 6,500 populations. Orthogonal factor analysis of the attitude items, followed by least squares analysis of variance or simple linear correlations, where statistically appropriate, was used to determine significant differences in the adequacy of housing factor scores.



Housing was significantly less adequate for blacks, for those living in the north Louisi ana community, and for those who lived in rented houses. The families of females who possessed lower levels of education and the families of males who worked at jobs with lower occupational prestige also lived in less adequate housing. The females who did not prefer to spend their resources on long-range alternatives to housing lived in less adequate housing. Thus, both socioeconomic variables and consumer preferences were directly associated with housing adequacy. The theoretical proposition that consumer preferences serve as an attitudinal link between the socioeconomic variables and housing adequacy was not supported by our data. The socioeconomic variables were related to housing adequacy but not generally related to consumer preferences. Only the socioeconomic variable, town, was related to consumer preferences.

Alvin L. Bertrand

Papers

The Theory of Organizations.

Social organization : a general systems and role theory perspective

School Attendance and Attainment: Function and Dysfunction of School and Family Social Systems

Consumer Preferences and Selected Socioeconomic Variables Related to Physical Adequacy of Housing

Basic Sociology: An Introduction to Theory and Method.