Showing papers in "American Sociological Review in 1967"

A framework for the comparative analysis of organizations

Abstract: Complex organizations are conceptualized in terms of their technologies, or the work done on raw materials. Two aspects of technology vary independently: the number of exceptions that must be handled, and the degree to which search is an analyzable or unanalyzable procedure. If there is a large number of exceptions and search is not logical and analytic, the technology is described as nonroutine. Few exceptions and analyzable search procedures describe a routine technology. Two other types result from other combinations-craft and engineering technologies. Task structures vary with the technology utilized, and are analyzed in terms of control and coordination and three levels of management. Social structure in turn is related to technology and task structure. Finally, the variations in three types of goals are weakly related to the preceding variables in this conceptualization. The perspective provides a basis for comparing organizations which avoids many problems found in other schemes utilizing structure, function or goals as the basis for comparison. Furthermore, it allows one to selectively utilize competing organizational theories once it is understood that their relevance is restricted to organizations with specific kinds of technologies. The scheme makes apparent some errors in present efforts to compare organizations.

A System Resource Approach to Organizational Effectiveness

Abstract: The prevailing formal and implied conceptions of "organizational effectiveness" are examined and found deficient. When effectiveness is defined with reference to goal attainment, there are both methodological and conceptual problems, for the goals are those of persons (observers or members)-not of the organization itself-and there is in principle no possibility for stable consensus about the nature of the goals. When defined with reference to societal function, the values and standards for assessing "organizational effectiveness" are similarly external to the organization itself. An improved conceptual framework, derived from the systems model of organizations, is proposed; the framework emphasizes both the distinctiveness of the organization as an identifiable social structure and the interdependence of the organization with its environment. The interdependence takes the form of transactions in which scarce and valued resources are exchanged under competitive conditions. The organization's success over a period of time in this competition for resources-i.e., its bargaining position in a given environment-is regarded as an expression of its overall effectiveness. Since the resources are of various kinds, and the competitive relationships are multiple, and since there is interchangeability among classes of resources, the assessment of organizational effectiveness must be in terms not of any single criterion but of an open-ended multidimensional set of criteria. The implications of this conception for theory, for empirical investigation, and for organization management are discussed.

Theories of mass communication

Abstract: Stages in the development of human communication the emergence of the mass press the development of motion pictures the establishment of the broadcase media the mass media as social systems mass society and the magic bullet theory theories of selective influence socialization and theories of indirect influence mass communication and the construction of meaning theoretical strategies for persuasion media system depending theory emerging media systems.

The Police on Skid-Row: A Study of Peace Keeping

Abstract: Following the distinction proposed by Banton, police work consists of two relatively different activities: "law enforcement" and "keeping the peace." The latter is not determined by a clear legal mandate and does not stand under any system of external control. Instead, it developed as a craft in response to a variety of demand conditions. One such condition is created by the concentration of certain types of persons on skid-row. Patrolmen have a particular conception of the social order of skid-row life that determines the procedures of control they employ. The most conspicuous features of the peace keeping methods used are an aggressively personalized approach to residents, an attenuated regard for questions of culpability, and the use of coercion, mainly in the interest of managing situations rather than persons.

Nobel laureates in science: patterns of productivity, collaboration, and authorship.

Abstract: Nobel laureates in science publish more and are more apt to collaborate than a matched sample of scientists. Interviews with 41 of 55 laureates and comparison of their research output with the output of the matched sample indicate that these patterns hold at every stage of the life-work-cycle. As laureates report and as their publications corroborate, they exercise noblesse oblige in arranging co-authorship in collaborative publications. Receipt of the Nobel prize is followed by declining productivity and changed work practices, as a result of changed role obligations and activities. Reductions in productivity are more severe for laureates who experience comparatively large increments in prestige through the prize than for those who were already eminent. The prize generates strain in collaborative associations so that most of these terminate soon after the award

Professionals in Bureaucracy: Alienation Among Industrial Scientists and Engineers

Abstract: The relationship between alienation from work and two dimensions of organizational structure-degree of organizational control and number of professional incentives-is examined for scientists and engineers employed by a major American aerospace company. This relationship is examined for professionals differing in length and type of professional training and for professionals working in two very different organizational units within the larger organization. The data suggest that work alienation is associated with type of organizational structure, but that scientists and engineers differ less in their experiencing of alienation than previous research would indicate, and that there may be as much structural variation within a particular organization as there is between different types of organizations.

Sociology and rehabilitation

Abstract: SOCIOLOGY AND REHABILITATION , SOCIOLOGY AND REHABILITATION , کتابخانه مرکزی دانشگاه علوم پزشکی ایران

On the personal consequences of alienation in work

Abstract: The consequences of alienation in work (i.e., engagement in work which is not intrinsically rewarding) are examined, using a random sample of the male work force in a Swedish community. The consequences are those commonly attributed to work alienation by critics of modern industrial society: intergroup hostility, anomia, political withdrawal, status seeking, and a sense of powerlessness. The notion that alienated labor eventuates in such outcomes receives little support here; the evidence suggests that this failure to confirm the "generalization hypothesis" is not attributable to methodological difficulties. The influence of social factors crucial to mass society theory (e.g., membership in an occupational community or in a work organization) is examined and found to be minimal. Finally, an alienated (extrinsic) orientation toward work is also unrelated to such variables as ethnic hostility, political engagement and powerlessness. The significance of these negative findings for images of work in contemporary society is discussed. T HE radical criticism of industrial society, from Marx to the moderns,' has centered its attack on alienation in work. The concern for alienated labor is perhaps the central theme in the literature on the mass society, a literature in which the craftsman's control over the work process and his

The Hawthorne Studies: A Radical Criticism

Abstract: These observations suggest that individual work might decrease after the prize and that collaboration might be substituted in its place as a means of coping with diminishing time for work. Using the percent of singleauthored papers to gauge the extent of individual work, we find that, for the laureates as a whole, it remains much the same (38 vs. 40 percent). Increases are confined to men who received the prize after they were fifty and are not significantly greater than would be expected simply as a result of aging. In summary, the Nobel prize-with its psychological and social consequences for the men who receive it-is associated with a variety of changes in work patterns. In the period directly after the prize, the productivity of laureates declines more than the productivity of rank-and-file scientists of the same age, but the social demands of the prize are more disruptive for the laureates who experienced comparatively large increments in standing than for those who were already members of the scientific elite. Changes in collaborative relationships also follow the award; prize-winning collaborations terminate sooner, on the average, when only one co-worker has been given the award than when the award is shared by several men. Laureates find new collaborators-as a group, they are not more apt to turn to individual work after the prize. These changes, neither anticipated nor intended by the Nobel Foundation, testify to the multiplicity of consequences of the most prestigious of all awards in science.

Toward a sociological model of consensus

Abstract: Two distinct meanings emerge from a review of the literature on consensus: agreement, and co-orientation. Using the second meaning, a conceptual definition of degree of consensus is formulated which is based on a social system model, rather than on individual system models. Drawing upon earlier research, two operational definitions of this model are proposed. Finally, a set of propositions relate degree of consensus in a group to the type of coordination which occurs between members of the group. THE importance of the concept of consensus for sociological theory has been stated eloquently and often. Park and Burgess used it as the central concept in their textbook in 1921, and Wirth made an impassioned plea for the study of consensus in 1948. More recently, Gross et al. have argued (in the context of their study of roles) that sociologists should not merely postulate consensus, but should transform the concept into a variable, in order to be able to study the degree to which it occurs.' Klapp, most recently, has reaffirmed the importance of the concept, and strongly urged

Status Inconsistency, Social Mobility, Status Integration and Structural Effects

Abstract: There are important methodological similarities among four different sociological theories: (1) the status inconsistency approach; (2) theories concerning the effects of social mobility; (3) the Gibbs-Martin status-integration approach, and (4) the analysis of structural or compositional effects. In each of these theories there is the notion that a dependent variable may be affected by deviance or peculiar combinations of statuses. If these theories are stated in simple mathematical form, identification problems can be noted. Unless restrictive assumptions can be made, there will be too many unknowns for solution. This has important implications for the testability of such theories.