Showing papers on "Social system published in 1989"

Social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability: conformity, complexity, and bolstering.

Abstract: This experiment tested predictions derived from a social contingency model of judgment and choice that identifies 3 distinctive strategies that people rely on in dealing with demands for accountability from important interpersonal or institutional audiences. The model predicts that (a) when people know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will rely on the low-effort acceptability heuristic and simply shift their views toward those of the prospective audience, (b) when people do not know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will be motivated to think in relatively flexible, multidimensional ways (preemptive selfcriticism), and (c) when people are accountable for positions to which they feel committed, they will devote the majority of their mental effort to justifying those positions (defensive bolstering). The experiment yielded results supportive of these 3 predictions. The study also revealed some evidence of individual differences in social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability. Many writers have criticized cognitive social psychology for its apparent indifference to the interpersonal and institutional settings within which people make judgments and choices (e.g., Gergen, 1982; Sampson, 1981). Although these critiques make important points, it is necessary to advance beyond metatheoretical position papers and to specify the particular ways in which interpersonal and institutional variables interact with cognitive tendencies of the perceiver to shape how people actually make up their minds. Recent research on accountability points to one possible answer. Tetlock (1985a) has argued that accountability is a universal feature of everyday decision-making environments. Accountability, from this standpoint, is a critical rule- and normenforcement mechanism: the social psychological link between individual thinkers on the one hand and the social systems to which they belong on the other. The fact that people are ultimately accountable for their decisions is an implicit or explicit constraint on virtually everything they do. Failure to behave in ways for which one can construct acceptable accounts leads to varying degrees of censure—depending, of course, on the gravity of the offense and the norms of the organization (Schlenker, 1982; Scott L Tetlock, 198 la). A good deal of experimental evidence indicates that accountability pressures can affect both what people think (the beliefs and preferences they express) and how they think (the reasoning

Indirect Relationships and Imagined Communities: Large-Scale Social Integration and the Transformation of Everyday Life

Abstract: This chapter presents general features of modernity that social theory has pointed to but inadequately thematized and that help to provide a much stronger sociological foundation for grasping some of the phenomena to which postmodern thought calls our attention. Modern political and economic affairs are distinguished by the increasing frequency, scale, and importance of indirect social relationships. The reproduction of embodied but social sensibilities, habituses, is altered as social life comes more and more to be coordinated through indirect relationships. Recognizing the role of indirect relations and imagined communities provides a way to understand the increasing split between everyday life and large-scale systemic integration, thus potentially informing and improving Jurgen Habermas's account of social versus system integration. Perhaps the most important transformation of everyday life in the modern era has been the sharpening and deepening of a split between the world of direct interpersonal relationships and the mode of organization and integration of large-scale social systems.

System dynamics meets the press

Abstract: The shared para- digms of society, the public discourse, the deepest assumptions about how the world works, these are the ultimate sources of system structure and the primary obsta- cles to structural change. The reigning paradigms of the western world are astonishingly unsys- tematic, and they give rise to badly structured, difficult- to-manage large-scale System dynamics has met the press in continuous, sometimes dramatic, often frus- trating confrontation since the earliest days of the field. In 1969, when I first became aware of Jay Forrester, he was trying to explain to a nation in the midst of urban crisis that governments should pull down city housing instead of constructing it (Forrester 1969). The press was fascinated by this unusual message, just the inverse of the conventional wisdom of the day. That was when the word counterintuitive began to be applied to complex systems. The first article to be written about Forrester's world model was in Playboy, of all places. A year or so later I watched Dennis Meadows discussing The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) on the Today show. He was given three minutes to get across the ideas of exponential growth, overshoot, and collapse, right after a mouthwash commercial and just before a demonstration by the British dart-throwing champion. The press has paid sporadic attention to the work of the M.I.T. group on national economic modeling, but a 50-year long wave cannot hold the interest of a nation with 4-year election cycles and a media attention span of a few weeks. The experiences of system dynamicists with the press have sometimes been funny, sometimes frustrating, sometimes fruitful. Those of us who use system dynamics to model large-scale social systems have had many such experiences, and we will continue to have them. We seek out the press because we think our field gives us valuable, sometimes crucial, insights about the world, and we want those insights to be spread widely. The press seeks us out because we usually have something to say that is relevant and off-beat. We rarely come at a topic the same way everybody else does, and the novelty and controversy we generate are magnets for the media. Strangely enough, given all these skirmishes with the press, our field has paid much more attention to communicating with managers and policymakers than it has to getting ideas across to the general public. Our focus on policy-level communication is understandable, since our models direct our awareness to the decision points in systems. But our field also makes clear the overarching power of paradigms, deep- level, socially shared assumptions about the nature of the world that set up the structures of decision makers, institutions, feedback loops, and system goals in the first place. If we communicate only to decision makers, we might be able to install better decision rules, we might redirect a physical or information flow or two, but we will not achieve the thoroughgoing restructuring of systems that we know is necessary to solve some of the world's gravest problems: the three big ones-poverty, pollution, and war, and a host of smaller ones-inflation, public indebtedness, land-use plan- ning, city management, and farm failures. For our larger social purposes our proper audience is the general public. Our only way of reaching that audience is through the mass media.

The Paradox of Interdependent Relations in the Field of Social Issues in Management

Abstract: The firm's relationship to its social and public policy environment is fraught with issues whereby individual values conflict with organizational requirements and organizational actions conflict with social goals The effects that time and scale can have on complex social systems can result in rational individual actions leading to undesirable collective outcomes over time, a paradox of interdependent relations Recent literature concerning prisoner's dilemma game strategies, the parable of the tragedy of the commons, and the logic of collective action serves as a useful framework for understanding individual/collectivity relationships These concepts suggest that an integrative approach should be used Implications for managers and public policy officials are discussed, and research questions are suggested

Prehistoric social landscapes of the Arawe Islands, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea

Abstract: This paper lays out a theoretical framework for interpreting a regional archaeological record in terms of the social formations which produced it. The central idea is that of the social landscape. Past social groups are seen to operate in the landscape in order to provide and sustain a social system, rather than reacting to the structure of their environment. The idea of a social landscape is employed to examine how groups organise themselves on a local regional scale to meet social goals and to link these forms of organisation to the archaeological record they leave behind. The central social principle explored here is that of debt, which enjoins dispersal of materials and sets up landscapes which are non-accumulative. Data from the Arawe island group on the south coast of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea are presented to illustrate these ideas.

Improving Theory and Research on Hazard Mitigation: Political Economy and Organizational Perspectives

Abstract: This paper opens with a discussion of the progress that has been made to date in research and theory on mitigation. It goes on to suggest approaches that, by addressing neglected aspects of mitigation-related issues, may improve our understanding of the topic. Woven through the paper are calls for several shifts in emphasis with respect to studies on mitigation: (1) from a social system, consensus model to a conflict model on society and community; (2) from an event-based, discontinuous concept of disaster and mitigation to a view that stresses the continuity between ongoing social life and the disruption occasioned by natural and technological agents; (3) from the study of the social consequences of disasters to the study of aspects of the social order that increase risk and lead to disasters; and (4) from an individualistic, social psychological approach to mitigation to a perspective that takes into account macro-level social phenomena. Language: en

Hierarchy in Organizations

Abstract: Hierarchy is nowadays defined as a universal structural principle of any organizational system—biological, technical, or social. With regard to social systems, this principle is discernible at all levels, from small groups to society as a whole. Indeed, mankind does not seem to know any other mode of association than that of a pyramid. However, the inevitability of this principle in social organizations means that the problems to which it gives rise are also inevitable. These problems derive from the characteristics of social relations that are typical of a hierarchy, namely, relations of subordination, dependence, and inequality. In an organization, one worker is consciously given the preeminent right to take decisions concerning another, and, moreover, he also receives the means for monitoring the job behavior of the other. Such workers form a clear minority which, however, decides for the majority. Herein lies one of the most important characteristics of intra-organizational relations, and the objectiv...

About Steaks Liking to be Eaten: The Conflicting Views of Symbolic Interactions and Talcott Parsons Concerning the Nature of Relations Between Persons and Nonhuman Objects

Abstract: Reasoning on the basis of the nature of a series of characteristics of social systems, Talcott Parsons asserted that relations of persons with others are interactional, but that their relations with what he called nonsocial objects-physical and cultural objects-are other than interactional. Logical as well as common sense considerations show that persons do interact both with categories of objects. Symbolic interactionists hold that interaction of persons with nonhuman objects-their designation of what Parsons called nonsocial objects-occurs during the course of the persons taking the roles of such objects internally with presumed mutuality, that is thinking about them, and interpreting them as one or another of three different kinds of signs. In the symbolic interactionist perspective, the overarching background of all interaction is the active self mediating reflexively between the persons and whatever kinds of objects with which they are involved.

Lessons from the past : issues for social work theory

Abstract: 1. Introduction Part A - Theory: 2. Orientation to Theory and Theory Construction 3. 'Theory' and 'Action': 'Practice Theory' and 'Theory for Practice' 4. Meta-Theory: 'Ends' and 'Means': and the Context of Practice: Part B - The Data 5. Explication and Critique of Four Conceptual Frameworks Part C - The Findings: 6. Purposes of 'Integrated' Theory 7. Problems in Achieving an 'Integrated' Social Work Theory 8. Nomenclature 9. Historical Influences 10. Relationship to Social Systems Analysis: Part D - Contribution 11. Contribution of 'Integrated' Theory to Social Work Part E - Conclusion: 12. The Need for more Modest and Rigorous Social Work Theory.

Educational Climate in Elective Adult education: Shared Decision Making and Communication Patterns

Abstract: Educational climate represents the social and contextual qualities of an organization as perceived by the participants. The theoretical construct of educational climate encompasses a range of variables which have been categorized as ecology, milieu, social system, and culture (Tigiuri, 1968). These categories are similar to the elements of the andragogical process described by Knowles (1984). In this research, the theoretical climate category of social system emerged as influential in an ethnographic study of an elective university program. Findings revealed that shared decision making and communication patterns were instrumental in the quality of the adult learning experience.

Relational dynamics of charismatic organization: The complementarity of love and power

Abstract: This paper outlines a new theory of structural transformation in charismatic systems by postulating a complementary relationship between love and power. Radical reorganization of social organization, the function of charismatic systems, requires mobilizing and realigning enormous amounts of social energy. The source of this social energy is love. When patterned as communion, love fuses the group into an undifferentiated whole and releases the social energy previously locked up as institutionalized structure. Released from structure or form, however, social energy is highly volatile and produces immense pressures towards instability. Counterbalancing the pressure from communion, a strong, collective order of power functions to harness and align the energy, thereby promoting group stability and enhancing the prospects for structural transformation. Data from a national study of sixty urban communal organizations are used to ground key aspects of the theory.

Different strokes from different folks : Which type of ties provide what kind of social support?

Abstract: Along with market exchanges and institutional distributions, community network ties with kith and kin are a principal way by which people and households obtain supportive resources. We evaluate six potential explanations of why certain types of community ties provide certain kinds of supportive resources: tie strength, contact, group processes, kinship, positional resources, and (dis)similarities. Quantitative and qualitative data show that most relationships provide specialized support. The kinds of support provided is related more to characteristics of the relationship than to characteristics of the network members themselves. Strong ties · provide emotional aid, small services and companionship. Parents and adult children exchange financial aid, emotional aid, large services, and small services. Physically accessible ties provide services. Women provide emotional aid. Because different types of ties are unequally represented in the networks, friends, neighbors and siblings make up about half of all supportive relationships. The ensemble of network members supplies Torontonians with stable and adaptive support. DIFFERENT STROKES FROM DIFFERENT FOLKS: WHICH TYPES OF COMMUNITY TIES PROVIDE WHAT KINDS OF SOCIAL SUPPORT EXPLAINING THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF SOCIAL SUPPORT We broadly address an issue which heretofore has been dealt with piecemeal. How are the characteristics of a person's community ties associated with the kinds of resources he/she gets through these ties? Social support from kith and kin is a prindpal way by which people and households get resources. Such personal community networks informally provide resources as diverse as emotional aid, goods, services, information, money and companionship. They supply much of the social capital that people and households use to deal with daily life, seize opportunities and reduce uncertainties (Kadushin 1981; DiMaggio and Mohr 1985; Coleman 1988). They underpin the informal economic arrangements often crudal for a household's survival, expansion and reproduction (Pahl 1984; Sik 1988). Usually operating in ways that transcend narrow reciprocity, they are both a product and a cause of the roles that people play (Leifer 1988). There has been much less analysis of access to supportive resources through community ties than there has been of two other principal means of obtaining resources: market exchanges as purchases, barter, or informal exchanges; institutional distributions by the state or other bureaucracies as citizenship rights, organizational benefits or charitable aid. Social science journals are filled with studies showing how positions in social structure affect market exchanges and institutional distributions: e.g., socioeconomic variations in pw-chasing power, ethnic minority access to schools,

Social Steering and Household Strategies: the macropolitics and the microsociology of welfare states

Abstract: An analytical perspective for grasping how welfare states relate to the ordinary life-pursuits of their population and how the latter relates to the welfare state is needed. What welfare states do is distinguished into social administration, social education, social reform, and social steering. Steering reaches furthest into people's lives. As such it is problematic both to integrative and aggregative theories of democracy; it can also include the possibility of calling forth more signals from the population than less ambitious democratic policies. A systematic overview of aggregate Swedish household data the major activities of households provides a basis for analysing how the population is affected by and affects the welfare state. The state appears as an important provider of work, housing, childcare, and leisure; the most effective signals from households to the state come forward when public provision and subsidy have created tight markets. From the household perspective, signals to government through individual'action of various sorts, direct or mediated, appear crucial even in very organized Sweden. Welfare states are social systems of human reproduction for the simple and the expanded reproduction of a given state population (cf. Therborn, 1987). As such, the welfare state expresses an encounter of state politics and the life pursuits of a whole human population. To an amazing extent, that encounter has largely been left out of focus by the immense literature on welfare states, centered on states as institutional structures of varying size and shape. The literature has mainly concentrated on explanations of welfare state developments, highlighting causal forces that are macro. Descriptions, conceptualizations, and evaluations have tended to rotate around institutional counterpositions such as 'from the poorhouse to the welfare state or 'politics against markets'. To the extent that macro-micro relationships have been probed into, they have typically been guided by This content downloaded from 207.46.13.51 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 06:25:10 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Changing the Definition of the Situation: Toward a Theory of Sociological Intervention

Abstract: The sociological intervention is identified as (1) directed at the operational definition of the situation and (2) taking into account the multiple, interacting layers of social participation framing human predicaments and their resolution. These are further differentiated, employing case examples, in terms of mode of attack — direct, indirect, or cooperative — and level of social context at which the intervention is directed — the personal, group, organizational, or social world being described here as "quantum'' levels of interest. While others may conduct such interventions, the sociological intervention is characterized as the special domain of the clinical sociologist. Sociology, unlike medicine or psychology, has never sought to maintain the strong disciplinary boundaries typical of "a specialty." Rather, in its historical posture of a generalizing social science encompassing the subject areas of the other social/behavioral disciplines, sociology has freely disseminated to others its findings, concepts, and methods while maintaining only a marginal interest in "applied" work. Consequently, while our subterranean tradition of clinical sociology reemerged around 1978, we have found it difficult to specify exactly the special contribution or expertise of the sociological practitioner. To limit the domain of clinical sociology to what self-identified clinical sociologists do or have done would, if anything, be counterproductive, as Lee (1973) and others have argued. As one who has been intimately concerned with the problem of defining our field for some years now, I believe we are ready to move beyond presentation of the variety of roles enacted by clinical sociologists (cf. Straus 1979a) to tease out the underlying logic of approach characterizing the specifically sociological intervention. In this paper, then, I shall state my findings that, on the basis of analyzing the published and unpublished literature of the field, the sociological interven51 52 CLINICAL SOCIOLOGY REVIEW/1984 tion may be characterized as (1) directed at the operational definition of the situation, in such a way as to (2) take into account the multiple, interacting layers of social participation framing human problems and predicaments and their resolution. Contemporary practitioners of clinical sociology almost universally characterize themselves as humanists in Lee's sense of the term (1973). While extrinsic to my general definition, this value orientation is useful when differentiating clinical sociological practice from more conventional "applied social science" (Lee 1978). Our interventions are aimed at empowering clients instead of simply adjusting them to the "realities of life." Rather than adopt the expert's role of prescribing a better or more appropriate reality for the client, we strive to minimize interference with the client's worlds and values; rather than serve the needs of "the system," we attempt to serve the needs of the human beings comprising the social unit or system in question (Straus 1982). Operational Definition of the Situation Translation of social theory, concept, and method into practice necessitates both theoretical eclecticism and some reworking of our usual formulations. Thomas's "definition of the situation" (1931) is usually understood phenomenologically to mean that whatever a person or group believes or accepts to be so is real in its consequences. While it is important to deal with socially constructed realities at this intrapersonal level, since they form the basis upon which conduct will be constructed by human actors (Blumer 1969), redefinition of internalized meanings and cognitive maps is mainly a concern of sociological counselors working with individuals and primary groups (Straus 1982). Most sociological interventions are more concerned with the manifestation of these "realities" in patterns of conduct and joint conduct being enacted by the individuals, groups, and/or systems under scrutiny. Thomas's statement of the principle was somewhat ambiguous about the nature of the definition of the situation, but was clear about the dialectical relationship between the individual's definition and the definition of the situation presented by others. These concepts are neatly summarized in Sarbin's (1976) characterization of the dramaturgical perspective holding that actors not only respond to situations, but also mold and create them....The interactions of participants define the situation. The units of interest are not individuals, not organisms, not assemblages of traits, but interacting persons in identifiable contexts. CHANGING THE DEFINITION OF THE SITUATION 53 It is the pattern of these interactions that corresponds to the operational definition of the situation and that is the target of sociological intervention. Levels of Social Context Both the original statement of definition of the situation and its dramaturgical operationalization are clear about the situated nature of conduct. They are not so clear about the complex and many-tiered nature of social ecologies and about how human behavior is situationally organized with respect to a subject's concrete location within that total social context. However, clinical sociologists are sensitive to the implications of how "social systems" at every level influence ongoing action. This sensitivity is then translated into practical actions designed to mitigate negative interlevel influences and/or to use these dynamics strategically to guide and stabilize positive change. As Freedman and Rosenfeld have put it (1983), the clinical sociologist uses a paradigm of "the integration of levels of focus" incorporating both "macro" and "micro" viewpoints. Thus, the characteristic sociological intervention combines multiple foci: "the group member, the groups to which the person belongs or desires to belong or not belong, organizations, committees, subcultures, culture, and society." In this paper it is necessary to adopt a typology of the various levels of social context; clearly, how one slices the social continuum represents a pragmatic choice relative to one's purpose. For example, Parsons (1951) selected a scheme appropriate to his theory of social action, while Lofland (1976) utilized an entirely different model of "human systems." As my purpose here is to describe sociological intervention generically, we will look at just four "quantum levels" of social participation: persons, groups, organizations, and worlds. The first two of these correspond to general usage. Persons are social actors defining themselves in conduct; for our purposes, they are their acts. The routinized patterns of conduct colloquially referred to as "one's act" are framed by (that is, organized in terms of) the culture of the worlds in which persons participate and the roles they play in the various groups in which they are involved. Each level of social structure is viewed as the emergent pattern of routinized conduct representing a dialectical synthesis between the next "higher" and "lower" levels. Groups, then, would be conceptualized as persons with more or less routinized social relations or roles. The actual role structure of the group operationally defines that group. As groups necessarily establish at least tacit patterns of relationship with other groups, they inevitably become tied into any number of formal or informal organizations. A special usage of organizations is employed here: this level of organized, identifiable intergroup relations is most often termed that of "social systems" 54 CLINICAL SOCIOLOGY REVIEW/1984 (Znaniecki 1934). However, since any interacting set of persons can be considered to form a "social system," and their relations can be analyzed in terms of systems theory (von Bertalanffy 1968), it seems best to employ another term for this structural level. Organizations, then, may range up through wider and wider scales of intergroup relations from "formal organizations," corporations, and associations to communities and governments. The operational definition of organizations consists of their institutions, meaning the routinized patterns of social relations often simply referred to as their "organization." The highest level of social context in this typology is the social world. This usage is adapted and expanded from Lofland's definition: "Complexly interrelated sets of encounters, roles, groups, and organizations seen by participants as forming a larger whole are often and properly thought of as 'worlds,' as in the phrases the business world,' 'the academic world,' the sports world'"(1976:29). In the sense employed here, a world is operationally defined by its culture, primarily the nonmaterial culture of norms, values, folkways, mores, language, and technology differentiating its participants from members of other social worlds. Those who share a subculture by definition share a world; larger-scale worlds might include the entire society, the civilization of which it is a part, and, possibly, Spaceship Earth itself. The Sociological Intervention If we identify the operational definition with the target of intervention, this scheme generates the following taxonomy of sociological intervention: Level of Target of Participation Intervention Persons Conduct Groups Role Structure Organizations Institutions

Social Work in the Field of Learning Disabilities: An Interactive Approach

Abstract: Children develop in an interactive matrix, dominated by family and school, which constitutes an intimate social system. Using a systems application of self psychology theory, this paper provides a framework for social work practice with teachers and families of persons with learning disabilities, aimed at enhancing their capacities to provide the empathic attunement and undistorted mirroring necessary to the child's self-cohesion and self-esteem. Practice examples are cited. Increased attention to the needs of those who constitute the child's social system is advocated.

Economics Versus Ecology

Abstract: An economic system is usually considered as an open system. Inputs come both from the natural and the social-cultural system. The natural system provides the natural resources in the economist’s sense, and all those resources and conditions which, even if they do not have any economic value, are required for production activities or are useful to consumers. The inputs from the social system have been summarized by Pareto with the term tastes (gusti). In fact the social system provides other inputs viz. those social factors which contribute to mould the attitude to business (propensity to entrepreneurial activity) and to shape the relationship between competition and cooperation.

Dualism in Social Theory and Systems Practice

Abstract: A methodology is a body of knowledge that enables action to be taken, either to increase substantive knowledge of the world (as in the natural sciences), or to bring about some other desirable state of affairs, such as the solution of a practical problem (as in engineering or management science). Successful action depends on reliable theories both about the world, and how to intervene in it. Such theories can only be established, however, by action. In the history of a mature engineering discipline, theory and practice combine to progressively enhance the theory and increase the likelihood of successful practice. Not all engineering disciplines are equally mature. Management science, however, has more intractable problems to solve than even the most junior engineering discipline. There is no unified body of theory, and successful practice of management is possible without knowledge of any of it. This is due not to the incompetence of management scientists, but to the fact that management science is a form of applied social science. There is disagreement as to how to generate substantive knowledge in social science, and less agreement as to how to intervene effectively in social systems. One contribution to the methodology of management science has come from the systems movement.