Socio CH 5 Test 3

6 key elements of the ideal bureaucratic organization (Weber):

1) Specialization 2) Hierarchy of positions 3) Rules and Regulations 4) Technical Competence 5) Impersonality 6) Formal, written communications

Who does bureaucracy distance?

Bureaucracy helps distance officials from the public. Oligarchy, then, thrives in the hierarchical structure of bureaucracy and reduces leaders' accountability to the people.

Bureaucratic Alienation

Bureaucracy's can dehumanize the people that it's supposed to serve. The same impersonality that fosters efficiency also keeps officials and clients from responding to one another's unique personal needs.

Social Group

Two or more people who identify with and interact with one another (Couples, families, circles of friends, clubs, businesses) while keeping their individuality, members of social groups think of themselves as a special "we."

Bureaucratic Ritualism

A focus on rules and regulations to the point of undermining an organization's goals.

Ways in which today's organizations differ from those of a century ago:

1) Creative Freedom 2) Competitive work teams 3) A Flatter Organization 4) Greater Flexibility

4 Things that Affect Organizations:

1) Economic and political trends affect organizations 2) Population patterns affect organizations 3) Current events can have significant effects on organizations that are far removed from the location of the events themselves. 4) Other organizations also contribute to the organizational environment.

4 Principles of the McDonaldization of Society (George Ritzer):

1) Efficiency 2) Predictability 3) Uniformity 4) Control

What 2 organizational traits do the problems of bureaucracy stem from?

1) Hierarchy and 2) Rigidity

What are the 2 very different types of work that the postindustrial economy has created?

1) High-skill creative work and 2) Low-skill service work. Therefore, at the same time that some organizations have become more flexible, some still continue to use the rigid chain of command.

5 differences between formal organizations in Japan and the US:

1) Japanese companies hired everyone in groups, giving everyone the same salary and responsibilities. 2) Many Japanese companies hired workers for life, fostering a strong sense of loyalty. 3) With the idea that employees would spend their entire careers there, many Japanese companies trained workers in all phases of their operations. 4) Although Japanese corporate leaders took full responsibility for their organization's performance, they involved workers in "quality circles" to discuss decisions that affected them. 5) Japanese companies played a large role in the lives of workers.

3 ways in which social diversity influences intergroup contact:

1) Large Groups Turn Inward 2) Heterogeneous groups turn outward 3) Physical boundaries create social boundaries. To the extent that a social group is physically segregated from others (Ex: By having its own dorm, etc.) Its members are less likely to interact with other people.

3 steps of Scientific Management:

1) Managers carefully observe the task performed by each worker, identifying all the operations involved and measuring the time needed for each. 2) Managers analyze their data, trying to discover ways for workers to perform each job more efficiently. 3) Management provides guidance and incentives for workers to do their jobs more quickly.

What do members of a primary group tend to do?

1) They tend to view each other as unique and irreplaceable. 2) They help each other in many ways, but generally think of the group as an end in itself rather than as a means to some goal. In other words, we prefer to think that family and friendship link to people who "belong together" (Ex: Family always remains family).

3 types of Formal Organizations (Amitai Etziona):

1) Utilitarian Organizations 2) Normative Organizations 3) Coercive Organizations

Sally Helgesen's 3 Gender Linked Patterns (Female Advantage):

1) Women place greater value on communication skills than men and share info more than men do. 2) Women are more flexible leaders who typically give their employees greater freedom. 3) Compared to men, women tend to emphasize the interconnectedness of all organizational operations.

Why might a member of a triad feel left out?

2 of the 3 group members can pair up at times to press their views on the third, or 2 may intensify their relationship, leaving the other feeling left out.

Group

A "circle of close friends."

Category

A group of strangers that share a common status.

Secondary Group

A large and impersonal social group whose members pursue a specific goal or activity. In most respects, secondary groups have characteristics opposite to those of primary groups. Short duration.

Crowd

A loosely formed collection of people in one place, such as students sitting in a large stadium, is a crowd. However, the right circumstances can quickly turn a crowd into a group. Unexpected events, from power failures to terrorist attacks, can make people bond quickly with strangers.

Primary Group

A small social group whose members share personal and lasting relationships. The family is every society's most important primary group.

Reference Group

A social group that serves as a point of reference in making evaluations and decisions (Ex: A guy who imagines his family's response to a girl that he's dating is using his family as a reference group). Reference groups can be primary or secondary.

Out-group

A social group toward which a person feels a sense of competition or opposition.

In-group

A social group towards which a member feels respect and loyalty

Dyad (George Simmel)

A social group with 2 members. Social interaction in a dyad is usually more intense than in larger groups because neither member shares the other's attention with anyone else. (Ex: Love affairs, marriages, the closest friendships).

Triad (George Simmel)

A social group with 3 members, which contains 3 relationships, each uniting 2 of the 3 people. A triad is more stable than a dyad because one member can act as a mediator should the relationship between the other two become strained. Such group dynamics help explain why members of a dyad often seek out a third person to discuss tensions between them.

Rationality

A way of thinking that emphasizes deliberate, matter-of-fact calculation of the most efficient way to accomplish a particular task. A rational worldview pays little attention to the past, and encourages productive efficiency, because its open to any changes that might get the job done better or more quickly. "Modern world view" according to Weber.

Network

A web of weak social ties. "Social web." Gives us a sense that we're living in a "small world."

Laissez-faire leadership

Allows the group to function more or less on its own. This style is typically the least effective in promoting group goals.

How does gender shape networks?

Although the networks of men and women are typically the same size, women include more relatives and more women in their networks, while men include more co-workers and more men.

Utilitarian Organization

An organization that pays people for their efforts. Joining one of these is often a choice, even though people must join one to make a living.

Bureaucracy

An organizational model rationally designed to perform tasks efficiently.

Samuel Stouffer's Research

Asked soldiers to rate their own chances of promotion. Discovered that we don't make judgement about ourselves in isolation, nor do we compare ourselves with just anyone. Regardless of our situation in absolute terms, we form a subjective sense of our well-being by looking at ourselves relative to specific reference groups.

The _________ that define work in the fast-food industry, telemarketing, and similar fields are very much the same to those from a century ago.

Automated Routines

What does communication offer an example of?

Communication offers an example of organizational informality. People create informal networks, or "grape vines," by using both word of mouth and e-mail to spread info quickly.

How do we use groups that we don't belong to for reference?

Conformity to groups that we don't belong to is a strategy to win acceptance by others and illustrates the process of anticipatory socialization.

Tradition (Max Weber)

Consists of behavior, values, and beliefs passed down from generation to generation. Tradition makes a society conservative because it limits an organization's productive efficiency and ability to change.

Why did Cooley use the term "primary" to describe certain groups?

Cooley called personal and tightly integrated groups "primary" because they are amongst the first groups we experience in life.

Stanley Milgram

Did a group conformity experiment using "teacher" and "learner" and electric shocks. He discovered that people are likely to follow the lead of not only legitimate authority figures, but also groups of ordinary people, even when it means harming another person.

Organizational Element

Factors outside an organization that affect its operation (Ex: Technology, Economic and political trends, current events, etc.)

Authoritarian Leadership

Focuses on instrumental concerns, takes personal charge of decision making, and demands that group members obey orders. A fast-acting authoritarian leader is appreciated in a crisis.

How can formal organizations breed alienation?

Formal organizations breed alienation by reducing the human being to "a small cog in a ceaselessly moving mechanism."

Instrumental Leadership

Group leadership that focuses on the completion of tasks. Members look to instrumental leaders to make plans, give orders, and get things done.

Expressive Leadership

Group leadership that focuses on the group's well-being. Expressive leaders take less interest in achieving goals than in raising group morale and minimizing tension and conflict among members.

How do groups influence their members' behavior?

Groups influence behavior of their members by promoting conformity. "Fitting in" provides a secure feeling of belonging.

What's the post-industrial society characterized by?

It's characterized by info-based organizations. Rather than working in factories to make things, more and more people are using computers to create or process info.

What types of jobs has the postindustrial economy created?

It's created many highly skilled jobs over the past half-century, but it has created even more service jobs. Fast-food companies now represent the largest pool of low-wage labor, aside from migrant workers, in the USA.

Two Leadership Roles

Groups typically benefit from two kinds of leadership

What did Weber believe about a strict hierarchy of responsibility?

He believed that it resulted in high organizational efficiency. But Michels countered that it also concentrates power and thus threatens democracy.

How does George Ritzer echo Max Weber?

He echoes him by saying that the ultimate irrationality of McDonaldization is that people can lose control of the system and end up being controlled by it.

Creative Freedom (workplace)

Highly skilled workers have creative freedom, meaning less day-to-day supervision as long as they generate good results in the long run.

Solomon Asch

His experiment with lines and group conformity revealed that many people are willing to compromise their own judgement to avoid the discomfort of being seen as different even by people we don't know.

Why do people tend to "keep score" in secondary groups?

In secondary groups, we tend to "keep score," aware of what we give others and what we recieve in return. This goal orientation means that secondary group members usually remain formal and polite. In a secondary relationship, therefore, we ask the question "How are you?" without expecting a truthful answer.

What comes from the personalities of organizational leaders?

Informality comes from the personalities of organizational leaders. The qualities and quirks of individuals can have a great effect on organizational outcomes.

Secondary Relationships

Involve weak emotional ties and little personal knowledge of one another.

What do each of the 4 principles in the McDonaldization of society do to people?

It limits human creativity, choice, and freedom.

Formal Organizations

Large secondary groups organized to achieve their goals efficiently (Ex: Business corporations, gov't agencies, etc.)

Coercive Organization

Membership is involuntary. People are forced to join these organizations as a form of punishment (prisons) or treatment (some psychiatric hospitals). Some characteristics as total institutions.

What are modern organizations shaped by?

Modern organizations are shaped by technology. Tech gives employees access to more info and people than every before. At the same time, modern tech allows managers to monitor workers activities much more closely than in the past.

Democratic Leadership

More expressive and makes a point of including everyone in the decision-making process. Although less successful in a crisis situation, democratic leaders generally draw on the ideas of all members to develop creative solutions to problems.

How can network ties be a powerful resource?

Network ties can be weak, but they can be a powerful resource. Who you know is often as important as what you know.

What do open organizations encourage leaders to do?

Open organizations encourage leaders to seek out the input of all employees, which usually improves decision making.

What does organizational flexibility provide better-off workers with?

Organizational flexibility gives better-off workers more freedom but often means the threat of "downsizing" and job loss for many rank-and-file employees.

What type of orientation do people in each group display?

People in primary groups display a personal orientation. People in secondary groups display a goal orientation.

Normative Organizations/ Voluntary Associations

People join these organizations to pursue some goal that they think is morally worthwhile. these include community service groups, political parties, and religious organizations.

Efficiency (McDonaldization)

People tend to believe that anything done quickly is, for that reason alone, good.

Larger groups are based less on _________, and more on __________ and ____________.

Personal Attachment; Formal Rules and Regulations

What helps to keep the US gov't from becoming an oligarchy?

Political competition, term limits, and a legal system that includes various checks and balances.

How do primary group members define themselves?

Primary group members define each other according to who they are in terms of family ties or personal qualities, but people in secondary groups look to one another for what they are, that is, what they can do for each other.

Typically, successful instrumental leaders enjoy more _______ from members, and expressive leaders generally receive more ____________.

Respect; Affection

Uniformity (McDonaldization)

Results from a highly rational system that specifies every action and leaves nothing to chance.

Which type of group includes more people?

Secondary groups include many more people than primary groups. In some cases, time may transform a group from secondary to primary, as with co-workers who share an office for many years and develop closer relationships.

Social Media

Technology that links people in social activity

What do tensions between groups do?

Tension between groups sharpen the group boundaries and give people a clearer social identity. However, members of in-groups generally hold overly positive views of themselves and unfairly negative views of various out-groups.

What's the largest network?

The Internet

Scientific Management

The application of scientific principles to the operation of a business or other large organization.

Rationalization of Society

The historical change from tradition to rationality as the main type of human thought.

What does the loss of privacy result from?

The loss of privacy is the result of more and more complex computer technology. The nature of the US economy is another factor causing the erosion of privacy. Another part of today's loss of privacy reflects the # and size of formal organizations.

Heterogeneous Groups Turn Outward

The more internally diverse a group is, the more likely its members are to interact with outsiders.

Control (McDonaldization)

The most unreliable element in organizations is human error, so to avoid this, much of the equipment of things are becoming more automated.

Describe the networks of more privileged people:

The networks of more privileged categories of people are a valuable form of social capital, which can lead to benefits such as higher paying jobs.

"Iron law of Oligarchy" (Robert Michels)

The pyramid shape of bureaucracy places a few leaders in charge of the resources of the entire organization.

A Flatter Organization

The pyramid shape of conventional bureaucracy is replaced by an organizational form with fewer levels in the chain of command.

Oligarchy

The rule of many by the few

Bureaucratic Inertia

The tendency of bureaucratic organizations to perpetuate themselves. Formal organizations tend to take on a life of their own beyond their formal objectives. Usually, an organization stays in business by redefining its goals.

Groupthink

The tendency of group members to conform, resulting in a narrow view of some issue. (Ex: A guy who imagines his family's response to a girl that he's dating is using his family as a reference group). Reference groups can be primary or secondary.

What types of relationships do Expressive Leaders typically build?

They build more personal primary ties. They offer sympathy to a member going through tough times, keep the round united, and lighten serious moments with humor.

What type of importance do family and friends have in the socialization process?

They have primary importance since they help to shape our attitudes, behavior, and social identity.

What can a powerful in-group do to a lower status out-group?

They have the ability to define others as a lower status out-group. In this way, in-groups and out-groups foster loyalty but also generate conflict.

What do organizations with plenty of opportunities for job advancements do for workers?

They motivate employees to work harder and become "fast-trackers," vice versa.

What do underrepresented people in an organization often feel like?

They often feel like socially isolated out-groups. Sometimes what passes for "merit" or good work in an organization is simply being of the right social category.

What types of relationships do Instrumental leaders typically have?

They usually have formal secondary relationships with other members. These leaders give orders and reward or punish members according to how much the members contribute to the group's efforts.

What idea are in and out groups based on?

They're based on the idea that "we" have valued traits that "they" lack.

Large Groups Turn Inward

This means that efforts to promote social diversity may have the unintended effect of promoting separatism.

Competitive Work Teams

This method draws out the creative contributions of everyone and at the same time reduces the alienation found in conventional organizations.

Peter Principle

When bureaucrats are promoted to a level of incompetency.

The principles of scientific management suggest that workplace power should reside where?

With owners and executives

According to Deborah Tannen, women have a greater what?

Women have a greater "information focus" that makes them wonder how asking questions in a particular situation will affect their reputation.

Parkinson's Law

Work will expand to be accomplished in the time allocated for it.

Networks are _________, meaning that they're constantly changing.

dynamic