Organizations

Types of Social Order

  1. These three "types" are different ways of organizing society to maintain order.

    • Each provides beliefs about:

      • Why some people should exercise authority.
      • And why other people should obey.

    • Traditional:

      • Social order based on a belief in custom.
      • Social action is based on respect for traditional ways.

    • Charismatic:

      • Social order based on a belief in an extraordinary leader.
      • Social action is based on commitment to a cause or mission.

    • Rational (Legal-rational):

      • Social order based on impersonal rules or laws.
      • Social action involves tasks carried out in conformity to rules and regulations.

  2. These three types of social order may also be applied to different types of organizations.

Formal Organizations

  1. *Formal Organizations: Groups with a purpose (and means) to achieve certain ends.

    • Ends: "product" or goals

    • Means: "organizational practices"

      • Ways of controlling workers to produce ends.
      • Ways to motivate workers to obey and accept organizational routines and purposes.

  2. Different organizational types (traditional, rational, charismatic) have different organizational practices.

  3. We will be looking at two types of organizations:

    • Rational Organizations: Bureaucracy

    • Charismatic Organizations: Direct Selling Organizations

Rational Organization: Bureaucracy

  1. Dominant form of organizations in the modern U.S.: "Rational Social ORder"

  2. Bureaucracy: Organization designed to increase efficiency through rational means.

    • Ends: product produced efficiently

    • Means: rational, objective

    • Accomplish large-scale tasks by coordinating the work of many individuals.

    • Whole system functions for optimum efficiency by controlling large numbers of people.

  3. Weber and the "Ideal Type" Bureaucracy:

    • "Ideal Type" of Bureaucracy:

      • Take all possible characteristics of bureaucracies
      • Describe them as if all present at same time in same place
      • "Model" to study real bureaucracies
      • 4 major elements/Organizational Practices (Weber had others):
        • Rules and Regulations
        • Specialization of Tasks (Differentiation)
        • Hierarchy (Stratification)
        • Impersonality

    • Rules and Regulations: "Bureaucracy" = "the rule of officials"

      • Rules are at the center of bureaucracy
      • Bureaucracies must operate in a completely predictable way.
      • Rules standardize the work
      • Rules usually apply to the job tasks
        • Everyone in same job does same tasks in the same way.
        • Routines are another aspect of this.
      • Allow workers to know how to do job
      • Routine, standard ways of doing things
      • Rules ensure that anyone who enters the job will be able to fulfill the tasks. E.g., Secretary with innovative filing system?
      • Sometimes rules can be intrusive. E.g., Dress codes - high school
      • Rules also aid in creating an organizational identity.

    • Specialization of Tasks - Division of Labor:

      • Divide up the tasks of the organization
      • Certain people specialize in these smaller tasks
      • Efficient way to handle complex work
        • E.g., Auto manufacturing and assembly line
        • E.g., University - specialized office

    • Hierarchy (and career ladders)

      • Arrange personnel in a vertical ranking of offices
      • Division between upper and lower offices
      • Part of structure is orderly move up the hierarchy.
      • Career ladders - for certain people
      • Allows coordination of many activities and employees
        • E.g., Investment Banking Corporation: CEO, Vice-Presidents, Executive Directors, Managing Directors, Associates, Financial Analysts

    • Impersonal relationships: For bureaucracies to be efficient, must be absent of emotional or personal bonds

      • Separate emotional ties from job:
        • Loyalty is to organization, not to particular people
        • Functioning of organization not dependent on personal ties.
      • Universal Standards
        • Impartial standards for all employees. E.g., Professor treats all students the same.
        • Also, same treatment for all customers
        • Ensures all are treated uniformly
        • Eliminates all personal and irrational elements.
        • If this is not done, you get corruption, nepotism
      • Compensation: Fixed payment structure
        • Important to have fixed salary attached to each job or position.
        • Helps retain impersonality and universal standards.

  4. Problems of Bureaucracy:

    • Dehumanization:

      • Impersonality leads to dehumanization
      • Reduces workers to "a small cog in a ceaselessly moving mechanism"
      • Impersonality leads to not considering clients' unique, personal needs.

    • Inefficienty:

      • Inefficientcy: the failure of an organization to carry out the work that it exists to perform.

      • Ritualism: preoccupation with rules to the point of thwarting an organization's goals:

        • Concentration on rules replaces concern for goals
        • Follow rules, for rules' sake, not for true purpose.
        • E.g., US Postal Service after 9/11

  5. Modern Example: Robin Leidner, "Over the Counter at McDonal's"

    • Excerpt from her book: Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life (1993)

      • Participant observation at McDonalds over quite a period of time.
      • Her focus is on the workers - and the impact of bureaucracy on workers.

    • A Rational Organization:

      • Founder of MacDonald's (Kroc) designed the whole process for efficiency and uniformity of the product (standardization).
      • It illustrates Weber's four major elements of bureaucracy.

    • Rules and routines:

      • This is the heart of the article.
      • Rules and regulations account for precise preparation, same in every store. Examples?
      • This ensures: UNIFORMITY and EFFICIENCY
      • Uniformity:
        • Precise calculations to produce uniform, standardized product
        • Emphasis on the quantitative aspects of products - size, cost, and time. Examples?
      • Efficiency:
        • Every bit of food and drink is closely monitored by computer (no waste or excess). Examples?
        • Even the customer knows the rules. Why is this important for efficiency?

    • Specialization of Tasks:

      • Making and serving the product is broken down into small pieces.
      • Small, specialized tasks both by workers and machines.
      • Highly bureaucratic system that leaves nothing to chance. Examples?

    • Hierarchy:

      • "Hamburger University" - very specific chain of command, training, and hierarchy.
      • How does this play out in the restaurants?

    • Impersonality:

      • The most unreliable element in McDonald's system is human beings.
      • Behavior of workers - and customers - is reduced to a series of machine-like actions
        • Although a certain "friendliness" is scripted - this is uniform, not truly personal.
      • To minimized unpredictable human element, automated systems are developed.
        • How does automation enforce "impersonality"?
        • Examples?*

    • This bureaucratic structure is very good at producing a standardized, uniform product, efficiently.

      • But what else do these organizational practices produce for the workers?
      • Examples?

    • Dehumanization - as Weber feared...

      • “The ultimate irrationality” of a rational system “is that people could lose control over the system and it would come to control us.” (Ritzer)
      • People lose their creativity
      • And lose capacity for correcting error, or for surprise and imagination

Charismatic Organizations

  1. Differences from Bureaucracy:
Bureaucratic Charismatic
Economic rationality (Weber) is the ideological basis that undergirds the majority of organizations (bureaucracies) today While economic rationality dominates life today, value-rational organizations are also common (organizations that are built on moral or value rationality)
Economic rationality is associated with a systematic orientation to profit and efficiency Many often have charismatic leaders
Economic rationality is clearly not evident in DSOs (Direct Selling Organizations)

  1. What is charisma:

    • Charisma, according to Weber, has four elements:

      • "Charisma is a 'gift of grace' or rare quality that resides in an individual;
      • the proof of charisma is the presence of followers;
      • charisma demands that followers develop new selves and repudiate their former way of life; and
      • charismatic leaders must demonstrate their abilities "through miracles, the continued success of a mission, or other proofs."

    • E.g., heroes, oracles: Interactions are "based on an emotional form of communal relationship

    • 60 minutes spot (3:30 mins)

  2. Charismatic Control: Three basic means by which social order and commitment are maintained:

    • Creation of a new self: individual's development of a new social identity around the organization's mission

    • Celebration of group membership: members' acceptance of the community of believers

    • Becoming a stakeholder in the organization: practices designed to promote organizational continuity.

  3. Example: DSO's : Nicole Woolsey Biggart, Charismatic Capitalism

    • Mary Kay Cosmetics - Direct Sell Cosmetics Company

      • Cosmetics that cannot be bought in stores.
      • Weaker form of charismatic organization (Mary Kay Ash Leader): Sale's group leaders
      • DSO workers are legally independent:
        • Every distributor is an "entrepreneur"
        • So... how to control worker?

    • Methods:

      • 95 interviews with distributors, DSO managers, and trade association executives;
      • Extensive fieldwork (sat in on a lot of DSO sales meetings and regional and national conventions); and
      • Statistical data on the industry.

    • Social Control at Mary Kay:

      • Creation of a New Self:
        • Self-transformation: encouraged to think one's way to success, must embrace positive thinking
        • Confessionals: I was a broken woman, and now I'm a millionaire.
        • Differentiation: more successful distributors are given gifts and prestigious titles and set apart at meetings.
        • Leadership: Mary Kay Ash, other leaders serve as examples of how to live.
        • Example: Modern day version – announcement of new national sales director
      • Celebration of Group Membership:
        • "Get everything you need in life here" - take care of all of the members' social needs within the group:
          • "how to do a breast exam" videos at conferences
          • distributors often socialize only with other distributors and their families.
        • Compartmentalization: distributors relationships are often channeled so that distributors only see others in their "line," regardless of geography.
        • Homogeneity: People associate with others like themselves:
          • In DSOs, distributors are urged to recruit friends and family.
        • Common Efforts: team awards like the pink Cadillacs.
        • Regularized Group Contact: at least weekly meetings
      • Stakeholder claims:
        • Sacrifice: Sacrifice for other distributors (Miss Go-Give Award)
        • Investment: if you leave the DSO, you lose all future financial rewards from downline members. Also, there are very severe social costs associated with leaving.

  4. Why does it work?

    • Status is achieved by embodying the organization's ideals

      • Being an "entrepreneur" is understood to be a morally superior way of being in the economy.

    • Workers and distributors often love feeling that they are part of an important moral enterprise, not just a profit-making business.

      • This association helps them create a "better" self, someone identified with an elevated purpose

    • The charismatic leader is as an exemplar.

      • They started off as "ordinary" people who achieved great success by following an entrepreneurial ideology.

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