SOC300H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Traditional Authority, Rationality, System Model
Document Summary
There are different understandings of organizations behavior with different assumptions. What accounts for criminal behavior: structural reasons, social reasons, societal reasons, biological reasons, personality reasons, cultural reasons. What distinguishes organization from other types of collectivity"s. Organizations are collectivity"s oriented to the pursuit of relatively specific goals and exhibiting relatively highly formalized. Formal= official, grounded in something beyond the personal/ cultural eg. written rules, official hierarchies. Families don"t have explicit goals that need to be fulfilled. Organizations and their formal structures are instruments for specific ends. They are efficient (or rational) means of achieiving ends and they can (should) be improved ! Goal: identifying ways in which organizations do/ can behave more rationally. Rational system assumptions: goals should dictate everything an organization does. Prescriptive: how to increase efficiency through science/ scientific method. Rearrange everything in the name of efficiency. Workers and managers alike how to set up their jobs for maximum efficiency.
