Sociology 2166A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Contingency Theory, Oligarchy
13 Jan 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
De nition: a collectivity deliberately constructed (and reconstructed) to seek speci c goals. Bureaucracy: a special form of organization (with characteristics similar to previous slide) Formalization: the extent to which the rules governing conduct are formal, written and established: work requires expert training, management, workers follow rules that are relatively xed, and extensive, o cial business impersonal uniform, e cient. For weber, bureaucratic organizations were a new development, di erent from the small-scale, haphazards, and more personalized forms of organization that characterized societies in the past. The growth of bureaucracy was related, more generally, to the social process of rationalization. Linked with rationalization the drive to nd optimum means to achieve a given end through rules, regulations, and social structures. Permanent, hard to change, source of power, inequality iron cage . Newer organizational theories emphasize other aspects: internal cohesion and co-operation, informal relations important, organizational cultures, variability. Contingency theory= organizational structures vary in relation to market environment.
