Rationalization of Society

• Refers to a transformation in people’s thinking and behaviors over the past 150 years
• Shift from traditional life to rationality
• Focus on:
  1) Personal relationships
  2) Idea that the past is the best guide for the present,
  3) Traditional life stood in the way of industrialization
• Capitalism required a change in perception and behavior
  1) Perception - traditional to rationality
  2) Behavior - personal relationships to impersonal, short-term contacts
• Capitalism demanded results; this shifted the focus to production and ways of measuring efficiency

• Karl Marx argued changed people’s thinking; increasing desire for material accumulation, investments, and profits
• Max Weber argued change in religious outlook produced capitalism
  -Capitalism first emerged in Protestant countries in Europe
  -Roman Catholic doctrine emphasized acceptance of present arrangements, which impeded Roman Catholic countries
  -Protestant ethic in particular the Calvinistic belief in predestination, that produced capitalism and the rationalization of society
  -People are predestined before birth to go to heaven or hell
  -Calvinist sought signs as to which people were destined for which fate
  -Financial success was considered a visible indication of God’s approval
  -Combination of hard work and accumulating money and investing provided the ideal catalyst for capitalism
  -Also produced ideal climate for rationalization – measuring a person’s worth in terms of results instead of relationships

Formal Organization and Bureaucracy

• Early formal organizations were guilds and army; was not a lot of them
• Formal organizations based upon results emerged
• Secondary groups designed to achieve goals became a central part of society
• Industrialization produced secondary groups
• Formal organizations tend to develop into bureaucracies
• Larger formal organization the great chance it will become a bureaucracy
• Typically, they are resistant to change
• Iron law of oligarchy – tendency of formal organizations to be dominated by a small, self-perpetuating elite; often excludes people from leadership positions
• Iron law of oligarchy is inevitable; if it is too strong there could be a grass roots rebellion that through the elite out of office
• Max Weber’s Bureaucracies (ideal image)
  1) Hierarchy of authority
  2) Clear division of labor
  3) Emphasis on written rules, communication, and records
  4) Impersonality of positions (Bureaucratic personality)
• Problem of written rules and unusual cases
• To many chiefs and not enough Indians
• Bureaucracies are more efficient than formal organizations
• They can have some dysfunctions
  1) Red tape – little or nothing getting done
  2) Lack of communication between departments; no clue what each other or doing
  3) Alienation – feeling of being treated like objects instead of people

Impersonality of bureaucracy

• Works feel alienated and lose control of their work
• Detached from the end product
• Workers may hate work, anger towards clients, fellow workers, and authority
• Alienated workers typically lack initiative, will not do work unless it is absolutely necessary, and will use the rules to justifying doing nothing
• Formation of primary groups may help overcome
• Peter principle - employees in bureaucracies are often promoted based upon their level of incompetence, employees are promoted for good work until they reach their level of incompetence
• Rules generally make it hard to demote people
• Bureaucracies have their dysfunctions are remarkably successful
• Study - The most prosperous countries are those with central bureaucracies
• Bureaucracies ten to perpetuate themselves through goal displacement
• If a goal is reached, a new goal is adopted thus re-legitimatizing its existence
• Success through failure

Voluntary Associations

• Organizations made up volunteers who have organized on the basis of some mutual interest
• Common interest that binds its members together
• Typically have high turn-over rates because membership is voluntary
• There is often an inner core that holds the association together; if the group loses interest, it is likely to fold
• Iron law of oligarchy issue also
• Examples – Boy Scouts, Knights of Columbus, KKK, NOW, NAACP, political groups, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, National Rifle Association, religious groups, MADD
• Some are long lasting, others are temporary until they achieve a goal
• Voluntary associations can be a bureaucracies
• Seven Functions of voluntary associations (first two apply to all)
• 1) Advancing a particular interest
• 2) Offer people an identity and for some members, a sense of purpose in life
• 3) Helping the nation in its governing role and/or helping it main social orders (groups getting people to vote, Red Cross, MADD)
• 4) Mediating between the government and the individual
• 5) Providing people training organizational skills
• 6) Helping to bring people into the political mainstream
• 7) Paving the way for social change

Working for the Corporation

• Corporate Culture refers to an organization’s traditions, values, and unwritten norms
• Corporate cultures contain “hidden values” that affect who succeeds and who fails to succeed
• Corporate culture grooms people “just like them” so it reproduces itself
• Favored employees receive better access to information, networking, and fast track positions
• Employees considered “outsiders” (usually women and minorities) are often given limited information, achieving less, and end up feeling alienated resulting in the perpetuation of the iron law of oligarchy

Humanizing the Corporate Culture

· Many companies have taken steps to counter negative sides of bureaucracies

· Giving equal access to employees based upon ability and contribution

· Fewer rigid rules

· Quality circles – groups of employees meeting to improve quality

· Employee stock ownership plans often at a discount

· Work teams – small groups of workers who are self-managing themselves to stimulate creativity and solutions to foster loyalty

· Corporate day care

· Cooperative organizational form – no overarching hierarchy, collective decisions are made

· Conflict theories often argue humanizing will not work because of the owner worker relationship

· Computer technology have transformed the workplace, computers provide information and often real-information to boost productivity

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Predicted computers will ultimately create a maximum security work place where virtually all movements will be tracked and logged