SOC 100

• Why study organizations? Because organizations have outcomes, intentional or unintentional, recognized or unrecognized.
• Organizations are a dominant component of contemporary society. It is inevitable and inescapable.
• Organizational analysis: to assess the state of the organization.
• Why do we have organizations: to do things that individuals cannot do by themselves.
• Organizations have 7 key features: (1) boundary; (2) rules; (3) hierarchy; (4) communication systems; (5) membership; (6) goals; (7) outcomes.
• The individual's identification with the organization is STRONGER if:

  (1) members needs are satisfied in it; (2) the goals are perceived as shared; (3) greater frequency of interaction (4) and less competition.
• Virtual organizations is an another growing trend that's home-based work or telecommuting, in which people work from their

  homes and use electronic communications to link with their employers.
• Organizations are the context in which people work. The members' performances are shaped by it.
• Organizations policies designed to be "family friendly": (1) Job sharing; (2) flextime; (3) telecommuting; (4) shortened workweeks.
• Categories of individual in the organization: (1) age; (2) gender; (3) race; (4) religion; (5) economic status.
• Interorganizational relationships are extraordinarily high level of

  corporate philanthropy. Much of these are based on the

  interorganizational linkages among the business firms.
• 3 harmful impacts of organizations: (1) crime-coercive (2) crime-facilitative; (3) authority leakage.
• The Modern Corporation has become the dominant institution in our

  times.

  Legal status: Organizations can be held responsible for certain actions.
• Organizations can be an Active Change Agents and Resisters of

  Change.
• Internal organizational changes affect the social structure in two ways: (1) Changing membership patterns; (2) altered patterns of work.
• Changing membership patterns: (1) Employment of women in the labor force; (2) patterns of childbearing and child rearing.
• Organization as a change agent: (1) decision-making or the grassroots approach; (2) co-optation. 


  Co-optation is a process of absorbing new elements into the leadership or policy-determining structure of an organization.
• Organizational weapon: organizational practices as weapons when they are used by a power-seeking elite in a manner unrestrained.
• Imperialism, or the attempt to expand corporate markets and

  reduce costs by exerting economic power over a weaker nation.
• Technology is one key to the growth of multinationals.
• Voluntary organizations: participants do not derive their

  livelihoods from the organizations' activities.
• Bureaucratized organization can be a mechanism to elevate their professional career (e.g., assistant to associate professor).
• 8 Types of Social Organization: (1) Family; (2) community; (3) association; (4) population; (5) aggregation; (6) classes and groups; (7) networks; (8) societies.
• Family is the earliest and the most universal of all social institutions. It is also the most natural, simplest and permanent form of social organization.
• A community is defined as “the total organisation of social life within a limited area.”
• Association is group organized for the pursuit of an interest or group of interests in common.
• Population is a complete set group of individuals, whether that group comprises a nation or a group of people with a common characteristic.
• Aggregation is the collecting of units or parts into a mass or whole. : a group, body, or mass composed of many distinct parts.
• A class is a group of people of similar status, commonly sharing

  comparable levels of power and wealth. A group refers to any

  number of people who share some social relation.
• Networks are a group of interdependent actors and the relationships between them.
• Societies are a group of individuals involved in persistent social

  interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory.
• Charles Horton Cooley coined the concept "primary group".
• Primary group is a plurality of persons who interact with one another in a given context more than they interact with anyone else.
• 4 factors of primary group; (1) Size of the group; (2) form; (3) composition; (4) duration.
• 4 indispensable qualities of primary groups: (1) Temporal priority in

  experience; (2) intimate association and interaction; (3) feeling of

  a psychological unity; (4) dissemination of the primary ideals.
• The Temporal Priority in Experience: more cogent and responsible

  than all others in attributing the quality of being primary to a group.
• Intimate Association and Interaction: the nature of interaction inevitably reflects the nature of the group.
• The Feeling of a Psychological Unity or the Fusion of

  Individualities in a Common Whole: subjective factors, namely, the

  feelings, images, and ideas.
• The Dissemination of the Primary Ideals: loyalty, truth, service, kindness, etc., as primary ideals, are rooted in the congenial family.
• Primary relations: feelings + images + ideas.


  Organization of experience or "We ness"