8: Groups and Organizations

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Chapter 5: Groups and Organizations

Social groups – cluster of people who interact and identify with each other.

primary – end in itself, close personal, lasting

secondary – large, impersonal, goal-oriented

Distinct from categories, people who identify with some status but don't necessarily interact

Distinct from dyads, triads, etc that may only interact, but do not identify (if they do, they are a small group)

Distinct from loose collections of people that don't deeply interact, or identify (crowds) though circumstances can tighten them into groups (e.g. protest rallies).

Distinct from networks which are webs of loose ties that don't necessarily have a common identity, and infrequent interaction. SOCIAL CAPITAL.

Leadership Roles: instrumental (tasks) <--------> expressive (well-being of group)

 Leadership Styles: Authoritarian <------> democratic <--------> laissez-faire

instrumental, obey, good in a crisis – creative, inclusive, bees – leave it on its own

RESEARCH

So why should we study groups? What effects can they have on us as individuals?

Solomon Asch – fake experiment testing visual perception

real experiment testing group conformity

haw many give clearly wrong answers (peer pressure)?

Stanley Milgram – fake experiment testing effects of punishment on cognition

real experiment testing obedience to authority.

Only a few of 40 subjects even began to question the experiment before reaching dangerous levels with the confederate screaming in pain. (physical presence increased obedience by 20% over telephone instructions)

Post-experiment interviews reveal they felt a strange and confusing negative feeling, but they couldn't put a name on it.  They essentially didn't want to "sass back" the professional scientist guy who was supposed to be the expert who knew what he was doing, because it was embarrassing – it felt like failing to perform their role as obedient assistant, fumbling their role, "losing face," and so they wouldn't speak up even though they disagreed with what was going on. 

Those who COULD put a name on it were the ones that questioned the experiment, because once they realized it was simple embarrassment, they could see that being embarrassed was not a sufficient reason to torture someone, BUT this was only possible once the emotion was recognized and labeled. (labeling your emotions actually disrupts the brain activity that is creating your response to an emotional stimulus)

  

 Stouffer - Reference groups - imagining others as a way to make evaluations and decisions (when its hard to make decisions on your own due to lack of experience or knowledge, like small version of isomorphism), anticipatory socialization

 p.111 - soldiers in WWII ranked chances for promotion inaccurately based on reference groups

Why is everyone at the gym in better shape than you?

Why are your friends more popular than you?

GROUP SIZE

dyads, triads, and very small groups are intimate and intense. As you add members, you get less intimate and intense, so the need for formal rules (and hence formal organizations) comes into play

Diversity – large groups turn inward (break down into homophilous subgroups)

Heterogenous groups turn outward and have more exogenous contacts

physical boundaries create social boundaries.

NETWORKS - network of "channels" or potential interactions, increases mathematically with the complexity of the group structure. Think about properties.

Networks give us a sense that we live in a small world.

Networks are characteristic of modern times where social ties are not just built around kinship and neighborhood, but around ideas and interests, made possible by transportation and communication.

(Facebook's "Social Graph" application) (NOW USE WOLFRAM ALPHA APP/WEBSITE)

It's all about who you know – network ties transmit information, network location is important.

Email still rules in the workplace: importance of spelling and layout

FORMAL ORGANIZATIONS (large, instrumental secondary groups)

utilitarian <----> normative <------>coercive

Tradition vs. Rationality (Weber and disenchantment)

Bureaucracy, six key elements

To stop a bureaucratic organization, do not kill the officers. Destroy the files! The files hold the policies and structures that determine what the organization does, just as genes hold the information that determines the structures and instincts of organisms.

PROBLEMS with bureaucracy..

• Bureaucratic alienation
• " ritualism
• " inertia
• Oligarchy

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT – Frederick Taylor and the Steele company

Organizations (especially firms) are like factories: they take some input, process it, and produce some output.

ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

organism metaphor, ecosystem of organizations and resources.

Scientific management as a successful adaptation

bureaucratic facility as a successful adaptation

• have you noticed that most airports feature the same restaurants? Not an accident – those corps have organized themselves to be good at dealing with local govt., like an animal that finds a niche (e.g. deep sea organisms that adapt to live off heat and chemicals from underwater thermal vents). Airport corporations can only thrive if they have specialized mechanisms for interacting with bureaucracies, lots of specialized applications and facility with paperwork, etc... same goes for design firms and accountants and lawyers etc...

McDonaldization – chapter opening story, plus scientific management = 4 principles p.121

Opposing trends in our post-industrial economy –

• Upper class "information" jobs involve creativity and innovation, new labor-saving inventions, design.  
• • Football shaped organizations with dynamic work teams, loose hierarchy.
• Lower class "service" jobs involve routine, discipline, obedience.
• • Pyramid shaped organizations with rigid hieararchy.

FOR NEXT TIME:

Prepare for Module 1 Exam

The DEATH OF EMAIL article... leads into formal organizations,

email still rules in the workplace, importance of spelling and layout