Unit 9 Lecture Notes.docx

Unit 9 Lecture Notes Social Network Analysis In this unit, we're going to talk about groups and organizations. Now, you don't have to think very far to realize that groups are very, very powerful forces in our lives, especially reference groups. So, groups are a source of identity. As a matter of fa...

Unit 9 Lecture Notes Social Network Analysis In this unit, we're going to talk about groups and organizations. Now, you don't have to think very far to realize that groups are very, very powerful forces in our lives, especially reference groups. So, groups are a source of identity. As a matter of fact, one of the basic questions in sociology is whether humans are essentially individuals or members. What defines us, what shapes us the most, is it our individuality or is it our membership in this group and in multiple groups? That's groups, organizations, and we'll distinguish between the two shortly. But organizations are probably one of the most pervasive structures in our lives. We work in them, we shop in them, we play in them, we study in them. We were probably born in an organization. We'll probably die in an organization. So, we need to realize how extensive organizations are in our lives also. And they are the source of much efficiency, much benefit, but they're also the source of much frustration and sometimes even alienation. So, there's lots to study about groups and organizations. One passing reminder, you will recall we talked about theoretical perspectives. We differentiated between the micro, meso, and macro levels of sociology. And you will recall from the last unit that we were talking about, human interaction. Human interaction is basically micro sociology. That was our last topic, but we're now turning to meso sociology, the study of large groups, organizations, communities. Let's begin with some definitions. Here's a definition of a group=the interaction of two or more people based on some common interest. A sports team is clearly a group. And here are some characteristics or some elaborations of the definition interaction among members. So yes, the sports team is interaction among its members. What do they do? Well, they practice, travel, and play games together. They probably hang out socially together. They share goals that motivate action. What is the goal of a sports team? To excel, preferably even to win, to have intense experiences of competition together. In the process, they're going to adhere to certain group norms that will guide their behavior. So, what are the norms of a player on a sports team? Well, you got to be physically fit, tough, disciplined, loyal. You have got to be supportive of your teammates. All those things that go on in a sports team are characteristic of groups. And in the short term or the long term, there will be some differentiation among the members. There will be an emergence of roles. So, for example, in our example of a sports team, someone will become the playmaker, the scorer, the defender, and the captain. These are all different roles. Remember the difference between status and the role that we talked about? And finally, and perhaps interestingly, is the emergence of attraction. The more a group exists and functions, the more individual members will either grow in liking certain other members or disliking certain other members. That's inevitable. That happens in all groups. A network is not a group. A network is the web of social ties that links people who have little common identity or action interaction. Recall. That's what characterizes a group’s common identity, lots of interaction networks. No, there's no common identity. There is not much interaction. Very, very rare interaction. Another difference between groups and networks is that groups have clear boundaries. It's clear who's in, who’s on the team and who's not on the team. Obviously, networks do not have clear boundaries. You never really know where they end or who's included or who's not. So, you can think of networks as people that you know or who know of you, but you don't really know each other. You don't have any kind of personal relationship, interaction, or familiarity, but you know who that person is, and that person knows who you are. So, you might call them distant acquaintances. Think about social media. Social media is networks. And here's another concept: category that of an organization. So, here's a big, long definition: a large secondary group of people participating in a division of labor. Okay, so they're a bunch of specialists, they have common leadership, and they communicate with each other. For what purpose? Well, to achieve a common goal efficiently, that would be like groups. That's what organizations are. So, think of organizations as transnational corporate. And there is a difference between a sports team as a group and a sports league, which is an organization because you don't know everybody on all the other teams in the league. You just know the other members of your team. And yes, universities are organizations. The University of Manitoba is an organization. It's not just a network and it's not just a group. Let me say a few words about networks before we get into groups and organizations. So here are some. Here are some observations that sociologists make about networks. There's a difference between a close-knit network and a loose knit network. So, a close-knit network is where everybody knows everybody else. I don't know if you've heard the expression every Tom, Dick, and Harry, this is building on that. So, in a close-knit network, I know you, but I also know Tom and Dick and Harry, and you know Tom, Dick and Harry and me and Tom knows everybody. Yeah, we all know each other. That's a close-knit network. A loose net network is where only one person knows everyone else. So, I know you and Tom and Dick and Harry, but you don't know each other. I could introduce you and we could become a close-knit network. But for now, we're a loose knit network. Okay, so just close versus loose is one spectrum within networks. Patterns of attraction. Remember, groups have likings, networks to a certain extent also. So, look at the chart here. If the dotted line is one way liking and the solid line is two-way liking, who's the star here? Who is the most liked person on this network? It’s B, right? Everybody likes B. Who's the least liked; who is the isolated in this network? I would say A. Only one person likes A and only A likes one other person, so, they're not really integrated into the core of the group. Here's another example. So, who's the star here? Who's the most liked? Well, everybody likes G and H. Is there an isolated here? No. F, J and I are all liked by at least two people. So, it's not as extreme as A. And these patterns change from one network to another. Here's another concept: strong versus weak ties. So, what's a strong tie? Well, somebody whom you know better, you might even be intimate with that person. So, there's some intensity of relationship. You share a lot. You know each other well. That's a strong tie to somebody in your network. What's a weak tie? Well, it's all the opposite. You don't really know them. I mean, you just know of them. You know who they are, but you don't know anything about them. And here's the interesting point. Weak ties. Strong ties are important, obviously, but so are weak ties. Weak ties are very important in their own way because they may bridge two close knit networks. There's one member of each network that knows each other, and that's the bridge from one to the other. That's important. It can be very important for the flow of information. So, everybody in one group, in this network is sharing information. But then one of them sends information across to the other network. And they're all talking about the same thing. So, a flow of information. Let's say you're looking for a job. You've exhausted everybody that you know, everything you can think of. But your friend has an uncle in Calgary who runs a business who is looking for something. and your friend puts you in contact with their uncle and that's a weak tie. I got you a job. Right? So, a flow of information. Think of support, crowd funding. Sometimes weak ties are the basis of crowd funding, right? Social media, crowd funding. So, don't underestimate the importance of weak ties as depicted here. Here's a fourth concept bonding versus bridging. And I've already talked about the importance of bridging, the connection between networks or let's say, groups. So, look at this scheme on the screen. You have three groups that are intensely bonding with each other. They're looking inward at each other. But each one of these groups has one or two people who are also connected with a completely different group or network. That's what bonding versus bridging is. And we could sort of describe the attributes of bridging behavior versus bonding behavior. Look at bridging behavior. It's based on mutually agreed interests and empathy for others. I'm describing bridging behavior here based on mutually agreed interests and empathy for lots of others. All others not just your in-group. It views people as individuals, not just as either in my group or out of my group. And bridging behavior strengthens a generalized trust in society. So, look at bonding behavior. It does all the opposite. People identify only with their in-group. However, I define and use people as we are, whether they're us or they're not. And it weakens, generalize, trust in society. So, there you have some aspects of the network. In our next video, we will turn into groups. Formal Organizations We talked a little bit about some of the features of our networks. So, let's turn our attention to groups now, and we will start with types of groups. Some groups are informal, some groups are very formal. So, what's the difference here? An informal group has no clearly defined roles. We would say statuses and roles or goals. So, think of a bunch of friends just meeting for lunch, hanging out, eating lunch, and then going back to class. That would be an example of an informal group compared to a formal group, which does have very explicit roles and goals and rules. So, a committee, for example, or a quiet rehearsal, roles, everybody sings their part, everybody does their part. So informal versus formal groups. Here's probably the most important distinction in groups sociologically, and that's the difference between primary versus secondary groups. A primary group is a small group in which relationships are both personal and enduring, lots of face-to-face interaction over extended periods of time, almost 24 seven. So, what comes to your mind first? Your family? Or your roommates of some sort. Primary group at is street. Gang is a primary group is a family. There's lots of emotional attachments to each other. There's lots of social identity derived from each other. So, there's this sense of weakness, loyalty, identity. Here's another important aspect of primary groups. They respond to each other as whole people, not just as somebody who's doing one thing. No. They do multiple things together. They know each other in multiple realms of life, not just one realm of life. And so, they engage in varied activities together and relate to each other as whole people. And with all this attachment and intensity, there's a lot of caring, there's a lot of emotional investment. Primary groups are very powerful socializing agents, as you will recall, from the topic of socialization, which are the most powerful agents of socialization as primary groups, family, friends, peers, that sort of thing. And as such, they also promote a lot of conformity to their norms. You could say they're agents of social control because there's so much investment in them. We depend on them so much that they have a lot of power over us, a lot of influence over us compared to secondary groups defined here as large, impersonal social groups based on only one specific interest or activity. So, these are groups that share all the characteristics of groups that we mentioned in the last video, but they do not have strong emotional ties. They're very superficial. They may not even be emotional ties at all because they're very rational groups. You could say they're contractual groups. They're groups that come together to pursue a particular task, to get something done together. So, courses that you take in university, you meet two or three times a week, but you're there to do only one thing. Nobody knows anything else about you outside of that one thing, but you do it well. You perform your roles according to norms and all that sort of thing. There's usually more role specialization in secondary groups. I'm the teacher. You're the student. Very specialized. Okay, we’re here to do one thing. This is a secondary group. So again, secondary groups are instrumental, which means they're just focused on the best means toward one specific end. They are a means to an end, whereas primary groups are not instrumental means to an end. They are an end in themselves. They exist for that moment for their own sake, not for the sake of one specific task. Primary versus secondary groups. We've already used the concept of in groups versus outgroup. So, we ask them, where are the good guys? They're the bad guys. All that sort of thing. Right. We divide the world this way. So, the in-group is the group towards which we feel loyalty because we know that we identify with them. They are like us, and we like them. That's the in-group. They exert a lot of control over us. The end group, as I've already mentioned. Right. A lot of social control, a lot of conformity. Maybe even ethnocentrism arises from in-groups compared to out-groups towards which we feel antagonism, disinterest, or animosity perhaps in the extreme. Maybe we fear we feel xenophobia, which is the fear of strangers. Like, who are they? They are completely unlike us. They must be dangerous. Lots of those negative feelings. And then finally, reference groups=groups we use as standards to evaluate ourselves. When we acquire a sense of self, we use reference groups, right? Groups we use as standards to evaluate ourselves, to develop ourselves, and groups to which we may not be long yet, but we aspire to be a member of that group. But like occupational groups, you want to be a teacher or a nurse someday. Well, teachers and nurses are your reference group. So, what do you have to do to get there to be like them? That's what reference groups are. They're also a form of social control because they will shape the choices you make even before you become and before you belong to that group. So those are some types of groups. What are some aspects of group structure? What do sociologists see when they look at the structure of all the different groups out there? Well, one of the most obvious is just the size of the group. How big how small is the group? And what's the effect of size on group functioning? And this is really kind of surprising or insightful. Let's start with the smallest group possible, just two members. One relationship. If a group is a dyad that consists of only two members, it's kind of unstable. So, take the example of a husband and wife, for example. If it's very unstable, it requires a lot of high commitment because if one member leaves, the entire group is destroyed, it's gone. It's not there anymore. So, it's unstable. It requires a lot of commitment, a lot of emotional intensity to maintain dyads compared to triads. Three members, three relationships are more stable. If we look at that aspect of group size, because if a triad this is one member of the group doesn't disappear, it's from three down to two. But they can always recruit another one and still exist and continue and move on. A member can be replaced without destroying the whole group. Another aspect of triads is that decision making is a lot easier compared to dyads and triads for decision making. So, in a dyad, you must have unanimity because the only two options are unanimity or 5050. And what do you do in a 5050 situation? You have got a problem. But in triads, you don't need unanimity. All you need is a majority. Two out of three. Right. So, decision making is completely different in triads. Obviously, unanimity would be preferable, but if not, triads are also subject to alliances. You know, two can sort of gang up on the other one or subject to shifting coalitions. No, it's not always A and B against C, sometimes it's B and C against A, depending on what the issue is or what the question is. Sometimes it's mediation. If A and C are unhappy with it, well, maybe B can bring A and C together, right? Mediation or maybe the opposite. Maybe B can divide and conquer between A and C, and there's just so many different things that can happen by sheer numbers alone. Think of your friends back in high school. Were you part of a threesome? What was it like? You recognize some of these dynamics? I think you probably do. Well, let's add one more member. A quadrant for members. We'll become that much more stable. Because if you lose one. you've only lost one quarter instead of one third or one half. Right. More stable, but less intense. More formal. As groups enlarge, they must change. They will change. And not the number of relationships here. The numbers on the left are just going up by one digit each. But the relationships, the number of relationships is doubling. That's interesting. So, a dyad. Sure, there's only one relationship, but if a husband and wife have a child, now, suddenly you go from one relationship to three relationships. And what if they have another child? Now also there's six relationships. Think of families. How many parents and siblings do you have? What's the size of your family? What happens? Group of 5-10 relationships? Group of 6 has 15 relationships. Group of 7 has 21 relationships. Wow. What a completely different group environment based on the number of relationships that go on. So, there's this concept of a small group. So, what is what? What defines a small group? What's the difference between a small group and non-small or a large group? And now it's not mathematical, it's not numerical. You see here that a small group is less than 20 members, but really that's not the definition of a small group. A small group=a group in which you still have a reasonable chance of knowing every other member, maybe even having some knowing to some degree in some way, maybe even having some kind of relationship with every other member. You can do that with 20 people, but you can't really do that with 50 and certainly not with 100 people. So, what if you belong to a hobby club or an arts group or something and there are 20 people in there and you get to know each other and liking disliking roles, all those things. We talked about that. Okay. But what if that group grows from 20 to 100? You don't have a chance of having a personal relationship with 100 people. So, the structure of the group is going to have to change. It's going to have to be formalized in some ways that it could survive informally at 20, but it must formalize if it's going to go to 100, the character of the structure of the group is going to change. And then you go from 100 to 2000 to a million or whatever, and you have societies. So how to solve what's the structure of societies? Well, that's macro sociology. So, the general principle we're looking at here is that an increase in size results, in an increase in stability, it's a good thing, but a decrease in intensity and intimacy. You can't be intimate with a hundred people; you can't know them. And so, look at look at the impact of numbers alone on groups. Here's leadership. There's a universal tendency for one or two members of a group to gain more influence. Recognition, and maybe even authority, maybe even power over time in groups. That's true of animal groups. That's true of human groups. So here are a few brief comments about leadership here. Different kinds of leadership. The two most fundamental kinds of leadership are: instrumental leadership leaders, those leaders who are just focused on getting the task done compared to expressive leaders who aren't so much focused on getting the task and then making sure that everybody's getting along, everybody's liking each other, everybody's happy, there's good cohesion, all that sort of thing. Very different. Instrumental leaders will generate respect. Expressive leaders will generate affection. Those are both good, but it's often very difficult for one leader to do both equally well, to be task oriented, and people oriented. Decision making styles, these are terms that you can define yourself. Some groups are democratic. They're just trying to reach a decision like 51% is a majority. We'll go with that. Compared to authoritarian decision-making style, where the leader doesn't even consult the members, the autocrat simply dictates what we are going to do? How are we going to do it? I don't care what you think. Okay, that's authoritarian. And then there's laissez faire styles of decision making, which is all laissez faire. The French word literally means to leave it alone. So, this is very uninvolved leadership or leadership that delegates authorities to other members and doesn't take much of a formative role. Consensus decision making style is, I guess, perhaps one category of Democratic. I mean, the Democratic leader is just looking for a 51% majority. The consensus leader says, yeah, 51% is okay, but it'd be better if we had 90, 95%. I mean, we don't have to have unanimity, but it would be better if most of us agreed. So, it's not pure majority. Trying to build consensus is much more challenging. Here are some sampled group processes and dynamics that sociologists observe in groups. The following are things that happen in all groups. Group identification is a primary source of our social identity. We derive who I am and how many groups that you name. Your identity is drawn from the groups to which you belong. Remember the difference between significance in development of the self, difference between significant others your family, your friends, compared to the generalized other. The generalized other is an abstraction. Okay, so those are degrees of difference between what we would now call primary groups compared to secondary groups. So, identification is something that always happens. Group cohesion group and group conformity, obviously, they're related. The more cohesive a group is, the more pressure there will be to conform to the norms of the group. So, what contributes to group cohesion? Well, interdependence. If the members of the group are all dependent on each other, none of them can do the task by themselves. Well, that will increase cohesion, attraction, liking. We've talked about that more than once. Do you like everybody else in your group? Well, that will increase cohesion and conformity. What do you think about the group goals? Are you really enthused about the group goals or are you then not so sure? Maybe you don't even want to be part of this group. Don't always get to choose. So yeah, how strongly you feel for or against the group goals will determine group cohesion. The norms that are in place to make sure everybody practices the same sort of thing. So those are factors of group cohesion. Well, another factor of group cohesion is the group competing against another group that will probably increase group cohesion. Families might fight internally, but as soon as somebody attacks the family from the outside, that family will probably unite against the common enemy. So, yes, conflict with an outside group is another means, another factor in another cause of group cohesion. And as I said, and as we all understand, cohesion facilitates conformity and so on to the point that it sometimes becomes a problem. Group Think, maybe you've heard of the concept. This is one form of group cohesion that is too much. It's over-the-top, it's excessive. Groups generally make better decisions than individuals do because groups have access to more ideas, more perspective, more experience. Groups can discuss decision making with each other and realize that some things are better than others. You know, the individual can't do that. So, groups generally make better decisions but there is a tendency in some groups to abandon thinking critically about the decision to be made and just shut up for the sake of the group because you don't want to disturb the group. And that's what we call group think. Here's a definition= Pressures for conformity and unanimity overwhelm members motivation to appraise situation as realistically. So, you don't think critically anymore. You don't even speak up anymore, even though you're not so sure because you want to support the group. You don't want to be a problem. And what happens? Well, when everybody in the room is doing that, it can result in much poorer decisions being made by groups. And yes, the concept of groupthink arose first in understanding political decisions on a national and international level. And there are a lot of political fiascos that have occurred because the group making the decision was afraid to speak critically to different ideas. It happens mostly in the most cohesive groups. Each member wants the approval of everybody else. So, there is this strong tendency towards uniformity, even when it's a completely bad idea. Every member who doubts simply silences themselves, and that silence looks like consent. And so, we go ahead doing well. How often does that happen in boardrooms where everybody disagrees, but nobody says so. And so, they all raise their hand and say yes. And speaking of groupthink, in politics, you think it happens in the Trump administration? Not that it doesn't happen in other administrations. Formal Organizations Let's move on to formal organizations. You will recall we've already given this definition of formal organizations, a large secondary group of people participating in a division of labor coordinated by communication and leadership to achieve a common goal efficiently. Maybe we should highlight that last word efficiently. Keep that in mind because as we continue here, you will understand the importance of how formal organizations seek efficiency. One of the ways they do that is that they divide up into specialized roles, more so than even formal groups do. So, the function of formal organizations is the function of certain roles and not the function of people. As we go along now, note this shift away from the quality of people to the character of roles. These are secondary groups. These are not primary groups teachers, students in the University of Manitoba. We have very specific roles to fulfill, organizations also have access to more resources than smaller groups do. They are bigger, they are longer lasting. The longest formal organization in the global North would be the Roman Catholic Church, 2000 years. Think of that clearly as a very formal organization with different means of control over its members. So, let's talk about that. Let's begin by talking about how formal organizations control their members. There are three different ways, three different types of social control that formal organizations exert over their members. The first of them is the use of coercive power. And as the image suggests, the best example is prisons. So, think of a prison as a formal organization. Membership is forced. Nobody wants to be there as a prisoner. Staff might be different, but we're talking about the prisoners here. Okay, so membership is forced, but that's also true elsewhere. Military draft, psychiatric hospitals would be other examples where membership is forced. And because it's force, they use very coercive power, physical power, a very negative means. So, yes, prisoners, prisons literally lock up their prisoners. They must use that kind of physical force. And obviously, none of the prisoners want to be there. So, we would say very low or nonexistent commitment, very high alienation, maybe even anger, obviously, for being there. So, what's a formal organization like that that must use that kind of coercive power? What's it like? Well, the officials rely on resources of coercion, not on their personal qualities, not in their wit or their charm or anything about them personally. But they use the resources of coercion. And over time, who controls what's going on in the prison? Maybe, you know, the prisoners will gather and generate their own informal leaders, quite apart from the warden or the staff. So power is contested because it is despised. In the middle we have utilitarian power. And so, the example here is factories. Here the control is by offering material rewards. Material means a paycheck, obviously pay for factory workers. That's what keeps them there. They may hate the job, love the paycheck, as the saying goes, but they're still there. So, this stimulates very medium commitment, very medium alienation, because, yeah, I want to be there. But no, I don't want to be there. I don't really enjoy it, it's not meaningful, but it's productive. It's useful. And so, leadership is also spread between the officials and the informal leaders that the staff or that the workers, the employees will generate, you know, the coffee breaks and lunch hour and whatnot. They will talk to each other, and leadership will emerge there, not just with the owner or the manager. And then thirdly, at the other end of the spectrum, we have what's called normative power. And the example here is churches or religious groups, here are membership is voluntary. People are there because they want to be there, completely opposite prisons. Obviously, it's not just churches or religious groups, it's political parties. It's community service groups. And the rewards here are effective. Belonging, accomplishment, respect, prestige, love. Why do people attend these kinds of organizations? Because they're not physically coerced. They're not simply coerced with money. They are drawn by all kinds of effective resources. So, it stimulates very high commitment and very low alienation, the opposite of coercive power. And here, the leadership is not using coercive sources. They're not using physical force. They're not using the coercion of a paycheck. They are using their own charm, charisma, persuasiveness. You know, successful pep talk only works if everybody already believes. And yeah, these are all people who already believe, and they want to be there. So, it's a completely different context. So, you can see how control and leadership varies in formal organizations, but we could continue talking about control and say, well, are there alternatives to physical force, monetary reward, or cognitive belief? Well, yes, there are. Some organizations can select their members. If you can choose your members, then less time and effort must be spent on trying to control them because they want to be there. You get to choose, decide if they are there and they will comply. Right. Note that coercive organizations and prisons do not get to choose their members. There's no selectivity. But I mean, they can be selective with some of the rewards. An open mental hospital ward compared to a closed one or an unguarded prison farm compared to a guarded one. So, there's a certain degree of selectivity that can be there. The other alternative to control is can you socialize the people into wanting to be there if you can. Then again, you must spend less time and effort trying to control them. If you can. You can either select those who already want to be there, or you can socialize people who are already there into wanting to be there. And again, coercive organizations and prisons know they're not going to socialize them. Doesn't matter. They have a life sentence. Nobody wants to be there. But churches, normative organizations, socialize with people and keep them that way without physical force and without monetary coercion. So, there are those dimensions to control as well. One more thing about formal organizations. There is all in every formal organization, there’s also an informal organization. People fill bureaucratic roles, but they resist becoming faceless cogs in a machine. They don't want to be depersonalized and dehumanized. They want their person to matter, not just the role or the office that they're holding or performing. So, we can define an informal organization as the complex personal networks within the formal organization. It's personal. It's based on personal qualities. Personal feelings. Not the position, not the office. So maybe the vice president and the custodian like each other. Maybe they play on the same curling team. Maybe they have a personal connection. Quite apart from what their formal organization connection is. So, what happens? The VP starts looking out for the custodian within the organization. This custodian starts giving special favors to the VP exchanges because of relationship, personal relationship. So, there is always the formal organization, the flowchart. But if you look behind it, you see not chaos, but a completely different kind of network going on other than the official bureaucratic top-down flowchart. The informal organization is not codified. It's not obvious. It's not charted. Its personal and sometimes formal policies and procedures have very little to do with how the organization operates. The day-to-day activities of the members of the organization, how things get done. Sometimes it's more instructive to look at the informal organization than the formal organization. You know, there's just the standard notion that board decisions get made on the golf course, not in the boardroom. The more important decisions, the real structure of power plays out not in the boardroom, but on the golf course. The boardroom just becomes casual. It just becomes a rubber stamp for private agreements made informally outside the formal organization. Bureaucracy 1 Now that we understand formal organizations, a little, let's talk about the most predominant form of formal organizations. The large, powerful, long lived, formal organization. The longest and the biggest is bureaucracy. Here's a definition: an organizational model rationally designed to perform complex tasks efficiently. Note that word efficient. Again, I highlighted it previously. Here's another way to define a bureaucracy=organizing activities into a logical, impersonal, and efficient manner. The word bureaucracy itself is telling. Bureau literally means office, and cracy means rules. So, bureaucracy is the rule for office holders. Remember our distinction? Weber's distinction between traditional authority, charismatic authority, and rational legal authority? Well, bureaucracy is rational, legal authority. The rule of office holders, not people. So here are some characteristics of bureaucracy. I think I've already mentioned this when we were talking about groups, we were talking about the characteristics of the individual who they are. But when we're talking about bureaucracy, the characteristics of the individual virtually disappear because they get reduced to what they do, not who they are, based on the office that they hold. So that's sort of a general introduction to the characteristics of bureaucracy. But here are some specific observations. Again, this comes from labor. Bureaucracies are built on specialization, a division of labor, often requiring very specific training and very specific competence for somebody to hold a particular office in a bureaucracy. So, yes, specialization, huge. Furthermore, all these offices are in a hierarchy of positions. There is a flowchart, the organizational bureaucratic flowchart authority flows down from the top. Responsibility flows up from the bottom. So, you're in charge of everybody below you. You are responsible to everybody above you in this hierarchy of bureaucracy. But your authority has a very particular range limitation. It's very bound, very well defined, not just vertically up and down, but also horizontally as well. Often the hierarchy of positions in a bigger bureaucracy is approximately a pyramid, very broad on the bottom. A single office at the top, one on the top, many on the bottom. So, a top-down chain of command. Those kinds of phrases, yes, are descriptive of bureaucracy. For example, university, who's at the top while the board who hires the president, who's in charge of all the vice presidents and then note that the vice-president for academic affairs, not for the other, all the other ones, oversees, well, all the different faculties. And the faculty of social science oversees, well, psychology, anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, etc. And in the Department of Sociology there is the department chair. And then underneath the department is the chair is the social faculty. So, there I am. I'm on the bottom of this flowchart of the bureaucracy of the university. But that chart looks like many others. All bureaucratic organizations have something approximate to this. Every office has very strict rules, regulations about what they should do, regulations about how they should go about doing it that govern the division of labor. One of the things that bureaucracies do is they try to classify every possible occurrence; every possible circumstance is classified so that if a case of that circumstance comes up, they can just treat it according to all the rules and regulations that apply to that case. The responses are regularized routinized to ensure that they are objective because the particularities of this case are irrelevant. We're going to treat this case according to the general rules that apply to this case. So, it's very objective, impersonal, as we will see in the offices. Again, as I've already mentioned, are based on technical competence. So, hiring, firing, promotion are all based on the technical competence of office holders. So, this does apply to individuals, but hiring and firing and promotion are based on competence, not on custom, not even on seniority, and certainly not on kinship nepotism. No, that's unfair. It's all based on technical competence. It's very impersonal. It is achievement-based, not ascription based. You remember the difference there. These are not ascribed positions. These are achieved based on technical competence, not on any other kind of favoritism. And as I now said, more than once, the relations are very impersonal. It's almost as if a bureaucracy is specified a relationship between offices, the office holder. Well, they come and go. They're kind of irrelevant. Yes, they need technical competence, but it's a separation of the person from the office. So, it's the office that holds the duties, the functions, the authority. It's not the person. It's the office. Okay. People are replaceable functionaries. They are faceless bureaucrats. They come and go. But it's the office that remains and holds the power and authority. Very rational legal authority here. So, yes, the relationships are between the office, the roles, not the people. It's divorced from personal life. Personal feelings must be subordinated to the bureaucracy, to the impersonal demands of the office. There's a saying in the military, we salute the rank, not the person. And that sort of describes the impersonal relationships of all bureaucracy not just the military. We don't care whether you like or respect or hate or whatever the person that's not that's irrelevant. You salute the office, the rank, the position they hold, not the person. And bureaucracies are characterized by extensive, formal, and written communication. Everything is written down. Get it in writing. Of course, these days it's not paperwork. It's signed in computer files. But bureaucracies accumulate vast files and the records of everything that has happened. Protected careers. So, if you become an office holder in a bureaucracy, see, and they're usually staffed by full time salaried office holders, you are protected. You can't get dismissed just because the boss doesn't like you. You can’t be arbitrarily dismissed for personal, subjective reasons if you are doing the rules in a regular and the job of the office. You're safe. Now there's a problem with this. There's even an irony to this if you think of it negatively. What bureaucracies do is protect mediocrity. And in that to that extent, they work against themselves. Because if the person is doing the bare minimum of what's required, you have no grounds to dismiss that officeholder that person. Recently, since the pandemic, there's been this thing called quiet quitting, doing the minimum requirements of one's job and putting in no more time, effort or enthusiasm than is necessary. Because you're guarded, your position is guarded by bureaucracy. So, what are some benefits of bureaucracy? What are some problems or disadvantages of bureaucracy? Here are two benefits. How many times have we used the word efficiency? Yes, bureaucracies are very efficient. They can coordinate the activities of large numbers of people. They are very efficient in handling repetitive, routinized circumstances or situations. Everybody knows exactly what to do with every case because all the rules and regulations are already predetermined. You don't have to invent the wheel. You simply must use the wheel or apply the wheel. Now there is the danger of misclassifying a case. But if the case is classified correctly. It’s all spelled out exactly what's going to happen. You know, if you go to the registrar's office of the university, what's your who are you? You’re one of those. Or one of those. Okay. You're a case of that. Well, in that case, this is what happens. Boom, boom, boom. And it all happens, right there. Officials become experts in their areas if they're competent, they're efficient and they're objective. Decisions are made according to objective, predetermined criteria, not on whether you're physically attractive or not or whether you are a relative or a friend or not. There's no subjectivity. Decisions are not based on an individual whim. The impersonal rules are more effective. They are less demeaning. They are fairer. What they do is ensure that there's no abuse of power because the officeholder is disbarred, not allowed to abuse power. They simply must perform whatever the rules and regulations say they do. So, what are some of the problems of bureaucracy? Well, I'm sure you've all encountered bureaucracies of various kinds. And what's the first thing that comes to your mind? They're very slow and they're even incompetent; they waste a lot of time and resources. And yes, there are lots of ways in which bureaucracies are wasteful and counter to their claim to competence are incompetent. Have you heard of Parkinson's law? Work expands to fill the time available. So, the office holder is given a certain amount of time to do the job. And even though she gets it done in half the time, she knows how to make herself look busy because she doesn't have to do anything else. Okay, so work expands to fill the time available is even creating tasks where none exist. Or the Peter Principle. Bureaucrats get promoted to their level of incompetence. That's the Peter Principle. So, if you do good at this level, we'll put will promote you to the next. And if you do good at that level, will promote you to the next. You may not do so well anymore. But we can't send you back down. So, I guess we're just going to stay there. So, people get promoted to their level of incompetence and then stay there are locked in by the bureaucracy, which is bad for business and for the bureaucracy. Ritualism. Bureaucrats just going through the motions, red tape. The expression of red tape comes from 18th century English government officials that whenever they would send a parcel out to somebody, they would wrap it in red tape. So that if you got something with the red tape in the mail, you knew it was coming from the bureaucratic government. That's what ripped red. But that's what red tape means. But by today, obviously, it means something much more pejorative, more negative. So, bureaucrats just perform ritualistically. You could say it's inertia. Bureaucracy can be very inflexible. It does not adapt quickly to new situations. There's almost a trained incapacity to adapt to new situations. And the inertia also suggests ponderous, slow, inefficient bureaucracies have a life of their own. They just go on regardless of whether they're doing it well or not. Which ultimately leads to Marx's notion of alienation. Bureaucracies can be very dehumanizing in their treatment of cases. Not going to treat you as a person. I'm just going to treat you as a case of this category. I don't care who you are. You know, I mean, I've just mentioned the plus is that that is objective. The minus is that it's dehumanizing depersonalization. It ignores all the unique circumstances of your case. All the nuance, the uniqueness of your case are irrelevant. We're just going to treat you as one case of a broader category, and that's alienating., You feel like a cog in the machine because you are a cog in the machine. That's alienating even for the bureaucrat, not just the person who is being serviced by the bureaucrat. And finally, bureaucracy is a built-in structured inequality. You know, this hierarchical flowchart? Yeah, it's hierarchical, it's bureaucratic, and it's clearly anti-democratic because it builds in, it builds inequality. Bureaucracy 2 Okay, here's one last little addition to Unit nine groups and organizations. We've been talking about, not just formal organizations in general, but bureaucratic organizations. Even though 90% of formal organization are bureaucratic organizations. And much of what we've been saying derives from Max Weber. Weber was very ambivalent toward bureaucracies. He was concerned about the world being overtaken by gray-faced bureaucrats. He talked about the iron cage of bureaucracy that all the world is being locked into this iron cage of bureaucracy that was all set at the beginning of the 20th century toward the end of the 20th century, George Ritzer gave us an extension of Weber's thoughts on bureaucracy and rationalization and formal organizations, and he called it McDonaldization. McDonaldization. Not just the restaurant, but of all society. So here is Richard's definition of McDonaldization, the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate ever more sectors of the world. So, you could say McDonald's has become a metaphor for an analogy or an allegory. I mean, there are differences between all those, but Richer identifies four characteristics with a fifth that represent McDonaldization. Here's the first one. No surprise efficiency. The effort to discover the best possible means to whatever end is desired. Remember a means to an end, right? This is not an end in itself. This is a means to an end. So, you walk into McDonald's and they're good at what they do because they are just super-efficient in everything. But they're also very calculable. The emphasis on quantity, not necessarily on quality, the emphasis on quantity of products and speed of service, often to the detriment of quality. Now, this doesn't just apply to McDonald's, obviously, but to maybe all fast-food outlets. But McDonald's started it in 1952. Calculability. We must be able to count and add up how many products, how fast we can deliver them. And it's not so important how good they are, but we'll be impressive by our sheer quantity and speed. Predictability. The assurance that everything is much the same everywhere and every time. It doesn't matter where you go in the world when you walk into a McDonald's, you can now I mean, there are some localized food products in different regions of the world by now. Obviously, they do cater, but you can be well assured of the speed, quantity, quality, and affordability and all those things. It's very predictable and maybe all the above are represented by control, the physical and social technologies that determine what will happen, like the machinery in the kitchen, how absolutely regulated all the employees are. Have you ever worked in a fast-food restaurant? You know exactly how you as a person are controlled? Well, yeah, it's good for business. So those are the four characteristics of McDonaldization. And here is the fifth. That is sort of a summary or a judgment or an assessment of the previous four. In the end, it is the irrationality of rationality, which means the paradox of reality. That instrument, until irrationality becomes irrational, when the ends is sabotaged by the means employed. So, you're trying to produce something of quality that's personal, but in the end it's just the machine. And yeah, rationality becomes irrational. Loyalty in the extreme. It's the ultimate dehumanization of the people who work at McDonald's and the people who eat at McDonald's. It's all so impersonal. It is dehumanizing. So is that true for or to what extent is that true of every aspect of society, economy, not just economy, but education, politics, religion has become McDonald's.