Formal Organizations Unit 3: Socialization

Formal Organizations  We spend most of our lives interacting with secondary groups  Formal organization : large, complex secondary group that has been established to achieve specific goals  Examples?

Bureaucracy  Many formal organizations are structured in a form called bureaucracy  Bureaucracy: a ranked authority structure that operates according to specific rules and procedures

Bureaucracy  Weber believed bureaucracies arise in industrial societies because of an increasing tendency towards rationalization  Examples?

Weber’s Model of Bureaucracies  Division of Labor  Ranking of Authority  Employment Based on Formal Qualifications  Rules and Regulations  Specific Lines of Promotion and Advancement

Bureaucracies  Pros?  Cons?

Bureaucracies: Pros  Things get done quickly and efficiently  Can achieve large-scale goals  High level of production  Create order  clearly defined job tasks and rewards

Bureaucracies: Cons  Idea of self-continuation  goals of individuals get lost  Bureaucratic personalities form  loss of creativity  “Red Tape”  causes delays  Tendency to result in oligarchies

Bureaucracies  Power tends to concentrate in the hands of a few people  They use their power to promote their own interests  Sociologist Robert Michels calls this the iron law of oligarchy  the tendency of organizations to become increasingly dominated by small groups of people