Utrecht University
Midterm
Sociology of
Organizations
Week 1-4
Sociology
2020-2021
,Index
Week 1...................................................................................................................................................5
Lecture 1: Introduction & theoretical strands 1..................................................................................5
(1) Managerial-psychologistic strand..............................................................................................5
(2) Durkheim-Human-Relations......................................................................................................6
(3) Interactionist-negotiated order (Erving Goffman).....................................................................6
Lecture 2: Theoretical strands 2.........................................................................................................7
(4) Weber-social action – institutional............................................................................................7
(5) Marx: labour process.................................................................................................................8
(6) Post-modern & post-structuralist..............................................................................................9
Literature: Watson chapter 2; analysing work and organization: scientific management, human
relations and negotiated orders.......................................................................................................10
Strands of thought and key theoretical perspectives in the sociology of work and organization.10
The managerial-psychologistic strand..........................................................................................10
The Durkheim-human-relations-systems strand..........................................................................13
The interactionist-negotiated-order strand..................................................................................14
Summary......................................................................................................................................16
Video 6.2 (Durkheim)........................................................................................................................16
Literature: Watson chapter 3; analysing work and organization: institutionalism, labour process
and discourse analysis......................................................................................................................16
The Weber-social-action-institutional strand...............................................................................16
The Marxian-labour-process strand..............................................................................................19
The post-structuralist strand and postmodernism.......................................................................20
Sociology, discourses and working lives.......................................................................................22
Summary......................................................................................................................................22
Literature: Taylor; the principles of scientific management.............................................................22
The effect of labour-saving devices..............................................................................................22
The development of soldiering.....................................................................................................23
Characteristics of the union workman..........................................................................................23
The development of scientific management................................................................................23
The workmen the chief beneficiaries............................................................................................23
What scientific management is.....................................................................................................23
Intelligent old-style management.................................................................................................23
What scientific management will do............................................................................................24
The selection of the workman......................................................................................................24
, Bringing together the science and the man..................................................................................24
The principle of the division of work............................................................................................24
The proof of the theory................................................................................................................24
The science of shovelling..............................................................................................................24
Teaching the men.........................................................................................................................24
Does scientific management pay?................................................................................................25
The discovery of high speed steel.................................................................................................25
The effect on the workmen..........................................................................................................25
Video 5.1 The unexpected force of social thought (Marx)................................................................25
Video 5.2 Economic chains of interdependency...............................................................................25
Video 5.3 Homo faber.......................................................................................................................26
Video 5.4 Alienation.........................................................................................................................26
Video 5.5 Class struggle....................................................................................................................26
Video 5.6 Caught in the capitalist system.........................................................................................27
Video 5.7 Class consciousness..........................................................................................................27
Video 5.8 Marx’s predictions............................................................................................................27
Week 2.................................................................................................................................................28
Lecture 3: a history of work and organizations.................................................................................28
Lecture 4: organizational structure...................................................................................................32
Literature: Watson chapter 4 (pp. 91-94); work, organization and globalization.............................35
The nature of modern societies....................................................................................................35
Literature: Smith chapter 1, book I; of the division of labour...........................................................36
Literature: Weber chapter VIII; bureaucracy....................................................................................37
Characteristics of bureaucracy.....................................................................................................37
The position of the official............................................................................................................37
Video 2.2 The invisible hand (Smith)................................................................................................38
Video 2.3 The division of labour.......................................................................................................38
Video 7.6 The three ideal types of authority (Weber)......................................................................39
Video 7.7 Rationalization..................................................................................................................39
Video 7.8 The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism..............................................................39
Literature: Watson chapter 5 (pp. 153-170): work organizations.....................................................40
The organizational principle of work structuring..........................................................................40
The nature of work organizations.................................................................................................40
Official and unofficial aspects of organizations.............................................................................41
Organizational structures and cultures.........................................................................................41
Official structure and culture: basic organizational design principles...........................................42
, Literature: Mintzberg; organization design: fashion or fit?..............................................................44
Deriving the configurations..........................................................................................................44
Simple structure...........................................................................................................................47
Machine bureaucracy...................................................................................................................48
Professional bureaucracy..............................................................................................................48
Divisionalized form.......................................................................................................................49
Adhocracy.....................................................................................................................................49
Configurations as a diagnostic tool...............................................................................................50
Are the internal elements consistent?..........................................................................................50
Are the external controls functional?...........................................................................................50
Is there a part that does not fit?...................................................................................................50
Is the right structure in the wrong situation?...............................................................................50
Fit over fashion.............................................................................................................................50
Literature: Burns and Stalker; mechanistic and organic systems......................................................50
Week 3.................................................................................................................................................52
Lecture 5: occupations & professionalism (Luuk Mandemakers).....................................................52
Literature: Freidson; labour markets and careers............................................................................54
Distinguishing labour markets......................................................................................................54
Careers in the free labour market................................................................................................54
Careers in the bureaucratic labour market...................................................................................55
The occupationally controlled labour market...............................................................................55
Variations in career-line................................................................................................................56
Labour market shelters.................................................................................................................56
Credentialism and labour market signals......................................................................................56
Credentials and labour market signals..........................................................................................57
Professionalism and schooling......................................................................................................57
Literature: Watson chapter 7 (pp. 204-213); the occupational and social organization of work......57
The occupational principle of work structuring............................................................................57
Occupational structure, class, status and inequality.....................................................................58
Occupations in a changing class structure....................................................................................59
Labour market segmentation and non-standard employment.....................................................59
Week 4.................................................................................................................................................60
Lecture 6: organizational culture......................................................................................................60
Literature: Hatch and Schultz; the dynamics of organizational identity...........................................62
Defining organizational identity....................................................................................................62
Organizational identity processes and their dynamics.................................................................64
,Dysfunctions of organizational identity dynamics........................................................................67
Conclusions...................................................................................................................................69
,Week 1
Lecture 1: Introduction & theoretical strands 1
The six strands of theory:
1. Managerial – psychologistic;
2. Durkheim-human-relations;
3. Interactionist-negotiated-order;
4. Weber-social-action-institutional;
5. Marxian-labour-process;
6. Post-modern/post structuralist.
Sociology and psychology in methodological pluralism:
- Sociology: social processes, cultures and structures;
- Psychology: individual actions and agency.
(1) Managerial-psychologistic strand
Consists of:
1. Scientific management (Taylorism);
a. Decomposition of work to enhance efficiency;
i. A boss is needed for this;
b. Separation of thinking (the employer) from doing (the employee);
c. Deskilling: simple tasks and complex control structures;
d. Neo-classical economic perspective on human behavior;
e. Incentive pay systems;
f. Man as homo calculus (economic animal);
g. Is on the micro-level in Coleman’s boat;
i. Fordism: Taylorism on tech;
1. Specialized machinery/electrical tools for one purpose;
2. Interchangeable parts instead of people moving around machines;
3. Mass production;
2. Psychological humanism;
a. Five types of needs: belonging, physiological, safety, self-actualization, self-esteem;
i. Agrees with scientific management: management promotes efficiency;
ii. Disagrees: which incentives?
b. According to the pyramid (figure 1), all needs matter, but:
i. They are not fully hierarchical;
ii. Importance varies between people.
Figure 1: hierarchy of needs
,Two-level theory of motivation:
- Hygiene factors: before the pandemic, hygiene was not something people paid as much
attention to as they now do;
- Motivation factors.
Similarities between scientific management and psychological humanism:
- They operate on the micro level;
- They neglect macro level conditions;
- They draw sharp distinctions between management and employees;
- They aim to manipulate employee behavior;
- They implicitly believe there is one best way of organizing.
(2) Durkheim-Human-Relations
- Emphasizes the social system around individuals;
o Informal relations;
o Social cohesion;
o Sentiments rather than reason;
o System properties (interdependencies);
- An autonomous and externally existing society;
- Social underpinnings of cognition (embedded rationality): norms, values and ways of doing;
- (Over)emphasis on the macro level of Coleman’s boat.
Hawthorne effect: the “being observed effect”.
Similarities between managerial – psychologistic and Durkheim:
- Draw sharp distinctions between management and employees;
- Aim to manipulate worker/employee behavior;
- Believe (implicitly) in one best way of organizing, the way to get there just differs (economic,
psychological or social incentives).
Difference: Durkheim is more macro-focused.
(3) Interactionist-negotiated order (Erving Goffman)
- Bridges micro and macro;
- Organizations and their members…
o Are restricted by rules;
o Bend the rules;
This means that rules shape behavior, but behavior also shapes rules.
,What happens in organizations results from ongoing interactions between actors, leading to an
‘order’:
- Individuals and society are mutually interdependent;
- Middle position between psychologism and sociologism;
- Less emphasis on rationality or sentiments, more on negotiations between actors;
- Organizational order emerges from a continual process of adjustment;
- Organizations and employees strive to preserve their identity.
Self-negotiation: literally negotiating with yourself (and sometimes even relativizing own behavior).
People negotiate with their identity and what they are doing (internal and external negotiation).
Subjective career: the way an individual understands or makes sense of the way they have moved
through various social positions or stages in the course of their life, or part of their life.
Steps in this strands (example):
1. Transgression: trying to stretch the rules;
2. Return to order: due to (institutional) rules, relationships get reinstated (the boss becomes
the boss again, the employee the employee);
3. Assumption of equality dashed: a reasonable request is not honoured;
4. Powerplay: the boss gets what he wants.
Internal negotiation: a fight for the preservation of identity (of individual employees for example).
Lecture 2: Theoretical strands 2
(4) Weber-social action – institutional
- Interplay between objective (material) and subjective (ideas) aspects;
- Modernization as a continuing rationalization: traditional or magical criteria are replaced by
technical criteria: Entzauberung der Welt;
- Bureaucracy: the best way to deal with rationalization.
Authority in 3 forms:
1. Traditional authority: sanctity, traditions;
a. For example a king or a divine power (power is given to them, not ‘earned’);
2. Charismatic authority: exceptional persons;
a. If a person has the ability to motivate you, you will follow them (example: famous
actor/singer);
3. Rational-legal authority: based on legal position and rules;
a. For example police have gained the right to give people fines;
b. Rules are followed because they are regarded as legitimate.
Bureaucracy is efficient because it is stable and predictable while at the same time allowing for
relative independence and discretion on the part of officials. All actions are rule-bounded.
Bureaucracy solves the problems of earlier administrative systems (figure 2).
Figure 2: traditional vs bureaucratic
Traditional Bureaucratic
Varying division of labour Clear jurisdictional areas
Organized on personal loyalty Organized on hierarchy and appeal
No rules/informal rules, arbitrary enforcement Learnable rules govern decisions that are
recorded
, Unpredictable Predictable
No separation household and business Private/professional distinction, including
ownership of means of production, office
Officials are leader’s henchmen Officials are free, appointed for skill, get salaries
Officials serve at pleasure of the leader Employment is a (full-time and lifelong) career
Weber: social action-institutions
- Instrumental values replace substantive values: focus on efficiency;
- But… means may subvert ends (the paradox of consequences);
o Limits of “rationality as a quest for efficiency”?;
- We are all prisoners within the iron cage of the bureaucratic organizational form (as the
rational instrument of modernization);
- Weber: place ideas and actions within the historical context;
- Two faces of rationalization and modernity.
Weber: bureaucracy – relation to Taylor?
- Wider in scope and balanced: attention to downsides of rationalization;
- It explicitly relates micro behavior to macro patterns;
- It is not so much managerial in nature as one would expect at first glance;
- They share a focus on efficiency;
- But the object of the bureaucratic thesis is not that employees follow the rules (in order to
optimize efficiency), the object is to show how power is constrained and made predictable in
the bureaucratic ideal type, thus promoting both efficiency and legitimacy;
o Beware of the paradox of consequences!
Weber: social action-institutions: institutional theories. Link with Weber: for both legitimacy is
crucial, but:
- More emphasis on dysfunctional elements of institutional embeddedness of organizations;
- Organizations: not rational actors striving for efficiency but as actors conforming to
institutional pressures (norms, values, accepted ways of doing things).
Weber: social action-institutions
- Emphasis on interorganizational fields and structural tensions;
- Legitimacy trumps effectiveness and efficiency as dominant driving factor;
- Mindless conformity: mimetic isomorphism;
o “Because we have always done it like that!”;
- It explains similarities between organizations.
(5) Marx: labour process
There are two types of people:
1. Proletariat: the workers;
2. Bourgeoisie: the owners;
a. They get the surplus value.
Owners want survival. The only way to survive is to make things more efficient en to grow.
If you don’t do this, others will and you will not “survive”;
o This is why workers are exploited: owners are obsessed about surviving and are
willing to do many things to achieve their goal to survive;
, This argument is used by political science to explain war.
To achieve survival, owners have to…
- Beat the competitors;
- Maximize surplus value;
- Increase efficiency (Taylorist).
Capitalist employment is essentially exploitative, extracting surplus value from workers’ labour.
Management has to subjugate (ondergeschikt maken aan) labour.
Capitalism led to deskilling, routinising and mechanizing of jobs. Rationalization supports capitalist
exploitation.
Exploitation makes the proletariat even more homogenous.
Marx emphasize asymmetric power relations between actors (capitalists and proletariat, owners and
workers): organizations are tools for exploitation.
Due to power relations, owners can oppress workers and it is easy to replace them.
Once labour is defined as a cost of production, rather than as a means to achieve a collective purpose
for the good of society, workers are disenfranchised from the product of their own work, leading to
alienation.
Labour process in 21 century: the ever-increasing accumulation of wealth on the part of the famous
one percent is because the rate of return on capital (r) always exceeds the rate of growth of income
(g).
(6) Post-modern & post-structuralist
Assumptions about this strand:
- There is no objective reality;
- The truth is relative;
- Progress is an illusion (at least in ethics);
- The shaping forces of discourse.
Organizations are sites where humans are subjugated by the language of modernism. There is a focus
on doubt, counterintuition, fragmentation, chaos and unpredictability.
Figure 3: illustration of premodern, modern and postmodern approach
Premodern, modern and postmodern:
- Premodern: there is not really a change in society;
- Modern: people are optimists, it will get better;
- Postmodern: the truth is relative.
