Organization - Syllabus. Defining formal organizations: What are they? Sociology has approached the study of organizations in a number of ways. Earlier studies stressed the formal features of organizations, and described their internal functioning and the relationships among participants within the bounds of the organization itself. Over the past twenty years or so, however, a new perspective has emerged, one that sees the organization in the context of its surrounding environment (Aldrich & Marsden, 1988).

Organization - Syllabus

RURAL SOCIAL ORGANIZATION - Sociology 4351 - Instructor: Dr. Tim Slack
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course provides an in-depth overview of the social organization of rural society. While the work of many rural sociologists is international in focus, this course will focus on the special circumstances facing people who reside in small towns and rural areas in the United States. The forces of globalization, urbanization, economic restructuring, and technological change are driving major changes in the social organization of rural America, and these changes are creating new challenges for those who reside there. Questions we will examine in this course include: Who lives in rural America? What are the important issues faced by rural people, families, and communities? What options are available to rural people and communities in our rapidly changing world, and how can rural people and places influence their futures?
The format of this course will include lectures, discussions, videos, guest speakers, and student presentations.
We all come to this course with different backgrounds that have led us to hold different ideas about the rural urban continuum. This diversity should allow for an interesting exchange of ideas.

REQUIRED TEXTS
Brown, David L. and Louis E. Swanson. 2003. Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century.
University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Flora, Cornelia Butler and Jan L. Flora with Susan Fey. 2004. Rural Communities: Legacy and Change. 2nd
Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
COURSE WEBSITE
This course makes use of the Blackboard website. You should be able to access Blackboard through your PAWS account. After you log into PAWS, you will find the link to Blackboard under “Student Services.” I will use the website to post course material, additional readings, grades, and announcements. Make sure to check the website regularly.

Formal Organizations - Syllabus - Stanford University

Course Description:
The modern world is powerfully shaped by the actions of large, complex organizations. As such, the study of organizations (including everything from schools and religious organizations to corporations, political parties, and governments) has a long history within sociology. This course provides a survey of the field of organizational sociology, beginning with the works of classical theorists, and covering contemporary work on ecological, institutional, and cultural approaches to organizations. Readings for the course balance theory and empirical research.

The Necessity and Inevitablility of Formal Organization: Classical Foundations

The Necessity and Inevitability of Bureaucratic Rationality

Max Weber. "Bureaucracy," (excerpt only), from From Max Weber. ed. Gerth and Mills.

Michels, Robert. 1949. "The Iron Law of Oligarchy" in Political Parties. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.

Industrial Organization: Humans as Machines

Harry Braverman, "Scientific Management," from Labor and Monopoly Capital, pp. 85-123.

Karl Marx, "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts... of 1844."

Bureaucratic Dysfunction: Formal and Informal Structure

Robert Merton, "Bureaucratic Structure and Personality," from Social Theory and Social Structure, pp. 249-260.

Peter Blau. "Consultation Among Colleagues." From Dynamics of Bureaucracy. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1955, pp. 121-143.

Cognitive and Structural Limits of Bureaucratic Rationality

James March and Herbert Simon. "Cognitive Limits on Rationality," from March and Simon. Organizations. London: Blackwell, 1993, pp. 157-192.

Karl Weick. "Educational Organizations as Loosely-Coupled Systems," Administrative Science Quarterly, v. 21 (1978), excerpt from article, pp. 1-9.

Organizations and Their Environments

Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salancik, "The Social Control of Organizations," from The External Control of Organizations, pp. 39-54.

Organizations in Networks

Walter Powell, "Neither Market Nor Hierarchy," Research in Organizational Behavior, v. 12 (1990), pp. 295-336.

Brian Uzzi. "Social Structure and Competition." Administrative Science Quarterly, 42,1:35-67, 1997.

Population Ecology

Michael Hannan and Glenn R. Carroll. "An Introduction to Organizational Ecology," Pp. 17-31 from Organizations in Industry. New York: Oxford, 1995.

Michael Hannan and John Freeman. "The Population Ecology of Organizations." American Journal of Sociology, v. 82 (1977), pp. 929-964.

Community Ecology

W. Graham Astley, "The Two Ecologies: Population and Community Perspectives on Organizational Evolution," Administrative Science Quarterly, v. 30 (1985), pp. 224-241.

Institutional Approaches I: Rationality Revisited

John Meyer and Brian Rowan, "Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony," American Journal of Sociology, v. 83 (1977), pp. 340-363.

Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell. 1983. "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields, American Sociological Review, 48: 147-60.

Institutional Approaches II: Applications

Lauren Edelman. 1992. "Legal ambiguity and symbolic structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights law," American Journal of Sociology 97: 1531-76.

Brian Rowan. 1982. "Organizational Structure and the Institutional Environment: The Case of Public Schools," Administrative Science Quarterly, 27: 259-79.

Comparative Approaches: Organizations Embedded in Cultures

Mauro F. Guillen. 1994. "Comparative Study of Organizational Paradigms," in Models of Management, 1-20 (portion). U. of Chicago Press.

Geert Hofstede. 1984. Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Abridged Edition. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. (excerpt)

Back into Organizations: Social and Cultural Approaches

Social Processes and Social Networks in Organizations

Jeffrey Pfeffer, "Conditions for the Use of Power," excerpt from Power in Organizations, pp. 67-93.

Stephen Barley, "Technology as an Occasion for Structuring: Evidence from Observations of CT Scanners and the Social Order of Radiology Departments," Administrative Science Quarterly, v. 31 (1986), pp. 78-108.

Culture in Organizations
Gideon Kunda. 1992. Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. (excerpt)

Sociology 110 - Summer Session I, 2000
Formal Organizations and Bureaucracy
Instructor: Amy Davis - www.unc.edu/~abarden

This course has the following objectives: (1) study the founding, transformation, and disbanding of organizations (2) provide you with opportunities to develop writing skills and to work with others (3) provide you with an atmosphere that encourages the exploration and exchange of new ideas (4) help prepare you for your professional and/or academic careers.

Texts and Readings

The primary textbook we will read this semester is Organizations Evolving, by Howard Aldrich. I refer to it as HA in the course schedule, but here is the complete reference.

Aldrich, Howard. 1999. Organizations Evolving London: Sage.

We will also read excerpts from books and articles from academic and popular journals and newspapers. The textbook is available at the campus bookstore. The other readings are available on reserve at the Undergraduate Library and/or are electronically available on my website.

Term Project
As soon as possible, find an organization with at least 2 but no more than 30 employees to study. You may pick an organization owned by a family member or the one at which you are currently (or have formerly been) employed. You must be able to visit this organization several times, so pick a local organization or one in your hometown. In addition to visiting the organization and making careful observations, interview the founder. Use the concepts from class to tell the story of this organization. A handout will be distributed in the first week of class detailing the requirements of this paper.

Team Work
We will form teams at the beginning of the term. We will meet in our teams during most class days. Team exercises are designed to apply concepts from the readings and increase participation in class. Also, teams are opportunities to discuss issues you encounter in your term projects. I encourage teams to form study groups for exams. I also encourage teams to coordinate photocopying of reserved readings.

Course Topics
Tuesday, May 23: First Day of Class. Introductions.
Wednesday, May 24: Introduction to Organizations Evolving
-Discussion Question: Why is it important to study small organizations?

Thursday, May 25: The Evolutionary Perspective.
-Discussion Question: In what ways do luck, chance, and mistakes play a role in
the evolutionary perspective of organizations?

Friday, May 26: New Organizations Part I. (Entrepreneurs and their Networks)
-Discussion Question: Why do nascent entrepreneurs use networks?

Tuesday, May 30: New Organizations Part II. (Knowledge and Resources)
-Discussion Question: How do most new business owners, according to Aldrich, compare to the business owners discussed in the N&O articles with regard to initial capital? Why do you suppose the similarities and differences that you find exist?

Wednesday, May 31: Organizational boundaries Part I.
-Discussion Question: Why do some organization leaders hire people they know?

Thursday, June 1: Organizational boundaries, Part II.
-Discussion Question: In what ways can rewards influence the behavior of organizational members?

Monday, June 5: Turning employees into members
-Discussion Question: What is a cognitive heuristic? What role do they have in an organization’s community of practice?

Tuesday, June 6: Managers
-Discussion Question: Why is it problematic to say that managers advance through corporations as a result of merit?

Wednesday, June 7: New Organizational Forms Part I.
-Discussion Question: According to Besser, can Japanese forms of organizing
workers translate effectively in the United States? Why or why not?

Thursday, June 8: New Organizational Forms Part II.
-Discussion Question: What are the positive consequences of teams for individual workers and for the Camry plant? Negative Consequences?

Monday, June 12: Organizational Transformation
-Discussion Question: How common are organizational transformations?

Tuesday, June 13: Bureaucracy
-Readings:
Perrow, Charles. 1986. Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay. “Chapter 1:
Why Bureaucracy?” Pp 1-36
-Discussion Question: What are some reasons why bureaucracy is a good way to organize?

Wednesday, June 14: Charismatic Control
-Discussion Question: Under what conditions is charismatic control effective in organizations? What is your reaction to charismatic control? What are some ways in which Direct Selling Organizations differ from Bureaucratic Organizations?

Thursday, June 15: Organizational Power
-Readings:
Ford, Ramona L. 1988. “Political and Economic Power in the United States
Today: Alternative Views.” Work, Organization, and Power. Pp. 105-148.
-Discussion Question: How does the power pluralism view differ from the power elite view?

Monday, June 19: Organizations and Social Change
-Discussion Question: Why is it important to consider age, period, and cohort effects?

Tuesday, June 20: New Populations
-Discussion Question: Why do new populations have to establish legitimacy?
Why don’t these new populations have legitimacy?

Wednesday, June 21: Reproducing Populations: Foundings and Disbandings
-Discussion Question: According to Aldrich, how do small, local breweries survive given the dominance of beer producers like Budweiser?

Thursday, June 22: Organizational Death
Readings:
Sutton, Robert I. 1987. “The Process of Organizational Death: Disbanding and Reconnecting.” Administrative Science Quarterly 32:542-569.
-Discussion Question: What is a successful organizational disbanding?

Friday, June 23: Community Evolution

Books On Organization

Sociology of Organizations: Classic, Contemporary and Critical Readings
by Michael J. Handel (Editor) - The depth of these overview essays makes this book ideal for use as either as a stand-alone text or a supplementary reader. After reading this book, students will have a thorough understanding of central concepts and an appreciation of the primary texts that are the foundation of the field.
Scholars and students in the fields of sociology, management, organizational behavior, and organizational psychology and those within political science and economics who are interested in how organizations function will find this work a welcome, invaluable resource.

The Social Psychology of Behavior in Small Groups
by Donald C. Pennington - June 15, 2002
Covers theories of group behavior and their application in organizational psychology and everyday social behavior. Topics include structure, formation, roles of individuals within groups, co-operation, conflict, teamwork, leadership, and
decision-making.

Organizational Behavior
by John R. Schermerhorn, James G. Hunt, Richard N. Osborn - June 15, 2002
The theme of this edition is The High Performance Organization. Ethics and social responsibility, workforce diversity,
technology, entrepreneurship, and skill-building are some of the important topics emphasized. Schermerhorn's new edition is intended for the Organizational Behavior course taught at most 2-year and 4-year colleges.

Social Psychology of Organizational Behavior: Key Readings
by Leigh L. Thompson (Editor) October, 2002
Each article in this collection of readings has been carefully chosen for its tremendous impact on the field of organizational behavior. It focuses specifically on micro-organizational behavior, which has almost uniquely been influenced by social psychology. The reader is carefully structured into Sections which reflect a progression through widening levels of analysis: the
science of organizational behavior; decision making; negotiation and social dilemmas; groups and teams; procedural justice; relationships and trust; and vales, norms and politics. This volume is in an attractive, user-friendly format and will make excellent supplementary reading to courses on the social psychology, work and organizational psychology, and business.

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