Download or read book Human Institutions written by Jonathan H. Turner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years 'the New Institutionalism' has focused more on organizations in their social and cultural environments than on societal-level institutional systems. Thus, missing from these studies has been a larger sociological analysis of institutions, per se. In his newest book, leading social theorist Jonathan H. Turner offers a creative, richly grounded reinterpretation of social evolution. He ressurrects a level of analysis undertaken by earlier functionalist theorists, but with a new-found emphasis--that of discovering the larger forces driving the formation of human institutional systems. Only by exploring the larger macro-dynamics can the institutions of economy, kinship, religion, polity, law, and education be fully understood, as Turner persuasively shows in this magesterial explication of twenty millenia of human social life.
Download or read book Social Organizations written by Göran Ahrne and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1994-07-05 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lively and wide-ranging essay, Göran Ahrne sketches an organizational theory of society. Combining the insights of organization theory with the traditional concerns of social theory, he makes an innovative and creative contribution to both fields. Using a broad definition of organizations, the author shows that what goes on inside, outside and among organizations is central to understanding social relations. Organizations provide people with resources and motives, and they set the frames for human action. Although organizations do not form societies or systems, society is shaped and changed through interaction between organizations. Drawing on various schools of organization theory, including institutional, ecological and contingency theories, the book shows how their synthesis with social theory clarifies the nature and effects of organizational interactions.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Sociology Social Theory and Organization Studies written by Paul S. Adler and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2014 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociology and social theory has always been a major source of new perspectives for organization studies. Access to a series of authoritative accounts of theorists and research themes in sociology and social theory which have influenced developments in organization studies is essential for those wishing to deepen and extend their knowledge of the intersection of sociology and organization studies. This goal is achieved by drawing on a group of internationally renowned scholars committed in their own work to strengthening these links and asking them to provide critical accounts of particular theorists and research themes which have straddled this divide. This volume aims to strengthen ties between organization studies and contemporary sociological work at a time when there are increasing institutional barriers to such cooperation, potentially generating a myopia that constricts new developments. Used in conjunction with its companion volume, The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Organization Studies: Classical Foundations, the reader is provided with a comprehensive account of the productive and critical interaction between sociology and organization studies over many decades. Highly international in scope, theorists and themes are drawn from both the USA and Europe in equal measure. Similarly the authors of the chapters are drawn from both sides of the Atlantic. The result is a series of chapters on individuals and key research themes and debates which will provide faculty and post graduate researchers with appreciative, authoritative and critical accounts that can be drawn on to design courses or provided guided reading to the field.
Download or read book Studies in the Theory of Human Society written by Franklin Henry Giddings and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sensemaking in Organizations written by Karl E. Weick and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1995-05-31 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The teaching of organization theory and the conduct of organizational research have been dominated by a focus on decision-making and the concept of strategic rationality. However, the rational model ignores the inherent complexity and ambiguity of real-world organizations and their environments. In this landmark volume, Karl E Weick highlights how the `sensemaking' process shapes organizational structure and behaviour. The process is seen as the creation of reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves.
Download or read book Organization Development and Society written by Baruch Shimoni and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-11 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organization Development and Society: Theory and Practice of Organization Development Consulting offers a new approach for the practice of organization development (OD). The new approach, a habitus oriented OD (HOOD), sees consultees' thinking and behavior a result of habitus, a cognitive structure developed historically in endless interactions between human behavior and social structures. HOOD has two goals: The first goal is to redefine the objectives of individually oriented OD. The focus on habitus and social structure allows individually oriented OD scholars and practitioners to keep their subjective approach, which searches for consultees' inner world. However, this subjectivity searches not only for consultees' psychological but their social dispositions. It views the individual level, the habitus, as a site of social dispositions that from within the individual consultees generate thoughts and behaviors in a way that closely corresponds with the organization's social structure; with power relations and social positions and with accepted metaphors and common language. The HOOD links the concept of habitus to the field of OD and in so doing provides an alternative way to incorporate the individual and the social in OD. HOOD's second goal is to re/position OD between organizations and society and thus to produce a consulting practice that is both pragmatic and human. It is pragmatic since incorporation of habitus enables the consultant to liberate consultees' perspectives and behavior from the organization's social and structural hoops and to use these perspectives in processes of change and development. Considering the habitus as central to consulting projects is human since it enables consultants (and consultees) to identify the responsibility for organizational problems (and other phenomena) not only at the level of the individual but also at the level of the organization and the environment outside the organization.
Download or read book Sociology of Organizations written by Mary Godwyn and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sociological study of organizations encompasses both planned and formal organizations as well as spontaneous and informal ones. Sociologists examine organizations with attention to structure and objectives, interactions among members and among organizations, the relationship between the organization and its environment and the social significance or social meaning of the organization. The ways of defining and examining organizations vary depending on the theoretical emphasis. This book focuses on three things: * providing a wide and historically accurate portrait of the diversity of sociological theories and their application to organizational studies * updating selections that reflect a variety of ways that new technology affects methods of organizing and types of organizations * including readings that examine a range of both formal and informal structures, and both deliberate and impromptu interactions. Lively and provocative, this textbook is theoretically rigorous, disciplinarily informed and representative of heterogeneity within organizational studies.
Download or read book Human Services as Complex Organizations written by Yeheskel Hasenfeld and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2009-07-29 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Hasenfeld has done it again. An excellent collection of essays on many of the most important trends and issues involving human service organizations." —Mayer N. Zald, Professor (emeritus), Sociology, Social Work, and Management, University of Michigan The Second Edition of this best-selling text provides a comprehensive and state-of-the-art perspective on human service organizations. This vanguard collection weaves the latest theoretical and empirical studies in macro theory with contemporary examples from hospitals, schools, social service organizations, mental health centers, and public welfare agencies. Blending theory with application, this outstanding anthology highlights the moral choices and accomplishments made by human service organizations. Key Features of This Edition Presents the latest theoretical and empirical studies on human service organizations, offering students key analytical tools to study and understand human behavior in various contexts. Introduces important new topics, such as the impact of the policy environment, emotional labor, and advocacy Offers students a new perspective with original studies on organizational ideologies, conditions of work, structuration of service technologies, diversity, and discretion. Intended Audience This exceptional compilation of the best theoretical and empirical studies on human service organizations is indispensable to graduate students and scholars of organization studies, organizational behavior, and Human Behavior in the Social Environment.
Download or read book The Social Theory of Practices written by Stephen P. Turner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the first analysis and critique of the idea of practice as it has developed in the various theoretical traditions of the social sciences and the humanities. The concept of a practice, understood broadly as a tacit possession that is 'shared' by and the same for different people, has a fatal difficulty, the author argues. This object must in some way be transmitted, 'reproduced', in Bourdieu's famous phrase, in different persons. But there is no plausible mechanism by which such a process occurs. The historical uses of the concept, from Durkheim to Kripke's version of Wittgenstein, provide examples of the contortions that thinkers have been forced into by this problem, and show the ultimate implausibility of the idea of the interpersonal transmission of these supposed objects. Without the notion of 'sameness' the concept of practice collapses into the concept of habit. The conclusion sketches a picture of what happens when we do without the notion of a shared practice, and how this bears on social theory and philosophy. It explains why social theory cannot get beyond the stage of constructing fuzzy analogies, and why the standard constructions of the contemporary philosophical problem of relativism depend upon this defective notion.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Organization Studies written by Paul S. Adler and published by Oxford Handbooks Online. This book was released on 2009 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organizations are a defining feature of the modern world, and the study of organizations (Organization Studies) has become well established in both sociology departments and professional schools, most notably business and management schools. Organization Studies has long drawn inspiration from foundational work in sociology. The sociological lens affords depth of insight into the technological, economic, cultural, and political forces that shape organizations from both within and without. In particular, "classical" works in sociology have long energized organizational research, primarily by suggesting ways of making sense of the ever-accelerating pace of social change. In recent decades, however, the field has lost interest in these sociology classics. This trend reflects and reinforces an increasingly academic focus of contempory Organization Studies. Not only does this trend weaken Organization Studies' engagement with the big social issues of our time, but it isolates the field from the broader field of the social sciences. The aim of this Handbook is to re-assert the importance of classical sociology to the future of Organization Studies. Alongside several thematic chapters, the volume includes chapters on each of nearly two dozen major European and American theorists, each of these chapter addressing: (a) the ideas and their context, (b) the impact of these ideas on the field of Organization Studies, and (c) the potential future research these ideas might inspire. The goal is not reverential exegesis, but rather to examine how the classics can energize organizational research. This wide-ranging Handbook, with contributions from leading American and European scholars, will be a vital, informative, and stimulating resource for anybody undertaking research in, teaching, or interested in learning more about Organization Studies today. About the Series Oxford Handbooks in Business & Management bring together the world's leading scholars on the subject to discuss current research and the latest thinking in a range of interrelated topics including Strategy, Organizational Behavior, Public Management, International Business, and many others. Containing completely new essays with extensive referencing to further reading and key ideas, the volumes, in hardback or paperback, serve as both a thorough introduction to a topic and a useful desk reference for scholars and advanced students alike.
Download or read book Human Services as Complex Organizations written by Yeheskel Hasenfeld and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1992-04 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On human services
Download or read book Debugging the Link Between Social Theory and Social Insects written by Diane M. Rodgers and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, natural and social scientists began comparing certain insects to human social organization. Entomologists theorized that social insects -- such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites -- organize themselves into highly specialized, hierarchical divisions of labor. Using a distinctly human vocabulary that reflected the dominant social structure of the time, they described insects as queens, workers, and soldiers and categorized their behaviors with words like marriage, slavery, farming, and factories. At the same time, sociologists working to develop a model for human organization compared people to insects, relying on the same premise that humans arrange themselves hierarchically. In Debugging the Link between Social Theory and Social Insects, Diane M. Rodgers explains how these co-constructed theories reinforced one another, thereby naturalizing Western conceptions of race, class, and gender as they gained prominence in popular culture and the scientific world. Using a critical science studies perspective not previously applied to research on social insect symbolism, Rodgers attempts to "debug" this theoretical co-construction. She provides sufficient background information to accommodate readers unfamiliar with entomology -- including in-depth explanations of the terms used in the research and discussion of social insects, particularly the insect sociality scale. The entire premise of sociality for insects depends on a dominant understanding of high/low civilization standards -- particularly the tenets of a specialized division of labor and hierarchy -- comparisons that appear to be informed by nineteenth-century colonial thought. Placing these theories in a historical and cross-cultural context, Rodgers explains why hierarchical ideas gained prominence, despite the existence of opposing theories in the literature, and how they resulted in an inhibiting vocabulary that relies more heavily on metaphors than on description. Such analysis is necessary, Rodgers argues, because it sheds light both on newly proposed scientific models and on future changes in human social structures. Contemporary scientists have begun to challenge the traditional understanding of insect social organization and to propose new interdisciplinary models that combine ideas about social insect and human organizational structure with computer technologies. Without a thorough understanding of how the old models came about, residual language and embedded assumptions may remain and continue to reinforce hierarchical social constructions. This intriguing interdisciplinary book makes an important contribution to the history -- and future -- of science and sociology.
Download or read book Pathways of Human Development written by Jay A. Mancini and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009-08-20 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pathways of Human Development uses theoretical perspectives from developmental, social, and behavioral sciences to examine the many ways that individuals, families, and communities intersect and interface. Focusing on the impact of change on human development, including its antecedents, processes, and consequences, the chapters examine a range of topics such as health and adaptation; social anxiety disorder; protective factors and risk behaviors; parent-child relationships; adolescent sexuality; intergenerational relationships; family stress and adaptation; and community resilience. By extending human development theorizing across these pivotal life-changing issues, this volume offers a comprehensive map of the trajectories of development among individuals, families, and communities.
Download or read book The Human Group written by George Caspar Homans and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George C. Homans's classic volume The Human Group was among the first to study the small group as a microcosm of society. It introduced a method of analysis and a set of influential theories that cut across areas of specialization on the personality, community, and industry.The study of even the smallest groups is extremely complex, with the simplest associations involving an abundance of actions, relationships, emotions, motives, ideas, and beliefs. Homans concentrates on certain activities and processes he observes in five carefully selected and differentiated case studies and from them draws common patterns and ideas that serve as the bases of testable propositions.He divides his cases into static and dynamic groups. In all five cases, Homans selects comparable phenomena for analysis with a contextually different emphasis and elaboration each time. His results demonstrate that, different as these groups are, their behavior reveals fundamental similarities and social uniformities. A ground-breaking and authoritative work when it was first published in 1950, The Human Group continues to Inform and invigorate the study of small groups in sociology, psychology, management, and organizations.
Download or read book Social Movements and Organization Theory written by Gerald F. Davis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-05-09 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the fields of organization theory and social movement theory have long been viewed as belonging to different worlds, recent events have intervened, reminding us that organizations are becoming more movement-like - more volatile and politicized - while movements are more likely to borrow strategies from organizations. Organization theory and social movement theory are two of the most vibrant areas within the social sciences. This collection of original essays and studies both calls for a closer connection between these fields and demonstrates the value of this interchange. Three introductory, programmatic essays by leading scholars in the two fields are followed by eight empirical studies that directly illustrate the benefits of this type of cross-pollination. The studies variously examine the processes by which movements become organized and the role of movement processes within and among organizations. The topics covered range from globalization and transnational social movement organizations to community recycling programs.
Download or read book Management Organizations and Contemporary Social Theory written by Stewart Clegg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social theorists speculate about large-scale social questions, asking of any phenomenon, how is it possible? This book addresses how various social theories contribute key insights into the nature of organizations and management. The cast of characters to be found in this book have had a transcendental impact, including on the practices of the management and organization disciplines. For students, however, engaging with social theory in a conversation that is much broader and potentially richer than those that may have been previously encountered is not at first easy. The question is where to begin: this book provides answers. Drawing on research from international contributors, this valuable textbook is an essential resource for students and introduces key social theories and theorists making them accessible to a management audience. The chapters include objectives and end-of-chapter reflective questions, as well as a glossary for readers grappling with new terms.
Download or read book The Sociology of Organizations written by Michael J Handel and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2003 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In introducing this reader comprising three dozen articles and critiques in organizational sociology, Handel (sociology, U. of Wisconsin-Madison) overviews definitional issues over the term organization as viewed by rational theories and open systems theories. Starting with classic theories of bur
