Chapter 7. Groups and Organizations
7.4. Formal Organizations
A complaint of modern life is that society is dominated by large and impersonal secondary organizations. The individual gets lost in the paper work and digital files through which modern society is administered. From universities to businesses to health care to government, these organizations are referred to as formal organizations.
A formal organization is a large secondary group deliberately organized to achieve its goals efficiently and effectively. Typically, formal organizations are highly bureaucratized. The term bureaucracy refers to what Max Weber termed “an ideal type” of formal organization (1922/1946). In its sociological usage, “ideal type” does not mean “best,” “good” or “perfect”; it refers to a general or typical model that can be used to describe a collection of characteristics, or a model that could describe most examples of the item under discussion.
For example, if a professor were to tell the class to picture a car in their minds, most students will picture a car that shares a set of characteristics: four wheels, a windshield, and so on. Everyone’s car will be somewhat different, however. Some might picture a two-door sports car while others might picture an SUV. Some might picture an electric car while others might picture a combustion car. It is possible for a car to have three wheels instead of four. However, the general idea of the car that everyone shares is the ideal type.
Corporate, state and other organizational bureaucracies are similar. While each bureaucracy has its own idiosyncratic features, the way each is deliberately organized to achieve its goals efficiently shares a certain consistency. In this sense bureaucracies are defined by an ideal type common to most large scale modern organizations.
Types of Formal Organizations
Sociologist Amitai Etzioni (1975) posited that formal organizations fall into three categories. Normative organizations, also called voluntary organizations, are based on shared interests. As the name suggests, joining them is voluntary and typically people join because they find membership rewarding intrinsically, or in an intangible way. Compliance to the group is maintained through compliance with shared norms or moral control. The Audubon Society or a ski club are examples of normative organizations.
Coercive organizations are groups that one must be coerced, or pushed, to join. These may include prison, the military, or a rehabilitation centre. Compliance is maintained through force and coercion. Goffman (1961) states that most coercive organizations are total institutions (see Chapter 5. Socialization). A total institution is one in which members are separated from the rest of society and live a fully controlled life to submit to a process of total resocialization.
The third type are utilitarian organizations, which, as the name suggests, are joined for instrumental purposes, as a means to an end. People enter them to pursue a