Primary groups are small, personal groups like family and friends that provide lasting relationships and assistance. Secondary groups are large, impersonal groups focused on goals and activities like work organizations. Formal organizations are large secondary groups organized efficiently to achieve goals through specialization, hierarchy, rules, and impersonality. However, bureaucracies can become inefficient, dehumanizing, and resistant to change over time. New challenges include increasing diversity and flexible team-based models.

1. Groups and Organizations
Sociology, 13h Edition by John Macionis
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. Social Group
Two or more people who identify and interact with one
another.
• Not every collection of individuals forms a group.
• Many people with a status in common–women,
homeowners, soldiers, millionaires, college
graduates, and Roman Catholics–are not groups,
but categories, because of limited interactions.

3. Not Quite a Social Group
• Crowd
– Temporary cluster of people created by an event
– A group can have temporal status
• A crowd can become a group, then a crowd
again.
– A large gathering of people at a football game
– A crowd that begins to riot might be considered a group
because of their purposeful interaction.

4. Primary Groups
• Traits
– Small: friends, family
– Personal orientation
– Enduring
• Primary relationships
– First group experienced in life
– Irreplaceable
• Assistance of all kinds
– Emotional to financial
Small social groups whose members share personal, lasting
relationships.

5. Secondary Groups
• Traits
– Large membership
– Goal or activity orientation
– Formal and polite
• Secondary relationships
– Weak emotional ties
– Short term, goal directed
• Examples
– Co-workers and political organizations
A large, impersonal social group whose members
pursue a specific goal or activity.

6. Summing Up
Primary Groups and Secondary Groups

7. Group Leadership
• Two roles
– Instrumental: Task-oriented
– Expressive: People-oriented
instrumental and expressive are also used to define gender; Ch.13
• Three leadership styles
– Authoritarian: Leader makes decisions; Compliance
from members
– Democratic: Member involvement
– Laissez-faire: Mainly let group function on its own

8. Group Conformity Studies
• Asch’s research page 164
– Willingness to compromise our own
judgments
– Line experiment
• Milgram’s research page 165
– Role authority plays
– Following orders
• Janis’s research page 165
– Negative side of groupthink
– “the tendency of group members to conform, resulting
in a narrow view” consequences?

9. Figure 7.1
Cards Used in Asch’s Experiment in Group Conformity
In Asch’s experiment, subjects were asked to match the line on Card 1 to one of the lines on Card 2. Many subjects agreed with the wrong answers given by
others in their group.
Source: Asch (1952).

10. Reference Group
• Stouffer’s research page 166
– We compare ourselves in relation to
specific reference groups. upward
• In-groups and out-groups
– Loyalty to in-group downward
– Opposition to out-groups
in-groups out-groups
A social group that serves as a point of reference in making
evaluations and decisions about where resources go, and
who gets rewarded and punished

11. Group Size
• The dyad
– A two-member group
– Very intimate, but unstable given its size
• The triad
– A three-member group
– More stable than a dyad and more types of
interaction are possible

12. Figure 7.2
Group Size and Relationships
As the number of people in a group increases, the number of relationships that link them increases much faster. By the time six or seven people
share a conversation, the group usually divides into two. Why are relationships in smaller groups typically more intense?
Source: Created by the author.

13. Social Diversity:
Race, Class, and Gender
• Large and homogenous groups turn inward.
– Members have relationships between themselves.
• Heterogeneous groups turn outward.
– Diverse membership promotes interaction with
outsiders.
• Physical boundaries create social boundaries.
– If segregation of groups takes place, the chances for
contact are limited.
• Networks
– “Web of weak social ties”; people we know of or
who know of us

14. Global Map 7.1
Internet Users in Global Perspective

15. Formal Organizations
• Utilitarian
– Material rewards for members (functional-conflict)
• Normative
– Voluntary organizations
– Ties to personal morality
(functional-conflict)
• Coercive
– Punishment or treatment
– Total institutions (functional-conflict)
Large secondary groups organized to achieve goals efficiently;
date back thousands of years.

16. Summing Up
Small Groups and Formal Organizations

17. Bureaucracy
• Max Weber’s six elements to promote
organizational efficiency:
– Specialization of duties
– Hierarchy of offices
– Rules and regulations
– Technical competence
– Impersonality
– Formal, written communications
An organizational model rationally designed to perform tasks
efficiently

18. Organizational Environment
• Factors outside an organization that affect its
operation:
– Economic and political trends
– Current events
– Populations patterns
– Other organizations
• Informal side of bureaucracy
– In part, informality comes from the
personalities of organizational leaders.

19. Problems of Bureaucracies
• Bureaucratic alienation
– Potential to dehumanize individuals
• Bureaucratic inefficiency and ritualism (irony)
– Preoccupation with rules, interferes with meeting goals
• Bureaucratic inertia
– Perpetuation of the organization becomes more important
than the goals and the purpose for it’s existence
Oligarchy: The rule of the many by the few
• Helps distance officials from the public.
• Michels: Concentrates power and threatens democracy page 174
.

20. The Evolution of Formal Organizations
Scientific Management
Application of scientific principles to the
operation of a business or large organization
1. Identify tasks and time needed for tasks
2. Analyze to perform tasks more efficiently
3. Provide incentives for worker efficiency
Whose interests are being served???

21. New Challenges
to Formal Organizations
• Race and gender
– Pattern of exclusion
– “Female advantage”
• Japanese organizations
– Value cooperation
– Organizational loyalty
• Changing nature of work
– Information-based organizations
– Creative autonomy, competitive work teams, flatter
organization, and greater flexibility

22. Figure 7.3
U.S. Managers in Private
Industry by Race, Sex, and
Ethnicity, 2005

23. Figure 7.4
Two Organizational Models
The conventional model of bureaucratic organizations has a pyramid shape, with a clear chain of command. Orders flow from the top down, and reports of
performance flow from the bottom up. Such organizations have extensive rules and regulations, and their workers have highly specialized jobs. More open
and flexible organizations have a flatter shape, more like a football. With fewer levels in the hierarchy, responsibility for generating ideas and making
decisions is shared throughout the organization. Many workers do their jobs in teams and have a broad knowledge of the entire organization’s operation.
Source: Created by the author.

24. McDonaldization of Society
• Efficiency: Do it quickly
• Predictability: Use set formulas
• Uniformity: Leave nothing to chance
• Control: Humans are most unreliable factor
Each principle limits human creativity, choice, and
freedom.
Weber: Rational systems are efficient but
dehumanizing.

25. Future of Organizations:
Opposing Trends
• Movement toward more creative freedom for
highly skilled information workers
• Movement toward increased supervision and
discipline for less skilled service workers

26. Class Activity
• Group 1: Explain behaviors on an elevator;
group or crowd?
• Group 2: How can we make this classroom
more efficient? Is that a good thing, or just
more drifting toward McDonaldization?
• Group 3: After considering the differences
between the American and Japanese models
of automobile manufacturing (pages 176-7) , which
is best and why?