SW120

Social Interaction and

Organization
 Social Interaction:
– The process by which people act and
react in relation to others

 Through social interaction, we create

the reality in which we live.
 Individuals
rely on social structure to
make sense of their everyday
situations

 Status: a social position that a person

occupies
 It helps us to define our relationship
with others
 It can be a prestige
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoZaEvzURDQ

 Status set: all the statuses a person

holds at a given time
 The status set change over the life
course

 Ascribedstatus: a social position a

person receives at birth or assumes
involuntarily later in life
– Gender, ethnicity, age group, caste
 Achievedstatus: a social position a
person assumes voluntarily that reflects
personal ability and effort
– Occupation, marital status

 Ideal type and reality

 In reality: Combination of ascribed and

achieved status
 Examples?
 A master status: a status that a society
defines as having special importance for
social identity, often shaping a person’s
entire life.
 E.g. occupation, gender, disability and
illness

 Role: behaviour expected of someone who

holds a particular status
 People hold a status and perform a role
 Statuses and roles vary by culture
 WHO IS OUR UNCLE
 “uncle” in Hong Kong: sibling of
mother is different from sibling of
father and uncles often refer to some
other people
 “uncle” in the united status: a sibling
of either mother or father

 Therole of parent in western

societies and Chinese societies
 Role set: a number of roles attached
to a single status

 E.g. a status as a lecturer: a teacher

role and a colleague role
 a status as a mother: a maternal role

and a civic role (toward their school

and other organizations in the
community)
 What are roles as a college student?

 From the youth’s perspective

 Fromthe others’
perspective
 Role conflict: conflict among the roles
corresponding to two or more statuses (as
a mother and as a employee)
 Role strain: tension among the roles
connected to a single status (as a
colleague and as a supervisor)
 Strategy to minimize role conflict:
– Perform roles linked to one status at one time
and place and carry out roles corresponding to
another status in a completely different setting
(leave the job at work)
 Role exit: the process by which
people disengage from important
social roles
 Ex-doctors, ex-husbands

 People come to doubt their ability to

continue in a certain role and to

purse a new life
The social construction of reality
 The process by which people creatively
shape reality through social interaction
 People present themselves in terms that

suit the setting and their purposes, we try

to guide what happens next

 Individuals have to act in expected ways in

order make the status believable to others
(the professional of social workers)
 Constructed or being
constructed
 Therole of the US government in the
War against terrorists

 The Thomas Theorem:

 Situations that are defined as real

are real in their consequences

 Communication
 Nonverbal communication:
 Communication using body movements,
gestures, and facial expressions rather
than speech.
 Body language, smiling, eye contact
 Unintended body language can contradict
the planned meaning
 Careful observation of nonverbal
communication provides clues to
deception
 Goffman
 Unfocused interaction: individuals
exhibit mutual awareness of one
another’s presence
 Large numbers of people are
assembled together on a busy street
 People do not talk directly, but often
continually communicate nonverbally
through their posture, facial and
physical gestures
 Focused interaction
 People directly attend to what others say
or do
 Encounter: An instance of focused
interaction
 Much of our daily life consists of
encounters with friends, family members
and colleagues, frequently occurring
against the background of unfocused
interaction with others
 Impression management
(Goffman)
 Idealization:

 Individuals construct performances to

idealize their intentions
 E.g.
A physician (Doctor) and
patients
 Peopletry to convince others that
what we do reflects ideal cultural
standards rather than selfish motives

 Social workers: helping others

 Teachers: transmitting knowledge

 Rather than seeking income and
power
 Personal social space

In Western culture people

usually maintain a distance of
at least three feet when
engaged in focused interaction
with others
 Social Group
 Social group: two or more people who identify
and interact with one another
 Family, peer groups, churches, clubs, business
organizations
 Primary group: a small group whose members
share personal and enduring relationship
 A long lasting, personal and tightly integrated
group
 Circles of family members and friends
 Having a sense of belonging, bond to each others
by emotion and loyalty
 Members are personally oriented
 Defined themselves according to who they are
 Secondary group:
 A large and impersonal social group whose
members pursue a specific goal or activity
 Having weak emotional ties and little
personal knowledge of one another
 Short termed
 Involving more people than the primary
group
 Members are goal oriented
 Defined themselves according to what
they are or what can they do to one
another
 A reference group
 A social group that serves as a point of
reference in making evaluations and
decisions
 Your classmates
 In-group: a social group commanding a
member’s esteem and loyalty; often have
positive views of themselves while
negative views of other group
 Out-group: a social group toward which
one feels competition or opposition.
 E.g. whites view people of colour as an
out-group which is subordinate to them
 The Dyad: a social group with two
members
 The dominant dyad

 The Triad: a social group with three

members
 Tend to be more stable than a dyad

 One member can act as a mediator

Characteristics of a large group
 Large group:
 Increase the group size will reduce

the intense personal interaction

 The larger the number of people, the

greater the possible number of

relationships e.g. a ten-person group
can produce forty-five possible dyads
 Group dynamic
 Large groups turn inward
 Members of large groups are likely to

have relationships just among

themselves

 Heterogeneous groups turn

outward (to interact with
outsiders)
 Social equality promotes contact
 All groups have the same social

standing, people of all groups will

interact

 Physical
boundaries create social
boundaries
 Which type of social
network is better for us?

Strong ties or weak ties

Group Discussion: Which type of
social network is better for us?
 Social networks and social
capital
 A web of weak or strong ties
 Social capital: the aggregate of resources

which are linked to personal contacts,

interpersonal relationships and
memberships in a group
 The strength of weak ties (Granovetter,

1983)
 a key component to building and

maintaining democracy, social and

economic development
 Social Capital
 Bonding social capital the value assigned
to social networks between homogeneous
groups of people and.
 Bridging social capital: social networks
between socially heterogeneous groups
 Criminal gangs create bonding social
capital, while bowling clubs create
bridging social capital.
 Bridging social capital is argued to have a
host of other benefits for societies,
governments, individuals, and
communities
 Positive and Negative sides
 Trust and reciprocity

 Negative sides of social networks

 Social inclusion and exclusion

How can we develop social capital

in the community?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RxrMaW-sNA
 Formal organization:
 Large secondary groups organized to

achieve their goals efficiently

 Government agencies, multi-national

corporations
Types of Formal Organizations
 Utilitarian Organizations
– Business organizations, earning profits
and income

 Normative Organizations
– Not for income but to purse some goal
that people think is morally worthwhile
(voluntary associations)
 Coercive organizations
– Having an involuntary membership
– Prisons, psychiatric clinics
 Bureaucracy
 Bureaucracy:
– An organizational model rationally
designed to perform tasks efficiently

 Key elements:
– Specialization
– A clear-cut Hierarchy of office
– Rules and regulations govern the
conduct of officials
 Technical competence: Staff have
technical competence to carry out
their duties
– Recruitment base on certain criteria:
talent and skills
– Performance of staff is regularly
monitored
 Impersonality
 Formal, written communications
 Officials are full time and salaried (they
are expected to make a career within the
organization)
 There is a separation between the tasks of
an official within the organization and his
life outside
 No members of the organization own the
material resources with which they
operate (workers are separted from the
means of production)
 Formal relationships

 Informal relationships
 Informal relationships tend to be

developed among people working at

the same level
 Problems of bureaucracy
 Bureaucratic Alienation
– Dehumanize the people
– Create alienation
 Bureaucratic Inefficiency and Ritualism ( 形
式主義 )
 Inefficiency
– Ritualism: a preoccupation with rules and
regulations to the point of thwarting an
organization goals
– Even in cases where another solution might be
a better one for the organization as a whole
– Hinder individual creativity and strangles
organizational performance
 Bureaucratic Inertia 惰性
– The tendency of bureaucratic organizations to
perpetuate themselves
 Oligarchy: the rule of the many by
the few
 The iron law of oligarchy: a few

leader in charge of organizational

resources
 A hierarchy concentrates power and

endangers democracy
Case 1: Scientific management
 The application of scientific principles
to the operation of a business or
other large organization
 Division of labour

 Piece rate,

 production line

https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=vNfy_AHG-MU
 Case 2: Surveillance in
organizations
 Especially in a total institution
 The architecture of an organization is

directly involved with its social

makeup and system of authority
 Activities are visible to supervisors

 The lower the position of a person,

the more his/her behaviour tends to

be closely scrutinized
 Two forms of surveillance:
1. Direct supervision of the
work of subordinates by
superiors
– (students in view of the
teacher)
2. Keeping files, records
and case histories about
people’s work lives
– To regulate, monitor and
assess their behaviours
– Timetables regularize
activities across time
and space
What are the major
characteristics of McDonald

Case 3: MCDONALDIZATION
 McDonaldization
 the process by which a society takes on
the characteristics of a fast-food
restaurant. McDonaldization is a
reconceptualization of rationalization, or
moving from traditional to rational modes
of thought, and scientific management.
 Standardization and routinization in the

everyday life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
 As a way of life v=gCj_VhLgcmY
 Efficiency

Calculability
(size, quantity)
Uniformity and
predictability (same
speech, holiday
packages)

 Controlthrough automation (cook food at

fixed procedure, interact with automated
systems, such as e-mail, voice mail, touch-
tone information system, bank machines)

Rational or irrational?
 Group Discussion

Any other business like this?

Peer Review section 3
Peer Review section 2
Peer Review section 1