Groups and Organizations

lecture 7

Social structures
Midterm on OCT 25 , 2023 from 10
am to 12 in the classroom
 Social groups
-small social structures
■ Social groups: two or more people who identify or
interact with one another
■ Crowds : are collections of people who are physically at
the same place at the same time, but do not interact in any
meaningful way
■ Categories: are collections of individuals who share a
social status (women, students, lawyer et al).
 Types of Social Groups
■ Primary groups （初级团体）: a small social group whose
members share personal and lasting relationships
■ Strong ties （强关系）
■ Serve expressive needs （满足情感需求）– person

orientation （以人为本）
■ Secondary groups （次级团体） : a large and impersonal
social group whose members pursue a specific goal or
activity
■ Weak ties （弱关系）
■ Serve instrumental needs 满足实用需求 (the purpose of the group

is about the task instead of the relationships)—goal orientation （以

目的为本）
 Group leadership
■ Two leadership roles:
■ Instrumental leadership （以完成任务为目的的领导方式）
■ Expressive leadership （以团队和谐与稳定为目标的领导方式）
 Group leadership
■ Three leadership styles
■ Authoritarian leadership （专权的领导方式）
■ Democratic leadership （民主的领导方式）
■ Laissez-faire leadership （放任型的领导方式）
 Group Conformity (从众心理）
-social influence in Groups

Asch’s Research
On group conformance
■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=NyDDyT1lDhA
 What did Ashe’s conformity experiment tell us?
• Apparently, people conform for two main reasons:
• they want to fit in with the group
• they believe the group is better informed than they are
• Many of us are willing to compromise our own
judgement to avoid the discomfort of being seen as
different
 researcher

teacher

Shock generator

Milgram’s shock experiment

the conflict between obedience to authority and personal
conscience

How punishment affects learning

Learner
■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Xxq4QtK3j0Y
■ how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it
involved harming another person
■ 65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e., teachers) continued to the
highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300
volts.
What did Milgram’s shock experiment reveal?

■ Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an

authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent
human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all
from the way we are brought up.
Groupthink: the tendency of group members to conform,
Resulting in a narrow view of some issue

Group conformance

Do groups make better decisions than individuals?

Can three stooges can really surpass Zhu Geliang?
Group thinking vs. brainstorming
■ Reference groups
■ How to behave —anticipatory socialization (预期社会化）
■ How to evaluate
■ In-groups and Out-groups
■ In-groups: is the group that an individual feels she
belongs to, and she believes it to be an integral part of
who she is.
■ Out-group: is a group someone doesn’t belong to; often
we may feel disdain or competition in relationship to an
out-group
 Group Dynamics
■ Group size
■ The dyad: a social group with two members
■ The Triad: a social group with three members

■ Groups size and Relationships

■ Stability increases with group size
 Social Diversity and Groups Relationships
■ Large groups turn inward
■ Heterogeneous groups (异质群体） turn outward
■ Physical boundaries create social boundaries
■ Networks
■ Six degrees of separation （六度分隔理论）
■ all people on average are six, or fewer, social connections away
from each other
■ If you pick any two Facebook users, it's been calculated there's
an average of 3.57 "degrees of separation" between them
■ Gender differences in networks
 Formal Organizations
(larger social structure)

■ Types of formal organizations

■ Utilitarian Organizations
■ People join utilitarian organizations for money (companies,
governments, schools et al.)（功利组织）
■ Normative Organizations (voluntary organizations)
■ People join normative organizations as a means to promote
some important social issue or cause
■ Coercive Organizations (prison)
■ People are forced to join coercive organization

How about army ?

 Bureaucracy （官僚主义）

■ Bureaucracy: is an organizational model rationally

designed to perform tasks efficiently
■ Characteristics of Bureaucracy (UMAC)
■ Division of labor and specialization
■ Hierarchy of authority –oligarchy
■ Rules and regulations
■ Technical competence
■ Impersonality : “Faceless bureaucrat”
■ Formal, written communication
 Problems of Bureaucracy
-- “iron cage”
■ Bureaucratic Alienation
■ Reducing the human being to “a small cog in a
ceaselessly moving mechanism”
■ Bureaucratic inefficiency and Ritualism
■ Red tape
■ A focus on rules and regulations to the point of
undermining an organization’s goals
■ Bureaucratic Inertia
■ The tendency of bureaucratic organizations to perpetuate
themselves
 The McDonaldization of Society
■ McDonaldization: refers to the increasing and
ubiquitous presence of the fast-food model in most
organizations that shape daily life
■ Four principals
■ Efficiency : streamlined processes

■ Predictability
■ Uniformity : uniformed goods and services

■ Control:

■ Rationality, although efficient, may be irrational and highly

dehumanizing