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ORGANIZATIONS

Formal organizations are large, secondary groups that are organized to achieve their goals efficiently. They
are the product of rationalizationof society, which means the acceptance of rules, efficiency, and practical
results as the right way to approach human affairs.Past is the best guide for the present i.e. traditional
orientation tends to be abandoned. Rationality was a totally different way of thinking that came to
permeate society. This new orientation transformed the way in which society is organized. As a result,
formal organizations,secondary groups designed to achieve explicit objectives, have become a central
feature of contemporary society. Examples can be business corporations, government departments, colleges
and universities, hospitals, prisons, and military organizations.

Such organizations are deliberately created ‘social machines with human parts’. In these organizations
social relations are impersonal, formal, and planned. These organizations have major influence on the
everyday lives of members of modern societies.

Types of Formal Organizations
Three types of organizations have been distinguished on the basis of why people participate i.e. Utilitarian,
Normative, and Coercive.

Utilitarian Organizations
Just about everyone who works for income is member of utilitarian organization,which pays its members to
perform the jobs for which they were hired. Large business enterprises, for example, generate profits for
their owners and salaries and wages for their employees. Most people must join an organization for making
a living.

Normative Organizations 
People join normative organizations not for income but to pursue goals they consider morally worthwhile.
They are also called voluntary organizations. The interests of such organizations can be community services,
social action, and environmental protection. They are concerned with specific social issues. Examples can
be Edhi Trust, Red Crescent, The Lions Club.

Voluntary organizations strive for participatory democracy, in which all members have an equal opportunity to discuss and decide important questions affecting the organization.

Coercive Organizations
These organizations have involuntary membership. These are total institutions that feature very strict
control of members by top-ranked officials. Members are physically and socially separated from ‘outsiders’
or ‘civil society’. The examples can be prisons, psychiatric hospitals, and military units. Total institutions
transform a human being’s overall sense of self.

From differing vantage points, many organizations may fall into all these categories. A psychiatric hospital,
for example, serves as a coercive organization for a patient, a utilitarian organization for a health
professional, and a normative organization to a hospital volunteer.


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