Chapter 5 Flashcards
Authority
Power that people accept as legitimate rather than coercive.
Aggregate
A collection of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time but share little else in common.
Authoritarianism
A political system controlled by rulers who deny popular participation in government.
Authoritarian Leaders
Leaders who make all major group decisions and assign tasks to members.
Conformity
The process of maintaining or changing behavior to comply with the norms established by a society, subculture, or other group.
Bureaucracy
An organizational model characterized by a hierarchy of authority, a clear division of labor, explicit rules and procedures, and impersonality in personnel matters.
Category
A number of people who may never have met one another but share a similar characteristic, such as education level, age, race or gender.
Bureaucratic Personality
A psychological construct that describes those workers who are more concerned with following correct procedures than they are with getting the job done correctly.
Division of Labor
How the various tasks of a society are divided up and performed.
Corporations
Organizations that have legal powers, such as the ability to enter into contracts and buy and sell property, separate from the I individual owners.
Democratic Leaders
Leaders who encourage group discussion and decision making through consensus building.
Dyad
A group composed of two members.
Formal organization
A highly structured group formed for the purpose of completing certain tasks or achieving specific goals.
Groupthink
The process by which members of a cohesive group arrive at a decision that many individual members privately believe is unwise.
Goal Displacement
A process that occurs in organizations when the rules become an end in themselves rather than a means to an end, and organizational survival becomes more important than achievement of goals.
Expressive Leadership
Leadership that provides emotional support for members.
Informal Side of a Bureaucracy
Those aspects of participants’ day-to-day activities and interactions that ignore, bypass, or do not correspond with the official rules and procedures of the bureaucracy.
Ingroup
A group to which a person belongs and with which the person feels a sense of identity.
Instrumental Leadership
Goal- or task-oriented leadership.
Ideal Type
An abstract model that describes the recurring characteristics of some phenomenon.
Outgroup
A group to which a person does not belong and toward which the person may feel a sense of competitiveness or hostility.
Norms
Established rules of behavior or standards of conduct.
Laissez-Faire Leaders
Leaders who are only minimally involved in decision making and who encourage group members to make their own decisions.
Iron Law of Oligarchy
According to Robert Michels, the tendency of bureaucracies to be ruled by a few people.
Primary Group
A small, less specialized group in which members engage in face-to-face, emotion-based interactions over an extended period of time.
Prestige
The respect or regard with which a person or status position is given by others.
Power
According to Max Weber, the ability of people or groups to achieve their goals goals despite opposition from others.
Rationality
The process by which traditional methods of social organization, characterized by informality and spontaneity, are gradually replaced by efficiently administered formal rules and procedures.
Reference Group
A group that strongly influences a person’s behavior and social attitudes, regardless of whether that individual is an actual member.
Punishment
Any action designed to deprive a person of things of value (including liberty) because of some offense the person is thought to have committed.
Secondary Group
A larger, more specialized group in which members engage in more-impersonal, goal-oriented relationships for a limited period of time.
Technology
The knowledge, techniques, and tools that allow people to transform resources into usable forms and the knowledge and skills required to use what is developed.
Social Group
A group that consists of two or more people who interact frequently and share a common identity and a feeling of interdependence.
Theory
A set of logically interrelated statements that attempts to describe, explain, and (occasionally) predict social events.
Socioeconomic Status (SES)
A combined measure that attempts to classify individuals, families, or households in terms of factors such as income, occupation, and education to determine class location.
Triad
A group composed of three members.
Total Institution
Erving Goffman’s term for a place where people are isolated from the rest of society for a set period of time and come under the control of the officials who run the institution.
Small Group
A collectivity small enough for all members to be acquainted with one another and to interact simultaneously.
Subculture
A category of people who share distinguishing attributes, beliefs, values, and/or norms that set them apart in some significant manner from the dominant culture.
