The evolutionary model of organization change sees change happening in small bits and add to a total amount of change.
The revolutionary model sees organizational change as unfolding over long periods of stability followed by bursts of major change activities.
The revolutionary model of social change is extensively explored in sociology and is closely associated with the mission of the sociology discipline: promote progressive social change. The following are additional discussions on social change in the revolutionary tradition.
Organized campaigns for social change come in many forms: from local neighborhood residents petitioning the city to preserve historic housing to transnational movements for human rights. Activists risk their lives for things they believe in. Lawyers work behind the scenes to strengthen environmental protection laws. Citizens’ groups hold rallies and collect signatures to support or opposed policy changes. Collective efforts by small groups may seem insignificant but, in fact, this is often how social change happens. In the U.S. some of the successes include women’s right to vote, end of legal racial discrimination, occupational safety and health rules, child labor laws, and Clear Air Act among others.
Popular social change organizing occurs though combinations of clubs, small groups, movement organizations, private associations and other non-profits. Campaigns to alter consumer behavior occur within fields that include producers, distributors, sellers and advertisers, consumers, consumer advocacy groups, and the media.
The most familiar (ideal-typical) form of organizing for change is a social movement that targets some part of the state. Prior to the activism of the 1960s and 1970s, activism tended to be portrayed as irrational outbursts by groups with material grievances against more powerful groups. More recently, scholars have come to view social movements as organized campaigns for social change and have paid more attention to the problems and process of organizing. Resource mobilization theory (1970s) emphasizes that effective campaigns require effective organizations. Current approaches to the study of social change organizing emphasize a political process model. This approach examines movement strategies under the assumption that the driving goal of the movement is to gain influence within the political system.
Organizational field is the collection of all organizations and agencies that interact with one another around some recognized area of social life. Organizational fields may overlap with markets, public policy domains, or interest group activities. In the case of organizing for change, as a collective, the organizational field in one area (such as HIV/AIDS activism or activism for women’s rights) allows space for activism of various kind (e.g. street activism vs. other forms). Even if activists do not agree on the form of activism, they may recognize their shared interest in the goals of the overall field and as a whole contribute to altering the system of relations (organizational environment).
Social change often starts with an event (e.g. Rosa Parks) or a change in the law, but for society to change, the change is slower since it involves a change in people’s values, beliefs, and aspirations.
Organizational sociologists study all of the organized activities within the state, industry and non-profit sector. Typically, in the case of non-profits, they exclude “political” organizations and action for social change as a special case. On the other hand, within the social movement studies, the focus is usually on social movement organizations, excluding most of the other kinds of non-profit organizations with which they interact.
So, what’s next for the Sociology of Organizations?
Dividing the organizational world into the three sectors (for-profit, non-profit and public) has been informative for studies in all sectors. However, it increasingly seems that these three are overlapping, resembling one another, and networking more so than in the past, which may change the approach into the future.
The field of organization sociology, so far, has not fully appreciated the extent to which the technology of an organization defines that organization. For example, technological changes have led to the reorganization of space and time in organizations. Staff member are able to telecommute (work outside of the workplace while remaining connected to it) and many industries now operate around the clock. In a similar way, universities have the freedom to teach more classes with fewer classrooms. Online education allows them to offer asynchronous classes in which students work on their own and “meet” online.
As in the first half of the twentieth century organizational theory was mostly concerned with “closed systems,” it started to incorporate “open systems” approaches later in the century that examined interactions between organizations and their environment in order to understand the organizations. Due to the transnational environments of almost everything, our notions of organizational environments will have to expand to incorporate the legal systems, tax systems, education, people and other resources of multiple nations and regions.
The knowledge of how organizations “work,” it is easier to be able to self-reflect, think about the organizations and institutional setting in which one’s life is embedded. Being aware of how organizations function, may help to have more institutional freedom to act and express oneself honestly even if part of a formal organization and even be a part of positive change.
Based on the discussion of social change in Week 8 Lesson and in the article by Rojas (2006), what are some of the ways change happens in organizational settings? Provide a concrete example (can be based on your personal experience or an event took place within the past 5 years) how social change happened in an organization.
