Cherry Juliana Sudartono
Introduction to Sociology
SSS 100 #1912
Professor Walter
Final Exam
June 2nd 2006
1. Discuss the importance of social group in everyday life, and explain how groups
and their numbers are shaped by group size, leadership style, and pressure to
conform
In our everyday life, we are always part of a group, regardless if
it’s family, friends, the people you live with, even the people you meet
commuting in the subways every morning. No man can live without other
people. We always want to be in a group because groups fulfill different
reasons for us. For example, functionalists believe that people join up and
form groups to fulfill their instrumental needs. Instrumental needs means
that the group is working together towards a specific goal. Such as a
football team, they play together as a group to win a match or to win a
championship or so on. On the other hand, groups also fulfill expressive or
also called as the emotional needs. This means that we receive supports
and kindness from the group that we are around with. Me, for example,
live thousands of miles away from my family, so to meet my expressive
need, I am always around my friends to feel the love and supports that I
cannot receive from my family across the globe. Groups have three
characteristics. They are group size, group leadership and group
conformity.
Group size affects the dynamics of a group. It is one of the most
important characteristics of a group. The smaller the group size is the
better the dynamic and the intimacy between the members, while the
bigger the group size is, the bigger the impact and power the group will
have. A dyad is a group that is made up of 2 members. It could be best
friends or married partners. In a dyad if one of the members refuses to cooperate it is most likely that the group will fail. For example, in a married
couple if either the wife or the husband refuses to communicate with one
another, misunderstanding will occur easily and it might lead to a divorce.
However, between the married couple (a dyad), a strong sense of unity and
intimacy are formed that cannot be found in any other group. If another
member is added to the dyad, a triad is produced. Thus the focus of the
group is right away altered. For example, if a baby is born, the family’s
focus right now is for the newborn. And unlike in dyad if one of the
member refuse to work (such as, the father refuses to change the diaper)
the group can still exist with the mother become the one who changes the
diaper. Between the triad, a coalition between two members might happen.
A coalition is some kind of an alliance that is formed between two
members to pressure the last member of the triad to conform. For example,
a mother and a son wanted the father to take them out for a picnic; they
could form a coalition together and pressure the father to take them out.
As the size of a group increase, members tend to start to specialize in their
own tasks, but once a group pass the 10 or 12 numbers, it is almost
difficult to participate in the same conversation, unless it is a formal
meeting where a leader is there to guide the conversation. 25 is the magic
number of a group, most likely a lot of things could be done where there
are 25 members in a group. Members can be divided into 5 sub-groups and
all of them can specialize in their own expertise.
Within a group there always is a leader. Most informal groups such
as families and cliques hardly appoint any leader. However a person is
usually seen as the leader (father is the leader of a family and so on). In a
more formal, more structured group however, such as a corporations or
schools) a leader is inevitably selected because such a large group need
someone to lead and to make sure everything is going in order. There are
two leadership functions; the first one is an instrumental leadership. He is
a leader who is always striving to achieve the groups’ goals. The second
one is an expressive leader. He usually is a leader who deals with
emotional issues, and always tries to maintain the harmony and the
solidarity among the group members. Such a leader for example is
Mahatma Gandhi. Overall there are three leadership styles, Authoritarian,
Democratic and Laissez-Faire. An authoritarian leader makes a major
decision in a group and he assign tasks to his members. These leaders are
strict and are focus on achieving the group’s objective. I believe that
sometimes a mother of a house can be an authoritarian leader, because for
example during spring cleaning, she will assign tasks to her husband and
children and demand them to finish cleaning up the house. However, this
type of leadership is most suitable during times of wars or disasters when
decisive actions are most needed. Democratic leaders encourage group
discussion and most of the times decisions are made through consensual
agreement. This type of leaders is very expressive and supportive to their
members. However, they are not as decisive as authoritarian leaders. And
finally, the Laissez-Faire leaders; these leaders usually appears when the
ability among the members are about the same and they are all highly
motivated to achieve the group goal. Thus, a leader to assign tasks is
nearly unneeded because everyone knows what’s need to be done and they
assign tasks to themselves. This type of leadership is sometimes bad,
because this leader does not encourage group members and this might lead
to not achieving their goal standard.
When we are in a group, sometimes we feel that we are compelled
to conform to the group’s perspective or beliefs because we want to feel
that we fit in the group. Sometimes even, we are pressured by our group
members to conform, this often happen to teenagers in school, or also
called as the peer-pressure. Other type of group conformity, is that
sometimes we even learned how to talk exactly like our other group
members, or to dislike a certain person, whom you know your group
members dislikes too just for the sake to be “on the same ground”. Two
experiments were conducted by Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram.
These two men have established that sometimes we conform to the groups
beliefs to avoid ridicule, and the bigger the size of the group is, the more
likely we are to conform. Other than that, they also find that under the
command of someone from a higher level, we are more likely to conform
to his command even though it is against our beliefs.
2. Compare the ideal characteristics of bureaucracy with the major shortcomings of
contemporary bureaucracies. Give specific examples from your own experience.
Weber's type of bureaucracy is very idealistic and perfect; it basically
leaves no room for errors and changes. The distinctive characteristic of
Weber’s bureaucracy models includes: Division of labor, hierarchy of
authority, rules and regulations, qualification-based employment, and
impersonality. Division of labor means the specialization of each member
of the bureaucracy. They all are given only specific tasks to do, regarding
of their specialty. Each and every task that was given is only a piece to
fulfill the major goal. Like a jigsaw puzzle, each piece is just another piece
of the main picture. Hierarchy of Authority comes in the shape of
pyramids. There are less people on top of the pyramid but the person on
top has more power and authority than those people on the bottom of the
pyramid. And also, the people from each lower office are under control
and supervision of the division higher than the previous level. So for
example, in LaGuardia Community College; On top of the chain is
president Gail Mellow, and underneath her, there's the vice presidents,
then the heads of the department, then the teachers and lastly the part time
teachers and personnel. So the teachers, part-time teachers and personnel
are all under supervision of the head of the department. All the teachers
have to report to the heads. Another characteristics of bureaucracy are the
presence of rules and regulations, that's normally given to members in
written format. Rules and regulations exist so that everything in the
bureaucracy can run smoothly and there are no misunderstandings on how
things should be done. For example, in our college, there is already a
written rules that no cheating are allowed in the school, therefore if two
different teachers caught two different students cheating, they are to
follow the same procedure to punish the students. Employment in a
bureaucracy is qualification-based. Meaning that they hire staff members
based only on specific qualifications and not because of favoritism or
nepotism. For example, every teachers in LaGuardia has to have at least a
Master degree before they are allowed to teach here. Individual
performances are evaluated on a specific standard too and promotions are
given based on the personnel performances. And lastly, personal feelings
are not allowed to take part in organizational decisions. Officials and peers
are not allowed to interact with one another with their own personal
feelings.
Weber's theory are applied to our modern societies, one main examples is
the chain fast-food restaurant, such as McDonald's. Four characteristics of
the contemporary bureaucracy are efficiency, predictability, emphasis on
quantity than quality and non-human technologies. In McDonald's for
example, it is very efficient for us to receive our meals, we can easily get
our meals in less than one minute and the price are highly economical.
Plus they have a drive-through system that allow us to not leave our cars
yet still can receive a hearty meal. Next is predictability, in McDonalds
you have a constant standards of the food, meaning that the fries we eat in
New York is the same tasting fries that I used to taste back in my
hometown, Indonesia. Contemporary bureaucracy also only focus in
quantity rather than quality. For example, McDonald's don't use chefs or
other qualified cooks, they use even part-time college workers who might
not know how to cook, and have them follow a specific order of making
the burgers to produce a considerable amount and to serve them to the
costumers. And finally all this system brings out the demystification and
dehumanization of our dining experience. No longer are we enjoying the
cook prepared by the chef's hard work and love. We are only eating what's
efficient and economical.
Although the bureaucracy model is perfect, Weber has overruled
some imperfections that are highly likely to happen. This model has three
major shortcomings that Weber has not taken into account to. The first one
is inefficiency and rigidity that happens on both the lower and upper level.
Officials in upper level sometimes feels that their positions are in jeopardy
that's why they don't want to disclose information to his peers so that he
has more power and authority by having the information. This information
blockage might lead to the inability of the lower level workers to finish
their tasks efficiently. Sometimes those at the bottom of the structure hides
their mistakes from the supervisors so that they will not receive any
punishment, or at least they will not be look down upon by the other
workers. This move might fatally affect the organizations. Also, the
workers on the lower levels might become so stagnant that the only thing
that they want to do is to follow the rules. They are so inflexible that when
faced with emergency they panic and might not know how to cope with it.
Bureaucracy organizations are also very resistant to changes. Even though
this might be a good thing because it will survive some catastrophe (such
as economic recession) it is unlikely that the organization will be
profitable. To have greater profits, one company has to take risks. And
finally, because bureaucracy is mostly created for middle and uppermiddle-class white men, some racial, class and gender bias might occur.
For example according to a study, most African Americans workers in a
bureaucracy feels that he is secluded from other workers, they have no one
to guide them to further their careers and they felt that they are
discriminated in the organizations. People from the lower class might also
feel that they are discriminated, because when they come from the lower
class, they might not have enough education to have a higher-level job in
the hierarchy, therefore they do not receive the same wage and job
security as someone from the upper level might. And lastly women might
feel that they are not as respected as men even though they might be on
the same level. They feel isolated and it's hard for them to gain credibility.