.......................................................... ORGANIZATIONS, SOCIAL STRUCTURE, AND HISTORICAL CHANGE Towards an Historical Sociology of Organizations Andrew G. Walder University of Michigan September 1978: .......................................................... CRSO Working Paper ,180 Copies available through: Center for Research on Social Organization University of Michigan 330 Packard Street Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 ORGANIZATIONS, SOCIAL STRUCTURE, AND HISTORICAL CHANGE Toward an Historical Sociology of Organizations l ABSTRACT This essay is an attempt to distill and sharpen extant ORGANIZATIONS: SOCIAL STRUCTURE. AND HISTORICAL CHANGE theoretical critiques of functionalist approaches to social Toward an Historical Sociology of Organizations change and development while focusing them on a parallel, currently dominant approach to the sociology of organizations. This approach is found in the thriving literature that seeks to relate structures of social relations in complex organizations to environments and technologies, using an implicit model of the organization as a self-equilibrating entity. As an alter- native, we argue for the importance of relating organizations concretely to historically-situated social structures. Specifi- cally, this requires careful attention both to the shifting kinds of functional and class distinctions between groups in organizations and to the conflicts between these groups and Andrew G. Walder the ways in which large scale social changes shift the resources Department of Sociology University of Michigan available to one group or another. Towards the pursuit of this July 3. 1978 new set of concerns is offered a framework of concepts, distinc- tions, and problems. A critical literature has proliferated in recent years over social processes that diverts attention from the complex workings ! a heretofore influential approach to the process of social change I of economy and social structure. This has been a particularly and economic development. This critique has been concentrated serious shortcoming in that portion of the organizational liter- particularly where this approach has found its clearest expres- I ature that seeks to relate the organization to its mocietal sion--in functionalist concepts and theories. Functionalism, environment. Such an approach can systematically bias our however, while most often the target of sustained critical attack understanding of such critical factors as technological change, in past years, merely formulates in an especially coherent man- while obscuring the effect of othere that are possibly of equal ner several disparate elements of an approach to thinking about importance. social processes that is common to a wide variety of social scien- In what follows we will attempt four things1 1) to distill tists and historians alike. The most worthwhsle portion of this and fortify extant critiques of theories of social change and critical literature has been that which raises basic theoretical development, concentrating on those aspects that have most direct issues: about the nature of sociological explanation, the most parallel relevance to the field of complex organizations1 2) to advantageous units of analysis, and the kinds of concepts to highlight the parallels between the dominant approaches in the employ in thinking about society. Since these are basic issues two fields, turning elements of the above-distilled critique in social science, these same avenues of criticism apply with onto organization theories1 3) to outline a set of substantive undiminished force to the contemporary field of complex organi- concerns and conceptual elements that contribute to a needed zations--a field which has long been dominated by ways of thinking reorientation in the sociology of organizations, and 4) to argue about social processes that bear remarkable similarity to oft- --en route that this shift in theoretical orientation requires criticized approachee to social change and development. an accompanying shift in methodological orientation--specifically These separate fields of inquiry have shared two common a wedding of historical to cross-sectional research. elemente. First is the tendency--either implicit or explicit-- I. Theories of Social Change and Development to conceive of the object of inquiry (a society or an organization) I A. Society as a Self-Equilibrating System. as a homeostatic syetem, regulated by an internal necessity to 1 Central to the perspective on'social change offered by such maintain cohesion and stability in the face of disequilibrating I I writers as Parsons (1966). Levy (1966), and Smelser (1959), is disruptions. Closely related to this first tendency ie the ! the conception of society as a structured system tending towards eecond--a tendency to conceive of elemente external to these equilibrium. Within this perspective, each aspect of social self-equilibrating entities in highly abstract, almost unidimen- structure is endowed with a specific function that contributes sional terms. The result is often a level of abstraction from towards the,maintenence of the existing structure. This func- out of balance. Within the logic of the theory, further, exo- tional tendency towards equilibrium is at the root of any pro- genous sources of change are not neglected--they appear merely cess of social change. Whenever this equilibrium becomes un- as stimuli to which a system must respond. If there is a cri- stable, due either to disturbances coming from within the system ticism to be made here about exogenous sources of change, it or impinging on it from without, "the tendency is to change, is not that exogenous factors are neglected, but that the way through mutual adjustment, to a new equilib;iumw (Smelser, 1959 I that they are related to the social system is inadequate. The p. 10). This process of change is essentially a process of problem with the kinds of explanation offered by this perspec- structural differentiation, resulting in more complex structures tive is not so much in .their statio or'endo~enous.biases,but that function to re-channel disturbances and integrate the entire in the very nature of an explanation that flows from an,= system at a new level of structural effectiveness and societal priori conception of society as a self-equilibrating system. equilibrium, (Parsons, 19661 p. 22). The source of change, in The weaknesses of this kind of explanation are most evident short, is the interaction between this posited tendency towards in the account of structural change in the British cotton industry equilibrium and disturbances in the system, while the process presented in Smelser's Social Change in the Industrial Revolution. of social change itself is in essence one of structural differ- Smelser offers a detailed historical account of change in indus- entiation. This evolutionary process through which social trial and family structure during the industrial revolution, systems become more complex and differentiated constitutes the overlaid with the elaborate theoretical framework of functional central dimension of'social development (Parsons, 19661 pp. 1-4). analysis. He traces the process of change in two social units. This perspective has often been criticized for its alleged industry and the family--conceived of as esystems'--through an "static" bias, and for its supposed neglect of sources of change entire process of differentiation from the initial dissatisfac- exogenous to the social system. This, so the argument goes, tions and disturbances in the system to the structural adaptn- leads to an ability to explain societal integration but not tions that successfully restored the system's equilibrium. Ini- change, and to an inability to incorporate sources of change tial dissatisfactions with the industrial system. Smelser argues. external to a given social system. Neither of these, however, stemmed from the increasing demand for cotton tex,tiles in the ! are particularly appropriate or powerful critiques. These I late 1700s, and a resulting "sense of opportunity" which was frue- I criticisms miss the .unique logic of the concept "equilibrium" in i trated by a variety of institutional bottlenecks in the putting- Parsons' social system--the posited tendency towards equilibrium out system of the period (Smelser, 19591 pp. 63-68). These new becomes simultaneously a source of change when the system is market opportunities, when linked to a Protestant value system, I gave rise to "disturbances" within the system1 friction between structural differentiation occurred--this time relocating former spinners and weavers, particularly when the former failed ade- family functions in such institutions as trade unions and cooper- quately to supply the latter# "excited speculation about instan- ative societies--and not until a further round of "channelling" taneous fortunesnl and a related browbeating of the poor for and "handling" of disturbances through factory legislation and their alleged immorality, theft, and lack of discipline (Smelser, the poor laws, that the social system was able once again to 19591 p. 80). This floating dissatisfaction with the level of approach equilibrium. productivity in the system stimulated a period marked by a The beauty of this account is that Smelser is able to parcel search for new ideas and resulted in a number of institutional the historical record so neatly into his theoretical boxes. By and technological innovations. These innovations, when initially carefully assigning each bit of history a functional