ORGANISATION AS SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP, FORMALISATION AND STANDARDISATION: A WEBERIAN APPROACH TO CONCEPT FORMATION

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Abstract
Central concepts in the field of sociology of organisations - as for instance formalisation, standardisation and organisational structure - are insufficiently and often only arbitrarily defined. This superficiality is striking because many organisational sociologists claim they are working in the tradition of Max Weber. The generally assumed conceptual relationship between an administrative staff under rational legal authority and his types of action is based on an inadequate reading of his work and in this contribution a conceptual definition of the actions of administrative staff members is developed out of the basic concept `social relationship', in particular the associative relationship. From this analysis of both basic concepts and the Weberian account of an administrative staff, a proposal is developed for new concepts of organisation and also of `formalisation' and `standardisation'. This contribution further provides a new basis for identifying the informal and formal aspects of an organisation and stresses that the formal side does not involve a determinate pattern of action.

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