Organizational Theory, Social Supports, and Mortality Rates: A Theoretical Convergence

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Abstract
Theorists and researchers have explicitly or implicitly made use of primary groups to explain a wide range of social behaviors, such as work productivity, mass media communication, combat morale, job search, services to elderly, and mortality rates. Typically, they have not systematically distinguished primary group from formal organization effects. Consequently, it is not known what primary groups uniquely contribute to social behavior. An expanded organizational contingency theory of group structure is advanced which fills in this gap and shows that primary group theory and organizational contingency theory share a common framework. To demonstrate the power of this formulation, national data on mortality are analyzed to predict which causes of death can and which cannot be reduced by primary groups.

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