Sociology of Organization in Yugoslavia

Abstract

The sociology of organization, as well as sociology in general is of a relatively new date and a new development. Generally, the sociological tradition in Yugoslavia is not very strong, as before the Second World War it did not exist at all, and after the War up until sixties it was considered as a bourgeois science not appropriate in a socialist society. Only after the general trend of liberalization in the early Sixties it gained the status of a scientific field parallel to economics, psychology and other social sciences. With the exception of the general sociology offered as a course on various faculties to give the students only the general insights into social phenomena, one of the most developed special fields in sociology is the sociology of organizations. It started to develop ten years ago as industrial sociology, and although it developed into a special branch, one still can find that the two names are used interchangeably. One indication of its flourishing is the fact that organizational sociology either under its original name or as industrial sociology -:is the credit course at the univerisities in Zagreb, Belgrade, Ljubljana, at all the faculties of the social sciences, at some technical faculties and the majority of economic faculties, which are numerous. At the sociological departments at the University of Zagreb and University of Ljubljana it is given as a separate course at the postgraduate level, but there is also a possibility of specialization in the field for those postgraduate students who get several courses in industrial/organizational sociology and complete a thesis on the subject. The other indication of the rapid development of this sociological branch is *the number of scientific centers or departments at various scientific institutions, throughout Yugoslavia. Attached to the University of Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Sarajevo are the Institutes of Social Research, each of which comprises one department concerned solely with the sociology of organization or industrial sociology. In Ljubljana such a center is situated at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Journalism. Only in Belgrade it doesn't exist in the scope of the University, but there is a department for industrial sociology at the Institute for Social Sciences outside the University.