Bureaucratic Settings Research Articles

Applied and basic social research: A difference in social context

Abstract A beginning point in the establishment of successful applied social research efforts is the conceptualization of a perspective identifying key differences between basic and applied social research activity. The distinctive character of applied research lies in its social context and several elements associated with this context. These elements are: (1) difference in work style; (2) multidisciplinary nature; (3) selection of variables; (4) communication of results; and (5) recommendations for action. The successful researcher in an applied environment is one who can function in a bureaucratic setting and is sensitive to the reality that not all research findings will be utilized in a rational planning model.

Artists in Offices: An Ethnography of an Academic Art Scene.

Universities have become important sources of patronage and professional artistic preparation. With the growing academization of art instruction, young artists are increasingly socialized in bureaucratic settings, and mature artists find themselves working as organizational employees in an academic setting. As these artists lose the social marginality and independence associated with an earlier, more individual aesthetic production, much cultural mythology about work in the arts becomes obsolete. This classic ethnography, based on fieldwork and interviews carried out at the California Institute of the Arts in the 1980s, analyzes the day-to-day life of an organization devoted to work in the arts. It charts the rise and demise of a particular academic art scene, an occupational utopian community that recruited its members by promising them an ideal work setting. Now available in paperback, it offers insight into the worlds of art and education, and how they interact in particular settings. The nature of career experience in the arts, in particular its temporal structure, makes these occupations particularly receptive to utopian thought. The occupational utopia that served as a recruitment myth for the particular organization under scrutiny is examined for what it reveals about the otherwise unexpressed impulses of the work world.

Behavioral Medicine in the United States: Research, Clinical, and Training Opportunities

has sustained dramatic growth during the past five years. Essentially unknown ten years ago, the term is currently being applied to a growing array of centers, institutes, departments, laboratories, units, sections, and other such entities in academic, clinical, research, and bureaucratic settings. This growth has taken place primarily within the United States and Canada, although Great Britain, Eastern and Western Europe, and the Soviet Union have recently developed biobehavioral activities in both the clinical and research domains. Although in a formal sense the term behavioral medicine can be dated to the Yale Conference on Behavioral Medicine held early in 1977, the evolution of behavioral medicine spans thousands of years, beginning with the work of Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, who made speculations that are remarkably similar to our current understanding of the relationship between mind and body. Descartes and more recent philosophers added to our understanding of this sometimes elusive relationship (Weiss, 1979). In medicine, concepts of psychosomatic illness did not gain currency until after middle of the 19th century. Sir William Osier observed the association between aggressive behavior and coronary heart disease; and Freud and others used hypnosis to demonstrate the influence of the mind on the body. By 1930, Franz Alexander had developed the concept that conflict could cause identifiable organic disease through prolonged autonomic arousal (Laman & Evans, 1980). And by 1947 the term psychosomatic medicine had gained widespread attention through Flanders DunbarT s publication of Mind and body: Psychosomatic medicine.

Engagement Style (Agent vs. Patient) in Childhood and Adolescence

The active vs. reactive dimension of development was investigated as a personality variable called engagement style. The dimension refers to the perception one has of oneself either as doing (agent) or being done to (patient). The dimension is distinguished from similar constructs, such as locus of control and locus of causality. A semi-projective measure of engagement style was developed and was demonstrated to yield high reliability coefficients. In a number of studies in which the Test of Engagement Style was used, the following hypotheses were confirmed. Boys from large families had more extreme scores, i.e., more agent or more patient, than those from small families. Agency scores declined significantly with age from childhood to adolescence. Boys from entrepreneurial family settings had higher agency scores than those from bureaucratic settings, while girls whose mothers work outside the home were more agent than those whose mothers are not so employed. Just as the active-reactive dimension is currently a focal point in developmental theorizing, engagement style is an important analogous personal construct, which should be further explored.

Educating for Survival in the School Bureaucracy

If beginning social workers are to perform effectively within schools and other bureaucratic settings, social work educators must place greater emphasis on training related to the administrative and political aspects of practice.

Argumentation in Foreign Policy Settings

This is a study of argumentation in three different kinds of high level, confidential, foreign policy settings: a collegial setting, a bureaucratic setting, and a bargaining setting. The causal and value assertions of the participants were coded using the detailed records of these three settings. The data show to be inadequate a defense/ attack model of argumentation in which the participants support their own arguments to make them resistant to attack, while attacking the weak spots in others'stated positions. In fact, there are few assertions which are supported by specific evidence, almost no mutually supported causal arguments, and the assertions which were attacked were no less emphasized than the assertions which were not attacked. More in accord with the data is the novel-arguments approach in which the key factor in persuasive argumentation is the development of arguments which others have not already taken into account.

The Hospital Volunteer

Specialization of medical practice in bureaucratic settings has created a situation where the individual is often treated according to universalistic and impersonal criteria. The hospital volunteer enters this health care system with a radically different expertise and organizational relationship compared to the salaried workers. The mandate of "helping" the patient and vague organizational ties create a problematic but necessary role for this lay person in a bureaucratic setting.

The Emergence of "Situated Role" in a Bureaucratic Setting

A study of vocational guidance in a federal German agency shows discrepancies between performance and the formally legislated job description. It is contended that welfare bureaucrats reduce formally stated role schemes in order to cope. The relational, normative, and functional aspects of reduction are discussed and mechanisms of cognitive reconciliation of the actual and the formal role are explained. Taking into account a third focus, namely, individuals' role images, I interpret the clash between bureaucratic and professional forces in welfare agencies as related to the political fate of social reform in capitalist societies.

Legitimationsprobleme der Medizin / Problems of legitimization in medicine

Abstract TALCOTT PARSONS’ professional complex model, his interpretation of the doctor-patient relationship in the context of American society, and his media scheme are used as a frame of reference for analysing some consequences of unplanned change occuring in the medical systems of various Western societies. To give sociological meaning to this development, two orienting statements are proposed and illustrated: 1. The more medicine is based on biochemical science and technology and the more medical services are rendered in a bureaucratic setting, the less will the doctor-patient relationship be guided by influence; 2. the less the doctor-patient relationship is guided by influence, the more is it going to become unlikely that the medical system will remain capable of justifying and maintaining its special and privileged status as an old and personal profession.

Advocacy and Bureaucracy: The Life and Times of a Decentralized Citizen's Advocacy Program

I The late F. Clinton McKay, third coordinator of the program and one of its chief architects, and William G. Nagel of the American Foundation, former executive secretary of the Governor's Council on Human Services, deserve special thanks for their help and encouragement. Mrs. Helene Wohlgemuth, the current Secretary of Public Welfare, William T. Conway and Lorraine Wright have also given substantial help. This is an examination of the Governor's Branch Offices, a citizen's advocacy program in the ghetto areas of Pennsylvania, during its four-year development. Its philosophy, based on views of bureaucratic access, response time, responsiveness and citizen advocacy led to an unusual organizational structure and procedures. The program raised issues about the feasibility and chances for success of an advocacy program in a bureaucratic setting, subject to forces such as routinization, inflexibility, changing executive support, and rivalries with other programs.'

Health and rehabilitation manpower strategy: New careers and the role of the indigenous paraprofessional

Changes in national policy concerning the crisis in health and rehabilitation manpower are examined in terms of innovative strategies designed to increase the number of supportive personnel and provide jobs for the poor. One innovative strategem is the new careers model in which the disadvantaged are recruited and trained to become indigenous paraprofessionals. Discussion focuses on the major characteristics of this working model and a delineation of the “indigenous” paraprofessional's salient role functions (bridging, client advocacy, helper therapy and change agent). Factors that appear to place constraints on the development of a viable model in highly organized systems and the potential utility of this approach in less complex bureaucratic settings are explored.

The Organization as a Political System

ed as political. For this reason, we would expect that such political actions would be clearly related to the normative and behavioral character of bureaucracy. For example, it might be noted that exercises of personal political power are highly differentiated in interpersonal exchanges taking place in the organizational setting. Or one might ask whether the values of creative citizenship are fostered or hindered by man's involvement in rigorous and impersonalized institutional forms such as that typically presented by bureaucracy? In any case, to determine in which ways the organizational influences tend to mold the political processes in bureaucratic settings should prove a revealing enterprise. Such an inquiry might, of course, be broadened to comment on the broad interaction of organizational and political values, especially with respect to the learning process. For example, socialization research relating to such matters as political authority might well be extended to include some consideration of the learning of organizational authority as well. A significant question might be the extent to which somewhat parallel socialization experiences tend to reinforce or contradict one another. That is, we might ask whether a strengthened orientation toward bureaucratic authority might carry over into a deepened respect for regime authority.41 In a similar vein, one might well ask whether the inculcation of bureaucratic norms, especially those associated with elitism and hierarchy, acts to subvert the learning of more democratic political forms. There is every indication that organizational involvement and political participation are closely related, yet there has been little study of the personal factors capable of explaining this relationship. Finally, assuming the relevance of organizational norms to those of politics, the political theorist must ask how notions such as pluralism or even democracy itself are affected by various types of nongovernmental institutional structures. So far this question has been approached by political scientists largely from the standpoint of specifying environmental influences on the governmental process. That is, this field has been dominated by such concerns as the impact of the group on the political structure or the role of the large organization in shaping public policy.42 What has been neglected has been the political status of the active individual in relation to others, to relevant organizations, and eventually to the state. To explore such topics, it may be necessary to expand notions of political order and especially democratic citizenship to nontraditional areas. That is, theories of democracy may have to be broadened in such a way as to include aspects of power and decisionmaking in organizations as well as in the state. In relation to their members, corporations and other large organizations might then be considered direct contributors to the political process and therefore subject to critique on the grounds of democratic theory as well as organizational efficiency.43 Only under these circum For an intriguing commentary on this problem, see Robert A. LeVine, Internatization of Political Values in Stateless Societies, Human Organization, 19 (Summer 1960), 51-58. See also Denhardt, Bureaucratic Socialization, loc. cit. 42 For example, see David A. Truman, The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1951). ' Peter Bachrach has written, would be ludicrous to argue that the highly complex, mammoth, industrial corporate structure should or could be organized with the sole objective of conforming to democratic norms. It would be equally ludicrous to contend that economic efficiency should be the sole criterion by which to judge the performance This content downloaded from 157.55.39.177 on Tue, 15 Nov 2016 04:02:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 686 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY stances would we be led to such evaluative questions as whether a system containing a predominance of elitist institutions in capable of complete democracy or how the citizenship role may be expanded in light of changing institutional restrictions. Through all of this, however, we must realize that there are inherent differences in the perspectives provided by the organizational and the political, that each works from the basis of its own special interest and is directed and limited by it adherence to this pattern. of a politico-economic institution. Peter Bachrach, Corporate Authority and Democratic Theory, in David Spitz, ed., Political Theory and Social Change (New York: Atherton Press, 1967), p. 269. See also Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), esp. pp. 101-6. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.177 on Tue, 15 Nov 2016 04:02:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Professional Autonomy and Bureaucratic Organization

Autonomy is regarded as an important dimension of professionalism. A number of investigators claim that bureaucratic organization limits professional autonomy. This study was undertaken to determine empirically the validity of this claim. The relationship between bureaucratic structure and degree of professional autonomy within the client-professional relationship was examined by systematically comparing the perceived autonomy of professionals in three types of bureaucratic settings, nonbureaucratic, moderately bureaucratic, and highly bureaucratic. The data revealed that those professionals associated with the moderately bureaucratic setting are most likely and those in the highly bureaucratic setting are least likely to perceive themselves as autonomous. These findings do not support the contention that bureaucracy is necessarily detrimental to professional autonomy.

The Effect of Bureaucracy on the Professional Autonomy of the Physician

Bureaucracy is frequently viewed as being detrimental to certain aspects of professionalism. This paper examines the relationship between bureaucratic structure and degree of professional autonomy within the client-professional relationship. Perceived autonomy of physicians in three types of bureaucratic settings-non-bureaucratic, moderately bureaucratic, and highly bureaucratic-are compared. The data reveal that those associated with the moderately bureaucratic setting are most likely, and those in the highly bureaucratic setting are least likely, to perceive themselves as autonomous. These findings suggest that there is an optimal level of bureaucratic organization with respect to professional autonomy within the clientprofessional relationship.

Career Perspectives in a Bureaucratic Setting. By Dwaine Marvick. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1954. Pp. viii, 150. $2.25.)

Career Perspectives in a Bureaucratic Setting. By Dwaine Marvick. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1954. Pp. viii, 150. $2.25.)

Career Perspectives in a Bureaucratic Setting.

Career Perspectives in a Bureaucratic Setting.

MARVICK, DWAINE. Career Perspectives in a Bureaucratic Setting. (Michigan Gov ernmental Studies, No. 27.) Pp. viii

MARVICK, DWAINE. Career Perspectives in a Bureaucratic Setting. (Michigan Gov ernmental Studies, No. 27.) Pp. viii