| Achieved status | A social position that is within our power to change.
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| Agrarian society | The most technologically advanced form of preindustrial society. Members are engaged primarily in the production of food, but they increase their crop yields through technological innovations such as the plow.
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| Alienation | Loss of control over our creative human capacity to produce, separation from the products we make, and isolation from our fellow producers.
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| Ascribed status | A social position assigned to a person by society without regard for the person's unique talents or characteristics.
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| Avatar | A person's online representation as a character, whether in the form of a 2-D or 3-D image or simply through text.
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| Bureaucracy | A component of formal organization that uses rules and hierarchical ranking to achieve efficiency.
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| Bureaucratization | The process by which a group, organization, or social movement increasingly relies on technical-rational decision making in the pursuit of efficiency.
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| Classical theory | An approach to the study of formal organizations that views workers as being motivated almost entirely by economic rewards.
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| Coalition | A temporary or permanent alliance geared toward a common goal.
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| Gemeinschaft | A close-knit community, often found in rural areas, in which strong personal bonds unite members.
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| Gesellschaft | A community, often urban, that is large and impersonal, with little commitment to the group or consensus on values.
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| Goal displacement | Overzealous conformity to official regulations of a bureaucracy.
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| Group | Any number of people with similar norms, values, and expectations who interact with one another on a regular basis.
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| Horticultural society | A preindustrial society in which people plant seeds and crops rather than merely subsist on available foods.
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| Human relations approach | An approach to the study of formal organizations that emphasizes the role of people, communication, and participation in a bureaucracy and tends to focus on the informal structure of the organization.
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| Hunting-and-gathering society | A preindustrial society in which people rely on whatever foods and fibers are readily available in order to survive.
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| Ideal type | A construct or model for evaluating specific cases.
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| Industrial society | A society that depends on mechanization to produce its goods and services.
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| In-group | Any group or category to which people feel they belong.
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| Iron law of oligarchy | A principle of organizational life under which even a democratic organization will eventually develop into a bureaucracy ruled by a few individuals.
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| Master status | A status that dominates others and thereby determines a person's general position in society.
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| Mc Donaldization | The process by which the principles of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control shape organization and decision making in the United States and around the world.
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| Mechanical solidarity | Social cohesion based on shared experiences, knowledge, and skills in which things function more or less the way they always have, with minimal change.
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| Organic solidarity | A collective consciousness that rests on mutual interdependence, characteristic of societies with a complex division of labor.
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| Out-group | A group or category to which people feel they do not belong.
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| Peter principle | A principle of organizational life according to which every employee within a hierarchy tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence.
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| Postindustrial society | A society whose economic system is engaged primarily in the processing and control of information.
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| Postmodern society | A technologically sophisticated, pluralistic, interconnected, globalized society.
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| Primary group | A small group characterized by intimate, face-to-face association and cooperation.
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| Reference group | Any group that individuals use as a standard for evaluating themselves and their own behavior.
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| Role conflict | The situation that occurs when incompatible expectations arise from two or more social positions held by the same person.
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| Role exit | The process of disengagement from a role that is central to one's self-identity in order to establish a new role and identity.
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| Role strain | The difficulty that arises when the same social position imposes conflicting demands and expectations.
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| Scientific management approach | Another name for the classical theory of formal organizations.
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| Secondary group | A formal, impersonal group in which there is little social intimacy or mutual understanding.
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| Social institution | An organized pattern of beliefs and behavior centered on basic social needs.
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| Social interaction | The ways in which people respond to one another.
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| Social network | A series of social relationships that links individuals directly to others, and through them indirectly to still more people.
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| Social role | A set of expectations for people who occupy a given social position or status.
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| Social structure | The way in which a society is organized into predictable relationships.
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| Status | A term used by sociologists to refer to any of the full range of socially defined positions within a large group or society.
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| Trained incapacity | The tendency of workers in a bureaucracy to become so specialized that they develop blind spots and fail to notice potential problems.
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