Greedy Institutions

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Greedy Institutions ("possessive institutions ") is a sociological term by Lewis A. Coser to designate institutions that make all-encompassing demands on their members and seek their exclusive, undivided loyalty directed towards them . They do not achieve this by force; rather, these institutions pull the entire personality under their spell, whereby they gain undivided consent and cooperation ( compliance ). They demand and achieve a high degree of identification ( organizational commitment ) and may prevent their members from entering into other ties or deepening them.

In contrast to the total institution (according to Erving Goffman ), preferably no physical violence , but above all psychological pressure and " social sanctions " are used to discipline the target persons ( actors ) in order to divide them into insiders and outsiders . To a little less extent than total institutions do, Greedy Institutions expect their members to show unconditional loyalty or even break with competing institutions.

application

Coser, in his 1974 publication, looked at monks , Jesuits and Leninists as well as “ housewives and mothers ”. In sociology, sects and orders ( sociology of religion ), military organizations ( sociology of war ), the family ( sociology of families ) and the university ( sociology of science ) are examined with the help of the greedy institutions category .

The sociologist M. Egger de Campo explains that Coser's concept of greedy institutions can be understood in such a way that in the course of the change from community to society of modernization , the freedom and autonomy of the individual had to be wrested from rulers, religious communities and employers. At the same time, she highlights the current importance of this concept, which she extends to spin doctors and management consultants , to live-in carers who are available around the clock in the employer's household, and to those involved in certain social networks or network communities .

The sociologist Uwe Schimank analyzes the Jehovah's Witnesses as a typical “possessive group”: They demand sacrifices from their members , namely an extensive segregation from worldly events, and if they do not comply, they impose sanctions up to and including exclusion from the group ; members would be required to invest a lot of time in their work within the group; the group members refrained from social contacts that could disrupt contact with the group; but the ritualized community within the group is large; and group members would be encouraged to study only the scriptures of the group themselves ( mortification ). These high demands of the group on its members contribute to the fact that the members feel obliged to it and the stability of the group has been high for over a hundred years.

We speak of the phenomenon of hyperinclusion when a person voluntarily puts his entire life at the service of a single institution, for example in top management. If there is actually only one such integration, both a greedy institution approach and an analysis of hyperinclusion can be used in sociology .

Do two Greedy Institutions come into play at the same time, e.g. B. child on the one hand and university on the other hand or z. B. Family and military service, this creates a tension. These examples make it clear that this tension is not only based on the expenditure of time and cannot be resolved by reducing it alone: ​​In the case of children and universities as greedy institutions , the resolution of rhythms and time structures that arise from the needs of an infant makes it more difficult for them Study required concentration; In the case of family and military service, it becomes clear "that even if the contingent time is halved (as in the case of soldiers who split their deployment time with a comrade), the burden for the families and soldiers associated with the separation is inevitably halved", but mostly can only be experienced compressed.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Lewis A. Coser: Greedy Institutions. Patterns of Undivided Commitment. The Free Press, New York 1974. Quoted from: Jan Currie, Patricia Harris, Bev Thiele: Sacrifices in Greedy Universities: are they gendered? Gender and Education, 2000, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 269-291. P. 270 (in English).
  2. ^ Lewis A. Coser: Greedy Institutions. Patterns of Undivided Commitment. The Free Press, New York 1974. Quoted from R. Burchielli, T. Bartram: Work-Family Balance or Greedy Organizations? , érudit, 2008, Vol. 63, No. 1, pp. 108-133, doi : 10.7202 / 018124ar (in English)
  3. ^ Lewis A. Coser: Greedy Institutions. Patterns of Undivided Commitment. The Free Press, New York 1974. Quoted from: Asher Cohen, Bernard Susser: Women Singing, Cadets Leaving. The Extreme Case Syndrome in Religion-Army Relationships , p. 127 ff. In: Elisheva Rosman-Stollman, Aharon Kampinsky: Civil-Military Relations in Israel: Essays in Honor of Stuart A. Cohen , Lexington Books, 2014, ISBN 978-0 -7391-9417-1 , p. 130.
  4. ^ Rosalind Edwards: Mature Women Students: Separating Or Connecting Family and Education , Taylor & Francis 1993, ISBN 978-0-7484-0087-4 , Chapter 4 'Greedy Institutions': Straddling the worlds of family and education . P. 62 ff.
  5. ↑ Jan Currie, Patricia Harris, Bev Thiele: Sacrifices in Greedy Universities: are they gendered? Gender and Education, 2000, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 269-291 (in English).
  6. ↑ a b c Waltraud Cornelissen, Katrin Fox: Studying with a child: The compatibility of studying and parenting: life situations, measures and perspectives for action , Springer 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-90652-2 , pp. 66–67
  7. ↑ Quotation: “Coser seems to imply that in the course of modernization, individual autonomy had to be wrested from rulers, religious collectives, and employers […] Coser's comparison […] indicates a deep belief in modern society ( Gesellschaft as opposed to Gemeinschaft ) that grants freedom and autonomy to the individual. However, individual freedom and autonomy may never be taken for granted, which shall becoe obvious in my following attempts to extend Coser's concept of greedy institutions to present-day phenomena […]. "Marianne Egger de Campo: Contemporary Greedy Institutions: An Essay on Lewis Coser's Concept in the Era of the 'Hive Mind' , Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 2013, Vol. 49, No. 6, pp. 969-987 (PDF; 107 kB) p. 970
  8. ↑ Marianne Egger de Campo: Contemporary Greedy Institutions: An Essay on Lewis Coser's Concept in the Era of the 'Hive Mind' , Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 2013, Vol. 49, No. 6, pp. 969-987 (PDF ; 107 kB)
  9. ^ Uwe Schimank, Groups and Organizations , in: Hans Joas (Ed.) Textbook of Sociology , 3rd edition, Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 226 ff
  10. ↑ a b See the example of top-class sport, which is presented as a greedy institution on the one hand and as hyperinclusion on the other hand: Jochen Gläser, Grit Laudel: Expert interviews and qualitative content analysis as instruments of reconstructive research Springer 2009, ISBN 978-3-531-93033-6 , p 266.
  11. ↑ P. Erfurt Sandhu: Selection Paths in Top Management, Homogenization Processes in Organizations Springer Gabler, 2014, pp. 178–188.
  12. ↑ MW Segal: The Military And the Family As Greedy Institutions , Armed Forces & Society (1986), Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 9–38, doi : 10.1177 / 0095327X8601300101 (summary, in English)
  13. ↑ a b Maren Tomforde: Serving together: To reconcile a soldier's profession, service and family in action. (No longer available online.) December 4, 2013, archived from the original on March 1, 2014 ; accessed on March 1, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.readersipo.de

literature

  • Lewis A. Coser: Greedy Institutions. Patterns of Undivided Commitment. The Free Press, New York 1974