Social organization

Social organizations are present in everyday life. Many people belong to various social structures, both institutional and informal. These include clubs, professional organizations, and religious institutions.^[10] Physical proximity with other members can strengthen a sense of community and shared identity within a social organization.^[11] While organizations link people with shared interests or goals, membership can also produce boundaries between members and non-members. Social organizations typically have some hierarchical structure.^[12] The form that hierarchy takes influences how a group is structured and how stable it tends to be over time.

Four other interactions can also bear on whether a group stays together. A group must have a strong affiliation within itself. To be affiliated with an organization means having a recognized connection and acceptance within that group, along with an obligation to return to it. The organization draws power through the collective resources of its affiliates. Those affiliates often have something invested in those resources, which motivates continued participation. At the same time, the organization must account for the substitutability of individuals: it needs affiliates and their resources to survive, but it also needs to be able to replace departing members. Given all these dynamics, internal coordination can be difficult. Recorded control — writing things down — makes processes clearer and keeps the organization coherent.^[5]

Social organizations within society change over time.^[13] Smaller-scale social organizations include groups that form from common interests and conversations.^{[citation needed]}

These small organizations — bands, clubs, sports teams — have the same structural characteristics as large-scale organizations, even if their membership is far smaller. They still interact and function in similar ways.

A school sports team is a clear example. Members share a common goal and work together toward it. Different roles or positions divide the labor. The structure, while informal, is real: there are coaches, captains, and players, each with distinct responsibilities.

Large-scale organizations typically involve some degree of bureaucracy: a set of rules, specializations, and a hierarchical system, which allows them to pursue efficiency at scale. These organizations tend to rely on impersonal authority, where the position of power is structurally defined and kept separate from personal relationships, so that operations run predictably regardless of who holds a given role.^[14]

A hospital is one well-known example of a large social organization. Within it sit smaller ones — the nursing staff, the surgery team — that work more closely together on specific tasks. As a whole, the hospital has relationships across its entire staff and with patients, division of labor, structure, cohesion, and communication systems. Without any one of these, operations would be harder to sustain.^{[citation needed]}

Whether bureaucracy and hierarchical management are effective also depends on the structure of work within the organization. Organizations where departments operate independently of one another — called parallel organizations — do not necessarily benefit from top-down hierarchical control, because the diversity of functions makes centralized coordination difficult. Interdependent organizations, where departments rely on each other to complete tasks, tend to be better suited to hierarchical management because the work requires coordination across the whole.^[14]

Societies can be organized through individualistic or collectivist means. Each orientation has documented associations with different patterns in economic behavior, legal and political institutions, and social relations. The organization of a society is shaped by its cultural, historical, social, political, and economic context, which in turn governs how members interact.

Collectivist or individualist orientations can exist within a single broader society.^[15] Studies have examined differences in collectivism between regions of the US^[16][17] and between regions of China.^[18][19] Researchers have also examined historical factors linked to these differences, such as histories of rice and wheat farming in different regions of China^[20] and patterns of frontier settlement in the western United States.^[21]

Social organizations can exist in digital spaces, and online communities show patterns of interaction similar to those in in-person social groups.^[29] The technology allows people to engage with social organizations without being in the same physical location.

Although the characteristics of online organizations differ in some ways from those of in-person groups, the structural parallels are clear. Various forms of online communication allow people to talk, share interests, and maintain membership in a group without physical presence. These online groups still function as social organizations because of the relationships within them and the shared interest in sustaining the community.

• Allocentrism – Personality attribute centering attention on others
• Communitarianism – Philosophy emphasizing community
• Cooperation – Groups working or acting together
• Corporation – Legal entity incorporated through a legislative or registration process
• Government agency – Organization distinguished by its role in public administration
• Institution – Structure or mechanism of social order
  • Total institution – Place where a lot of people (in the same condition) live together, cut off from society
• Organization – Social entity established to meet needs or pursue goals
• Postliberalism – Political movement opposed to liberal democracy, advocating for its replacement
• Social group – Two or more humans who interact with one another
• Social network – Social structure made up of a set of social actors
• Social structure – Aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society