Category: Communities Associations and Formal Organizations

We have noted that formal groups also allow the formation of informal groups within them. Since these groups are informal, they do not figure in the formal structure. But they inevitably emerge in all the formal groups–recent or old–and significantly influence their functioning. It is the identification of such informal groups within a formal group… Continue reading ALLIANCES, COALITIONS AND NETWORKS

Bureaucracy assumed additional importance in the context of developing countries. While the Western scholarship focussed on particular formal organizations either within the government or in the corporate sector to witness the functioning of the bureaucracy and relating it to efficiency and effectiveness, bureaucracy was, and is, viewed in the context of the countries of the… Continue reading BUREAUCRACY AND NATION-BUILDING: A POST SCRIPT

Other than communities and primary and secondary relationships is the vast territory of groups–small and large, and formal and informal. Here we focus our attention on the relatively large formal groups, that are mostly Secondary groups. We may mention here that in recent decades, the concept of ‘non-formal’ has also come into vogue, particularly in the field… Continue reading FORMAL GROUPS: ASSOCIATIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS

George A. Hillary Jr., of the University of Kentucky, Lexington, collected 94 definitions of community to analyse their content and produced an excellent paper titled ‘Definitions of Community: Areas of Agreement’.5 Hillary did not attempt to find out the number of times any particular definition has been used,6 but concentrated on various formulations. He identified 16 different… Continue reading DEFINITION OF THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY

Community is a commonly used word, but it connotes several meanings. Some people use it almost as a synonym of Society; others use it for a geographically distinct local community or for a group of people who are of the same origin. In the West, it has also been used for ‘total institutions’ such as… Continue reading THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY