Manning, P. K. (1977). "Talking and Becoming: A View of Organizational Socialization" in R. L. Blankenship. Colleagues in Organization: The Social Construction of Professional Work. London, Wiley & Sons: 181-205.
This is about developing ways to study adult socialization p. 182.
Organizational Structure
Weber say bureaucracies as rational and the pure form between command and compliance. Selznick saw Weber's ideal as unattainable -- in his view organizations were adaptive and subjective.
Sociologistas like Becker and Goffman advocate looking at organizations from the bottom up to avoid "managerial" theories. p. 183
Organizational rules can't really be understood in their literal form. They are usually applied based on the situation. They are only understood in context. p. 184 To understand what rationality means, one must understand what is taken for granted within organizations in which rationality is said to be found. p. 185
The author favors linquistic analysis by observing and listening to actors deal with problems and situations in the organization. According to Bittner, "the primary rule for the study of organizations from a phenomenological point of view is that one must study the ways in which terms of discourse are assigned to real objects and events by normally competent persons in ordinary situations. p. 186 Garfinkel calls this ethnomethodology.
Goffman argues that people in organizations are really people-in-roles (actors). Position is taken to explain behavior.
Role is actually an organizing scheme.
We should be studying dialogue and extract from it understanding of actors and organizations. Roles can be seen as sets of words and rules of usage. Roles are claimed labels. Actors order theri expectations in settings with reference to vocabularies.
Organizations as Socializing Settings
Features of organized settings... are described by competent actors with language terms, nonverbal cues, and behaviors that themselves constitute part of the setting. p. 191 Words themselves have an indexical quality. "Organizational talk" is talk that is both a feature of the setting and itself descriptive of the setting. p. 192
Roles are to be found embedded in the language actors normally use to talk about them. p. 192
Common-sense knowledge is that type of experience taken for granted upon which signification, marking, indexing, and symbolization are based. p. 193 New people act within the limits of the organization but do not share the common-sense knowledge current among the other members. p. 193
Talking and Becoming
It isn't enough to learn the vocabulary -- you must begin to understand the rules govening their use.
In this research method the researchers role is to generate oral lexicons, linking their use to situations and people, and building rules for their use. Rules should clarify discovered difference in usage among the "new" and "old" members in a group. p. 196 It is the learning of these "member's rules" for the use of language that is the basis for becoming a member of the group. Talking is becoming."
A Recourse, a Method
To begin to understand organizations, one could:
1. Learn the natural language of the organization. Pay special attention to those terms used to designate terms referring to roles. List the devices and categories and the rules for their use in the setting.
2. Develop a metalanguage that would allow the researcher to talk about the language people use to talk about their roles.
3. Schematically attend to the naming function of the members of the organization.
4. Do ethngraphic studies of the organization.