Suchergebnisse

In this paper we discuss the modes of engagement between social scientists and their clients. There are three significant variables: the negotiability of the problem, the openness of the client to the nature of the solution, and the discretion allowed to the social scientist in choice of method. During engagements clients experience pressure to close options, while social scientists wish to keep them open. The resulting balance determines the nature of the engagement at any time.

Users have many diff needs requiring diff kinds of res. There is a wide range of instit's for conducting res, & selecting the appropriate one requires a sophisticated knowledge both of one's particular needs & of the available facilities. In addition, the res'er must have a realistic conception of the part he can expect res to play in formulating a policy or determining alternative methods. Each society has its own particular way of organizing educ, possesses its own type & range of soc, pol'al & econ instit's, & each, therefore, tends to develop its own set of instit's for conducting res. A res'er should anticipate this & realize that in a particular country some of the necessary res facilities may not be available or have to be developed. Res today suffers from 2 major problems. The 1st is the lack of coordination between career planning & the range of existing res agencies & instit's. There has been little planning of res careers & structures to meet future needs & to ensure that the diff kinds of res agencies will have an adequate supply of suitably trained people. The 2nd problem involves the dissemination of knowledge. Publication of academic work may render it less accessible, because the res is divorced from the soc context in which it was undertaken. As a result it becomes less available to the diffusion channels in its original context, eg, the more res in educ'al sociol is treated 'like sociol' the less it belongs to educ. Org'al studies, too, become abstract & generalized so that they contribute to the sociol of org's but the org in which they were undertaken does not benefit from their findings. There are 3 interrelated approaches to optimum utilization of res: (a) industr & other org's engage in a mutual learning arrangement with U's & res org's, (b) development of internal dept's to work with outside instit's, (c) educ in the concepts & methods of soc sci, if appropriately followed up, may eliminate the engineering approach to sociotechnical & socioplanning problems, or at least encourage the use of other approaches. Modified AA.

An analysis of a social system requires, in addition to data-collection instruments, an organizing paradigm by which the data can be made to depict the system as a unified, functioning entity. The Parsonian model of social systems is applied to organizations. Four basic social subsystemsgoal attainment, adaptation, latency, and integration-are discussed along with data-collection techniques. Some data can be obtained with formal instruments, others only with more casual techniques. The technology employed by an organization affects all four subsystems; it should not be looked upon as a monolithic subsystem by itself. There is a particular sequence of interaction among the four subsystems, beginning with goal attainment and ending with integration. This has implications for organizational diagnosis, design, and development.