HIERARCHIST ORGANIZATIONS
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This research paper examines the utility and characteristic weaknesses of hierarchical or hierarchist organizations, public or private. From the standpoint of cultural theorists, hierarchically organized bodies tend to make effective and efficient use of resources for the purpose of maintaining themselves in power and are therefore highly stable. Under non-static or dynamic conditions, their capacity to resist change often leads to their becoming detached from reality and ossifying. Hierarchist organizations generally have within their midst or otherwise compete with elements of other types of cultures. Depending on the balance among these forces and the nature of changes faced by hierarchist organizations, their ability to accommodate and adapt to change can be enhanced or attenuated. Cultural theorists seek to explain "how [different] ways of life maintain (and fail to maintain) themselves" (Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990, 1). In their view, the key to understanding any culture is how [people] want to relate to other people and how they want others to relate to them" (Grenstad & Selle, 1995, p. 12). In organizing themselves socially, individuals form and join groups in which the ties among them and the constraints on the actions of members of such groups (the grid) are strong or weak. Wildavsky says that "the strength or weakness of group boundaries and the numerous or few, varied or singular, prescripti
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son, Ellis & Wildavsky, "change occurs when successive events intervene in such a manner as to prevent a way of life from delivering on the expectations it has generated, thereby prompting individuals to seek more promising alternatives" (1990, p. 3). When hierarchist organizations retain power for long periods of time, they tend to stagnate, rigidify and to resist obsessively pressures for change. As they suppress dissent, they drive individualism underground and often turn into a combination of hierarchists and fatalists. Apathy develops among many of their adherents, including elements of the leadership, particularly at lower levels. Another description of this type of hierarchist organization is totalitarianism.
Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky (1990) described social relations in the Soviet state as "strongly hierarchical, often despotic" (p. 88). In Medvedev's account of the factors which led to the catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, officials at various levels in the chain of command displayed a lack of interest in the latest nuclear technology, appointed incompetent officials to key posts and generally refused to make prudent which might have jeopardized their positions even when they knew better and even
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Approximate Word count = 1787
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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