UPSC SOCIOLOGY MAINS Syllabus – Paper 1 -Chapter 6 – WORK AND ECONOMIC LIFE
- Work, from a sociological perspective, is anything that a person undertakes with a goal of being productive in a way that meets human needs.
- But in economic sociology, it is generally an activity which results in paid employment, reward or contract.
- An organization is made up of a group of people who are working together to achieve certain goals.
- These organizations have individuals who are connected through their relationships with one another, therefore, to know which organization is formal or informal is to look into the nature of the relationship between these individuals.
FORMAL ORGANISATION OF WORK
- Formal Organization of Work is the one in which the worker is governed by the formal rules and regulations.
- Rules and regulations may be defined by a contract between the employee and employer or by various legislations, statutes and rules of the government.
- A formal organization is rationally designed.
- It has explicit objectives and for them, there are explicitly defined means as well.
- One of the most prevalent formal organizations of work is bureaucracy which is based on rational organization of work where workers work on the basis of legal rational basis.
INFORMAL ORGANIZATION OF WORK
- Informal Organization of Work is the one in which workers are not governed by fixed rules, but by directions of employer.
- It generally includes casual labor, contract labor, child labor, domestic labor etc.
- Informal organization is based on social contracts in which rule are implied rather than stated.
- Informal organization also escapes the legislations and rules of the land.
- They may also be organizations which are developed on the basis of personal linkages and rapport.
- It is largely a feature of society where labor supply is higher and workers accept whatever is given to them in any conditions of work.
CONCLUSION
- At the macro level, work is informally organized in traditional societies, but in modern societies, work is formally organized.
- Distinction is also understood in terms of intrinsic characteristics of work, sometimes formal organizations develop within itself informal structure and vice-versa.
- Even big formal organizations employ contract labor at times.
- Formal and informal organization of work also depends upon the task which is to be accomplished.
- Tasks which are to be accomplished in a project or mission mode have greater scope of informal working as the team has to improvise new strategies, make new plans and have to work in a flexible manner.
- Informal organization working offers more flexibility over formal organization working.
