Functionalism

Conceptual Overview

While functionalism has its origins in the work of the pioneering 19th-century French sociologist Emile Durkheim and his study of the division of labor in modernizing industrial societies, it is most widely associated today with American sociology and, in particular, the work of Robert Merton and his critique of the dysfunctions of bureaucracy, and Talcott Parsons who, in a series of general books and more specific organizationally focused articles such as those published in the first volume of Administrative Science Quarterly in 1956, developed a more general functionalist theory designed to explain both individual and macro-social behavior. From the functionalist perspective, in order to prosper, an organization must concern itself with the satisfaction of a number of what can be termed functional imperatives. Drawing on Parsons's general schema, these can be narrowed down to the identification of a set of goals toward which the activities of the organization as a whole can be oriented; a strategy of integration that ensures the common recognition and pursuit of these goals; the ability to recognize and adapt to environmental changes; and finally, a means by which internal patterns of belief and traditional action might be maintained and reproduced.

By the late 1950s, sociological functionalism within organization studies had started to combine with what is commonly referred to as general systems theory, itself generally attributed to the Viennese theoretical biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy and popularized in organization studies by Kenneth Boulding. Indeed, during this period, systems theory, with its emphasis on integration, and functionalism with its attention to the role particular elements play within a system related to its continued stability, emerged as the largely accepted theoretical basis for mainstream organization studies, providing a growing sense of institutional legitimacy and practitioner recognition for the field.

The emergence of structural contingency theory during the 1960s cemented this dominance. Early pioneers such as Burns and Stalker and Lawrence and Lorsch, while accepting the basic functionalist tenets of systems theory, argued that greater attention needed to be paid to how functional requirements differed depending on a range of contingencies—both internal and external—that made differing demands on the organization at any point in time. Such an approach posited, therefore, an emphasis not merely on functional stability, but equally on the necessity of functional adaptability.

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