Att se samhället är en introduktion till sociologiämnet. Boken visar på olika sätt att upptäcka och synliggöra samhället. Att studera och forska i sociologi handlar om att det som är välbekant och vardagligt i ett nytt ljus och i nya sammanhang.

Despite strong emotions and a high density of communication, intimacy does not preclude organization. Intimate relationships can often be recognized as partially organized. In this chapter I examine three intimate relationships – families, kinship, and friendship – in order to investigate how the variation in combinations of organizational elements can be explained by the core component of love in each type of relationship. In examining the appearance of organizational elements in intimate relationships, one can see considerable differences among them, not only in their degree of organization, but also in the elements that are present. There is a connection between the elements that appear in a relationship and the emotional content. But there are also differences within the same type of relationship in how much and in which ways they are organized. An investigation of organizational elements in intimate relationships also provides an awareness of the limits of organization and why intimate relationships remain partially organized. A broadening of the analysis examining connections between states and intimate relationships demonstrates why states can use membership as an organizational element only to a limited extent. States are extremely organized in many respects, yet they are only partially organized.

Markets have sometimes been described as vastly different from and even opposite to formal organizations. But markets and organizations share a similarity as well. Both are organized - by the use of decisions on membership, rules, monitoring, sanctions or hierarchy. Market organization creates differences among markets, and specific dynamics, which can be explained by the actions and interactions of market organizers: profiteers, others', sellers and buyers. The concept of market organization is an analytical tool, which can be used for analysing why and how markets are created, why they get their specific form and how they change.

A growing number of organizations are meta-organizations; rather than individuals they have other organizations as their members. This comprehensive book explains, in-depth, the unique way in which meta-organizations function, how they differ from organizations with individual membership, and how they are crucial agents in the process of globalization.

The modern world is highly organized. Much organization occurs within formal organizations, to the extent that the extensive study of formal organizations has overshadowed other forms of organization. But organization happens not only within, but also outside the context of formal organizations. We define ‘organization’ as a decided order, and we see some decisions as more fundamental than others and have dubbed these decisions ‘organizational elements’. We distinguish five such elements: membership, rules, monitoring, sanctions, and hierarchy. Individuals or organizations can use organizational elements to organize other individuals or organizations, even if they do not belong to the same organization. But organizers do not necessarily use all elements, and all settings are not organized by all elements. In fact, many social settings are only partially organized – even formal organizations. We use the concepts of social relationships and formal organization to specify what we mean by organization and organizational elements and compare organizational elements with other ways in which social relationships develop. We describe the differences between organization and other origins of social order such as institutions and networks. The chapter ends with an overview of the following chapters.

The book explores how various social settings are partially organized even when they do not form part of a formal organization. It also shows how even formal organizations may be only partially organized. Professors Göran Ahrne and Nils Brunsson first established the concept of partial organization in 2011 and in doing so opened up a groundbreaking new field of organizational analysis. An academic community has since developed around the concept, and Ahrne and Brunsson have edited this collection to reflect the current state of inquiry in this burgeoning subject and to set an agenda for future research. Its chapters explain how organization is a salient feature in many social settings, including markets, interfirm networks, social movements, criminal gangs, internet communication and family life. Organization theory is much more relevant for the understanding of social processes than previously assumed. This book provides a new understanding of many social phenomena and opens up new fields for organizational analysis.

It is common practice in organizational research to restrict the concept of organization to formal organizations, and to describe the world outside these entities by such other concepts as institutions or networks. It is argued in this article that the concept of organization can be fruitfully broadened to include some aspects of the order that exists outside and among organizations. A broader concept includes not only complete, formal organization, but also 'partial organization'. Both types of organization are based on decisions, but whereas complete organizations have access to all elements of organization, partial organization is based on only one or a few of these elements. Like complete organization, partial organization is a common phenomenon that not least characterizes much of the contemporary global order. The authors discuss how partial organization arises, how and why institutions and networks sometimes become organized, and the consequences of organization for change, transparency and accountability.

The modern world is highly organized. Much organization occurs within formal organizations, to the extent that the extensive study of formal organizations has overshadowed other forms of organization. But organization happens not only within, but also outside the context of formal organizations. We define ‘organization’ as a decided order, and we see some decisions as more fundamental than others and have dubbed these decisions ‘organizational elements’. We distinguish five such elements: membership, rules, monitoring, sanctions, and hierarchy. Individuals or organizations can use organizational elements to organize other individuals or organizations, even if they do not belong to the same organization. But organizers do not necessarily use all elements, and all settings are not organized by all elements. In fact, many social settings are only partially organized – even formal organizations. We use the concepts of social relationships and formal organization to specify what we mean by organization and organizational elements, and compare organizational elements with other ways in which social relationships develop. We describe the differences between organization and other origins of social order such as institutions and networks. The chapter ends with an overview of the following chapters.

In order to conceptualize international governmental organizations (IGOs) as powerful actors, international relations scholars increasingly resort to approaches that present these organizations as behaving like modern corporations or bureaucracies. Although we agree with the underlying assumption that it is useful to understand IGOs as organizations, we find these approaches only give partial answers. We argue that the key to a more complete under-standing of international organizations is to conceptualize them not as standard forms of orga-nizations with individuals as their members but as meta-organizations comprising organized actors as members. Meta-organizations are paradoxical constructions: autonomous actors with autonomous actors as members. An international organization is permanently competing for actorhood with its member states, and this competition has far-reaching implications for the ways they perform as agents of global governance. Meta-organization theory explains why international organizations are less powerful actors than standard organizations are—why it is more difficult for them to make decisions and to achieve coordination and organizational action. Yet international organizations are strong in other respects. Meta-organization theory explains why they are easily established, why they can place strong demands on new members, and why their existing members are slowly transformed by their membership. Overall, many international organizations are influential but in a different way than suggested by standard theories of organizations.

In this chapter we argue that the key to an understanding of international governmental organizations (IGOs) is to conceptualize them not as standard forms of organizations with individuals as their members, but as meta-organizations comprising organized actors as members. Meta-organizations are paradoxical constructions: autonomous actors with autonomous actors as members. Organizational elements cannot be considered in isolation in meta-organizations; their combination are key factors; therefore meta-organizations are often partially organized. IGOs are permanently competing for actorhood with their member states and this competition has far-reaching implications for to what extent they can make use of all organizational elements. Using one element may require the avoidance of other elements or certain forms of decision-making. This helps to explain why IGOs have problems achieving co-ordinated organizational action and why they are less powerful actors than standard organizations are. Yet IGOs are strong in other respects. The most important organizational element in IGOs is membership. The strengths of IGOs can be understood in relation to their creation, their expansion, and their long-term influence on their members.

This essay is motivated by two related observations about the field of organization studies. First, organization studies researchers have traditionally been good at importing ideas from other areas of research but poor at exporting their own ideas to other fields. Second, even within the field of organization studies, interest in organizations has decreased over the past decades as organization scholars have turned away from organizations to address such other phenomena as institutions or networks. Both developments are undermining the significance of organization studies as a distinctive field of research, the insights of which are necessary for understanding modern society. In this essay, we elaborate on recent suggestions by distinctively European scholars for strengthening concern for the particularities of organization in social theorizing. The first suggestion is to move decisions back to the core of the field. The second suggestion is to extend the notion of organization beyond organizations. We illustrate these two moves with examples from the literature and discuss implications for the future of organization studies.

The formation of queues is an institution: it is created and managed largely by the emergent norms of those in the queue. Research on queues has demonstrated that it is more and more common for organizations to intervene in the ordering of queues. In this chapter we investigate why and how queues are organized and the tensions that arise when a strong institution becomes the subject of partial organization. As an institution, the idea of how to form a queue has strong legitimacy resting on commonly accepted values of equality and fairness. The fact that a queue is organized with one or several organizational elements does not necessarily mean that the queue as an institution is replaced by organization; on the contrary, organizational decisions may support the queue as an institution. In other cases, however, organization is a challenge to the legitimacy of the queue; instead it is the organization that uses its power to further its own interest in selecting the preferred customers from a larger number of people standing in a line. When an organization decides the order in which people are admitted, little remains of the institution of the queue.

In this chapter, we explore the usefulness of applying the idea of partial organization as one way of mitigating the confusion surrounding the notion of organized crime. We examine three types of collectivities that are usually seen as examples of organized crime: outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCs), street gangs, and mafias. When we examine the occurrence of organizational elements, we find substantial differences among these three cases not only in the amount of their organization, but also in the ways in which they are organized. A few multinational outlaw motorcycle gangs have gradually been able to form strong formal organizations containing all organizational elements. For a mafia, the situation is quite the opposite. Because its embeddedness in kinship relationships provides cohesion and protection, it needs little organization. Through its strong kinship ties, a mafia has access to several functional equivalents to the organizational elements one can find in OMCs. In street gangs the appearance of organizational elements varies among the gangs, and they rarely have more than a few elements at any one time. One obstacle for the organization of street gangs is their local embeddedness and limited duration, which loosen the boundaries of the gang.

Globalization seems to affect all social phenomena and is now a well-established discourse within the social sciences. Globalization, however, is far from a unitary process. Probably it makes more sense to talk about globalizations. Globalization happens in a number of ways and different social spheres and different types of organizations have varying possibilities to become global actors. In this paper we discuss and explain why political parties and trade unions have difficulties in going global and acting outside the framework of the nationstate. By answering this question we want to contribute to the body of literature that tries to understand the requirements of contemporary politics. We do this by looking at attempts by political parties and trade unions to become global actors, which have not gone very well. To understand how society changes with the increasing number of non-territorial processes and actors that we can observe, it is necessary to investigate not only successful examples but also those that have problems to expand their activities with transnational contacts and to act on a global platform.  

Our point of departure is that if we want to understand and explain the difficulties political parties and trade unions have in deterritorializing their activities it is necessary to look at the historical and contemporary organizational forms of their attempts to globalize.

In the paper we identify five organizational characteristics that impede the possibilities for non-national unions and parties to act: embeddedness, leadership, ierarchy, agenda, interest and solutions. In other organizations, such Amensty International and Green Peace, this characteristics work better, enabling these organizations to be stronger non-national political actors. 

Departing from an organizational perspective and using the cases of Socialist International and four European trade unions, this paper illustrates why political parties and trade unions have difficulty acting globally. The analysis shows that international or transnational organizations for national parties or trade unions are established as meta-organizations, and herein lies the key to explaining their problems in becoming global actors. The national embeddedness of their members results in broad agendas and quests for national solutions, which divides and weakens leadership. Comparing these meta-organizations to a more successful global political organization, Amnesty International, reveals that its organization is quite the opposite: a centralized leadership, a narrow agenda, not working for the immediate interests of its members or finding solutions to the issues it raises. The paper concludes that if this form of organization is necessary in global politics then there is little room for political parties and unions on a global arena.

This study is an inquiry into how actors in the Swedish gambling industry, gambling problem prevention and support structures articulate responsibility for the problems that arise from gambling. A main point made in the study is that responsibility for the gambling-related harm is actively constructed and reproduced in a hegemonic way that situates the main responsibility for the emergence and handling of gambling-related harm on the individual gambler and that relies heavily on the individual's capacity to control and adjust his/her consumption to prevent gambling related harm. Drawing on extensive ethnographical fieldwork on responsible gambling practices in the Swedish context, the author brings attention to the often-unproblematized view of contemporary responsible gambling measures, and the need to develop a self-reflexive critical analysis of the ways in which responsibility is divided and assigned in this politicized market and wider policy field. As a conceptual contribution, an analytical distinction is suggested between measures of direct responsibilization (teaching and training gamblers to be responsible) and measures of indirect responsibilization (teaching and training intermediaries in the market, such as gambling agents and support association staff, to relinquish responsibility on behalf of the gambling consumer). The results indicate that such a distinction is fruitful for a nuanced understanding of contemporary responsibility policies and practices.

Responsibilization permeates the various corners of society - not least the

markets where responsibility is shifted down from states and organizations to individuals in their role as consumers. How then is responsibility (re)constructed and (re)distributed amongst market actors? This empirical paper contributes to our understanding of the ‘preventive turn’ in governance and more specifically the current trend towards self-control, and self-management by an analysis of consumer responsibilization at the market level. The paper is empirically based on interviews with key informants involved in attempts to organize rational, responsible consumers in the contested Swedish gambling market, a dozen participant observations of responsible gaming education (offline) and Internet studies of on-line equipment and education designed to motivate and teach gamblers to assume responsibility for gambling related problems. Drawing on a market constructionist perspective a model of responsibility in the making is presented. The paper then contributes with empirical illustrations of consumer responsibilization practices carried out in the Swedish context. Findings suggest that the responsible gambler is made up both directly and indirectly, both positively and negatively and by employment of a subtle yet powerful discourse of care.

Markets are intertwined. If a certain market is perceived as being unorganized or inappropriately organized for neighbouring markets, sellers or buyers in those adjacent markets may step in as organizers. In this chapter, I use the case of the Swedish taxi market as it developed from around 1990 until 2015 to demonstrate how hotel companies and owners of travel terminals haveassumed organizer roles in the taxi transport market. This account is based on a qualitative analysis of three cases of participant observation and eight interviews with key stakeholders. The interviews and the first two observations were conducted in the autumn of 2013, and one additional observation was conducted in the spring of 2015. In addition, the chapter is informed by a broad base of documents: previous research, industry reports and company policies, newspaper articles, and public reports.

Ek dr. Susanna Alexius vid Score, Stockholms universitet och Handelshögskolan i Stockholm ger sin syn på ansvarsfrågan inom bland annat spelmarknaden genom en sammanställning av det egna författarskapet i bl a boken Ansvar och marknader (Liber 2014) och ytterligare aktuell litteratur inom området. Hon lyfter här frågan om marknadens förutsättning att fördela och ge initiativ till ansvarstagande för spelmarknadens baksidor för att ge ytterligare fördjupning kring lösningen av problem inom spelmarknaden. Slutsatserna står delvis i kontrast mot ett förhärskande tankestoff om individualitet, beteendevetenskap och det egna ansvaret.

In this paper an historical comparative approach is applied to analyze how value conflict discourse and organization have evolved from the 1800s onward in three contested commodity markets – the alcohol, gambling and coal market. Situated mainly in the Swedish context, the three case studies demonstrate that the values at stake as well as the organizational arrangements brought forth in response to underlying value conflicts have changed significantly over time in all three markets. The commodities have stayed contested but for more or different reasons. Analyzing a dozen transformative moments in total we conclude that it matters to the organization of a market if there is an underlying value conflict and how this value conflict is configured. The comparative analysis sheds light on four processes in which value-conflict underpinnings of contested commodity markets may be shaped and altered: value addition, value expansion, value accumulation and value relocation.