an approach to the study of relative prestige of formal organizations

An Approach to the Study of Relative Prestige of Formal OrganizationsAuthor(s): Raymond PayneSource: Social Forces, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Mar., 1954), pp. 244-247Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2573241 .

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244 SOCIAL FORCES

AN APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF RELATIVE PRESTIGE OF FORMAL ORGANIZATIONS*

RAYMOND PAYNE

University of Georgia

HE purpose of this study was to determine whether formal organizations,' coexisting within limited socio-geographic areas, were

ascribed by those familiar with them relative evaluations measurable in quantitative terms. It was hypothesized that the individual organizations within a county, for instance, would be ascribed relative positions, i.e., that they would be found existing in an hierarchical prestige order. Further, it was proposed that the relative position of a given organization (or type of organization) within the order would be related to (1) characteristics of the organization itself, and (2) characteristics of the judges.

With these purposes and this approach the study becomes in part an investigation of differ- ential response accorded organizations, a complex phenomenon usually studied in terms of direct participation, not in terms of relative prestige placement. In addition, insofar as the study impinges upon the community domination-sub- mission patterns it constitutes an attempt to develop means for discovering the principles by which some community sub-groupings come to be accorded positions of superiority with the at- tendant rights and privileges which allow them to initiate, negate, or otherwise influence community action.

PROCEDURE

Data were collected in four selected Kentucky counties.2 All organizations existing and operating in each county at the time were listed by explora- tory methods in the field.

One of the three highest ranking officers of each organization was personally interviewed. Each interviewee supplied (1) objective data on his organization, such as number of members, date of local establishment, and purpose; (2) objective personal data, such as age and sex; and (3) rankings of all listed organizations in his county known to him, together with his appraisal of the extent of his knowledge about each ranked organization.

For purposes of comparison, the ranked list obtained from each informant was standardized in terms of a 100-point scale, making it possible to treat the position of a given organization as a percentile rank; the combined position (average of all percentile ranks of a given organization by all informants) is herein called the prestige score. Standardization was necessary because, since each rater arrayed only those organizations known to him, it was possible that no organization was ranked by all informants, and that no two informants ranked identical sets of organizations, and because raters placed lists having different num- bers of organizations.

FINDINGS

Some organizations existing in the four counties were thought by informants to possess relatively high prestige values; others were thought to possess lower prestige values. On some (the highest and lowest ranking organizations) there was a comparatively high degree of agreement among informants;3 the others were assigned to

* This article is based on selected aspects of the writer's unpublished master's thesis, A Study of Prestige of Organizations in Four Kentucky Counties (University of Kentucky, 1949).

1 "Formal organizations" are herein considered to be those human groupings which possess the distin- guishing characteristics of (1) voluntary membership; (2) regular set of elected officers (leaders); (3) meet- ings at designated points in time and space; (4) spe- cific interests or stated purposes which are recognized by the members as the chief bonds which hold them together; and (5) official names. The units herein called "organizations" have been designated by various writers as special interest groups, voluntary associations, formal associations, formal groups, and social organizations.

2 Magoffin and Powell counties in the eastern mountain region, Harrison in the Bluegrass region of central Kentucky, and Logan in the southwestern part of the state.

3In each county agreement was most pronounced on the top fifth and on the bottom fifth of the organi-



RELATIVE PRESTIGE OF FORMAL ORGANIZATIONS 245

various positions in the distribution of prestige scores, indicating that some organizations carry values on which there is relative consensus among judges, while the values carried by others are either (1) disputed among judges or (2) are not known or understood as nearly equally by all judges.

There are several clues in the data to indicate that "egocentrism" or extended self-interest dominated the ratings. These included the facts that (1) members placed organizations higher than did non-members; (2) men tended to favor men's organizations; (3) women tended to favor women's organizations; (4) rural residents tended to favor organizations with predominantly rural membership; and (5) town residents favored those composed predominantly of town residents.

However, these factors are not posited as causal ones; instead, the possibility must be admitted that objective interrelationships exist within the community-organization system which (1) cause organizations to be capable of relative placement, and (2) make possible expressions of preference (of which the above are examples) which might appear "egocentric."

Further indication that the above conclusion might be valid is inherent in the facts that (1) the organizations best known to all raters received relatively higher placements, and (2) each judge placed higher those organizations best known to him. The most significant point here is not only that the best-known organizations were rated higher, but that some organizations were better known than others sharing the common social setting. The best known organizations also had, on the average, larger memberships, more units per county, more regular attendants, more officers, more committees and committeeships, slightly higher costs of membership, and more extensive intercounty representation. Many of these factors might be considered functions of size and, therefore, explanations for the more extensive reputa- tions of the organizations and, hence, the higher prestige ratings. However, certain of the organizations with high prestige scores were not par- ticularly large, in terms of number of members. Outstanding examples of this group are the

Luncheon-Service clubs, including Lions, Rotary, and Kiwanis. Such clubs are relatively small, but they have a multiplicity of interests and their members serve actively in many areas of community life. Thus, it is indicated that the functions of size, while frequently associated with prestige, are not the sole determinant factors. The interests of the organization, the relations of that interest to the dominant interests and values of the people of the area, and the manner in which the organization attempts to reach its objectives are also involved. Further, there still remains the question-unanswerable in these data-of why a given organization in a given social setting should have become larger than other similar or different ones in the same locality.

The answer to this question probably lies in the interest of the organization and the degree of appropriateness of that interest in the eyes of the members of the society in which it exists. It was found that organizations of the same type (based on interest) were accorded high ratings in all four counties, despite variations in social, geographic, and economic conditions among the counties.

This fact emerged during the analysis when the organizations from all counties were classified by types, and the combined placement (by types) compared for the four counties.

The organizations could have been classed on the basis of any one of many attributes, such as internal structure, size, and various characteristics of the membership. However, the existence of an organization within a society is known by the members of the society because of the organization's activities, its functions, the things that are done by members singly or as a group in the name of the organization. The nature of the organization's activities is more or less dependent upon and the result of the types of aims, purposes, and objectives of the organization; and these, in turn, are largely dependent upon the type of special interest about which the organization was formed and/or is operating. Therefore, because it is fundamentally responsible for the organization's activities and, thus, reputation or standing, the special interest has been selected as a basis for developing a typology for the organizations examined in this study.

The organizations were found to represent 11 fairly distinct special interests. A category, or

zations. On this basis it was convenient, when desired, to divide the lists into quintiles, each containing a fifth of the organizations.



246 SOCIAL FORCES

TABLE 1. COMBINED RANKING OF 13 TYPES OF FORMAL

ORGANIZATIONS, BASED ON AVERAGE OF INTRA-

COUNTY QIJINTILE PLACEMENTS, BY TYPE, FOUR

KENTUCKY COUNTIES, 1949

NUMBER AVERAGE ORGANIZATIONAL TYPE OF QUINTIIE

(EXAMPLES OF ORGANIZATIONS INCLUDED) ORGANI- POSI- ZATIONS TION*

Luncheon-Service (Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis) ........................ 6 4.8

Philanthropic (American Red Cross, Community Chest) ........ ....... 9 4.3

Business Improvement (Business Men's Club, Chamber of Com- merce) .......................... 4 4.0

Agricultural and Rural Home Im- provement (4-H Club, Farm Bu- reau, Home Demonstration) ....... 40 3.6

Church Auxiliary (Baptist W. M. U., Methodist W. S. C. S.) ....... ..... 22 3.4

School Auxiliary (P-TA, Alumni Asso- ciation, Band Boosters) ........... 7 3.3

Veterans' Affairs (American Legion, V. F. W., D. A. V.) ........ ....... 10 3.1

Youth Development (Scouts, Y-Teens, Future Homemakers) ............. 18 3.0

Heritage Bearing (Daughters of Amer- ican Revolution, United Daughters of Confederacy) .................. 4 2.3

Brotherhood (Masons, Eastern Star, Elks, I. 0. 0. F.) ......... ........ 19 2.2

Sports and Recreation (Recreation Board, Farmers' Sportsmen's Club).. 18 2.0

Cultural and Aesthetic (Woman's Club, Book Club, Music Club)..... 16 1.8

Miscellaneous (Do-Better Club, Hook- ing Club) ........................ 7 1.7

* In each county the organizations were ranked high-to-low in terms of average of all percentile placements for each; each list was divided into quintiles, the upper fifth being assigned the numerical value of five, the next highest fifth, the value of four, and so on. Thus, if all six Luncheon-Service Clubs, for instance, had appeared in the upper quintile of all county lists, the average quintile position of that type would have appeared here as five.

type, has been established for each of them. However, some possess no well-defined special interests of their own, nor can they be placed in any of the 11 categories. Thus, it was necessary to add a miscellaneous group for them. From the data it was impossible to isolate the single most important interest of the Lions, Rotary, and Kiwanis Clubs, so they have been assigned to

still another category: Luncheon-Service. The resulting list includes 13 types, listed in order of their average intra-county prestige quintile positions in Table 1.

Similar categories have been proposed by Kolb and Brunner,4 Kolb and Wileden,5 Lind- strom,6 and Garnett,7 all based upon the interests of the organizations. However, each of the above named studies included only rural and village organizations, while the present study includes many mixed and town groups. For this reason, the typology here presented must contain categories with less well-defined limits and characteristics. They, therefore, exhibit greater tendency to overlap.

Few general statements can be made concerning the types of organizations and their rank positions which can be supported by the quantitative data obtained in this study. A complete analysis of the influence of organizational objectives and aims upon organizational prestige would call for more information than is here available.

However, organizations by type categories were assigned similar ranks in all counties. In the individual counties the types were ranked by the relative size of the averages of the prestige scores of the organizations by type. The coefficients of correlation (calculated from ranks or positions of the various items by means of Spearman's formula,8 expressed in terms of the Pearsonian coefficient of correlation rrhO9) between the distribution of these ranks and of those based on average quintile position were: County A, +89; County B, +87; County C, +94; and County D, +94. Each of these coefficients is large enough

4J. H. Kolb and E. de S. Brunner, A Study of Rural Society (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1946), p. 332 ff.

5J. H. Kolb and A. F. Wileden, Special Interest Groups in Rural Society, University of Wisconsin Research Bulletin 84 (December 1927).

6 D. E. Lindstrom, Local Group Organization Among Illinois Farm People, University of Illinois, Agri- cultural Experiment Station Bulletin 392 (June 1933).

7W. E. Garnett, Rural Organizations in Relation to Rural Life in Virginia, Virginia Agricultural Experi- ment Station Bulletin 256 (1927).

8 See H. Arkin and R. A. Colton, An Outtline of Statistical Methods (New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc.), p. 85.

9 Jack Wilber Dunlap and A. K. Kurtz, Handbook of Statistical Nomographs, Tables, and Formidias (New York: World Book Co., 1932), pp. 42-43 and 96.



RELATIVE PRESTIGE OF FORMAL ORGANIZATIONS 247

to lead to the conclusion that the similarities in placement of types of organizations were in- fluenced by more than chance alone.

It is to be further noted that the types having median or below median ranks are (1) composed, mainly, of more limited and rigidly specified segments of the population, and (2) include organizations with, chiefly, in-group (as con- trasted with community-wide) objectives, purposes and interests. The main special interests of those types with above median ranks include only religion, school, agriculture, business and philanthropy.10 None of these is found to be the chief interests of the types with median or below median ranks. Types including organizations formed about sports, recreation, and cultural interests were ranked relatively low. Veterans affairs and youth development organizations were distributed without obvious pattern among the five quintiles, giving these types medium rank.

Thus, the interests assumed to be most typical of rural areas and agricultural societies, including the service-center town, are represented in the types with comparatively high ranks. This indicates that the informants considered certain types of organizations in each county to be functioning more nearly in accord with the interests and recognized needs of the community than were other types, and it may be inferred that the informants used to a greater or lesser extent the interests of organizations as bases for the ranking process, if only indirectly.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of this study would lead to the condusions that the organizations in the studied areas were to be found existing in hierarchical prestige orders, the bases of which were the relative evaluations placed upon them by persons familiar with them. Further, it was possible to isolate some of the factors associated with relative placement of organizations. The two clusters of factors which appeared to be most closely related to prestige scores of organizations were (1) size and the functions of size, and (2) the interests of the organizations.

It cannot be conduded, however, that variations in prestige can be explained entirely in terms of size and the functions thereof, or on the basis of interest type, or a combination of the two. While the relationships are fairly constant there are notable variations which must be recognized. However, because of the lack of nearly complete data, the writer can only suggest other possible factors which have been indicated in the analysis of the information at hand. The variety of functions, the number of activities, the manner in which programs are planned and executed, the clarity and vigor with which purposes, aims, and accom- plishments are defined for the community, the number or proportion of active workers, the length of time spent by members in the execution of projects, the vigor of leadership, the socio- economic status of leaders and members-all are factors which have not been examined in this study, but which would have to be considered in order to complete the research.

"0The Luncheon-Service Clubs listed all of these interests, in various combinations, in all four counties.



an approach to the study of relative prestige of formal organizations

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