Selected Manifestations of Social Deviance in Organizational Culture

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the discourse about the issues of trust in management, authority and meaningfulness of human labour, which are inseparably connected with effectiveness, productivity, competitiveness of companies, organizations and the whole society as well. The authors want to provide a conceptual theoretical framework for further studies of social deviance in organizational culture and that is why it has a form of a theoretical study providing a platform for future empirical researches. This study is opened with defining the concept of social deviance as a deviation from the normality and by reminding of difficulties related to determination of normality. The organizational culture is defined as a coherent set of values, norms and patterns of behaviour that determine the manners and forms of behaviour of employees, their relationships inside (but also outside) the social system of the organization. Further the paper is focused on selected social deviances, which undermine the effectiveness of organizational structures to fulfil their objectives and missions. Based on the empirical analyses the attention is paid particularly to nepotism, clientelism and cronyism as tools for reaching latent goals of individuals and groups in the organization. The issue is set in the contemporary society and solved from the view of social psychological mechanisms of human behaviour in the group. The authors also remind the issue of responsibility, conscience and the negative effects of conformity, group thinking, obedience and the authoritarian leadership which is even more obvious when the employees are under the pressure (e.g. economic sanctions). In conclusion are outlined the tools of control of clientelism and similar phenomena and possibilities of applications of Weber’s socio-analytical model of bureaucracy in organizations

Social control as the central concept of sociology and social pedagogy

This article focuses on the issue of social control, which is discussed here from different points of view within sociology and social pedagogy. Social control deals with prevention as well as with responses to deviations from desirable behavioural patterns, and in the centre of its interest are interrelationships and sometimes rather inconsistencies between the individual and society. This is connected with the question of what are actually "desirable patterns of behaviour" and who are the concrete authors of this norm, i.e. in whose interest (individuals or groups) are introduced the norms of behaviour. The authors point out the fact that the usual reference to society conceals only the decisive context, i.e. social norms have in fact very often ideological function which also influences significantly the area of social pedagogy which (like other sciences or more precisely their knowledge) can become a mere instrument of any ideology, i.e. of the ruling class or group

Values and entrepreneurship

This paper deals with the importance of values ​​in business development. The authors remind M. Weber and his study about the impact of Protestantism on business development. After defining the concept of value, attention is focused on the theory of R.K. Merton, T. Parsons, R. Inglehart. Using the critical sociological approach the authors reflect on the research strategies in the area of values. In this context is mentioned for example the issue of ideal and real cultures – ideal cultures consist of norms and values to which people officially claim, e.g. values of Christian civilization, values of Central Europe; so-called universal values are very often (or should be) a base for legal norms. Real cultures represent a pattern according to which people act and regard it socially acceptable. In this context is also discussed the question of individualism without responsibility that is typical for current western society as well as for the Czech society of last decades. Value orientations are patterns for expected roles, culturally defined types of human relations, expressing the basic attitudes in social interaction. The level of prevailing business values is visible also in many multinational corporations espousing the concept of corporate social responsibility within their promotion but violating it in reality