Departmental Papers (ASC)
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
6-1960
Abstract
Preliminary observation suggests that the contact between Israeli officials and newly arrived immigrants from traditional societies is considerably less "bureaucratic" than might have been predicted. For example, analysis of several cases of such bureaucrat-client relationships indicates that officials often add the role of teacher to their relatively specific roles as bureaucrats by teaching newcomers how to perform in the role. Moreover, the official often becomes not only a teacher but also a kind of informal leader. This indicates that under certain conditions, formal organizations may give birth to incipient social movements, a direction of organizational change wholly unanticipated in the theoretical literature. The case material is analyzed in terms of (1) a theory of role impingement in which bureaucratic roles are seen to become intertwined with roles that are bureaucratically irrelevant to the conduct of formal organization and (2) a theory of socialization where the official serves as socializing agent for his clients.
Keywords
israel, new immigrants
Date Posted: 24 February 2010
This document has been peer reviewed.
Comments
Reprinted from:
Some Sociological Observations on the Response of Israeli Organizations to New Immigrants. Elihu Katz and S. N. Eisenstadt. Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 1, Special Issue on Comparative Public Administration (Jun., 1960), pp. 113-133
Publisher URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2390827