Weber on Status Groups and Collegiality: Applying the Analysis to a Modern Organization

Abstract

Max Weber's legacy includes his ideas about ideal types, status groups and value conflicts that help shape and give meaning to society. This paper uses these conceptualizations to examine Weber's ideal type status group, the Chinese Literate and test it by applying it to a modern group, specifically the Göring Institute, which harbored the German psychotherapy profession during the Third Reich (1933–1945). Weber's description of ancient Chinese Literate society is reiterated because it depicts Weber's “ideal type” status occupation group qualities. Then those qualities are applied to a contemporary organization, the Göring Institute. The way Weber's status group model applies to the Chinese Literate is compared and contrasted to the way the model applies to the Göring Institute. Information about the Göring Institute is drawn from: Psyche and Swastika: Neue Deutsche Seelenheilkunde 1933–1945 (1975), Psychotherapy in the Third Reich (1985), Medicine and Modernity (1997) and Treating Mind and Body (1998) by Geoffrey Cocks. Two findings derived from this comparison are: first, it appears Weber's criteria for his ideal type status group can be applied to a modern group such as the Göring Institute; second, social value conflicts were generated and mitigated by both the Chinese Literati and the Göring Institute. The later finding exemplifies Weber's micro-analysis of class conflict, while the former seems to re-enforce Weber's theory, and Cocks concern, that status groups have more influence in societies that are politically stressed, than in ones that are not.

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