week1_Kelemtrans_Pengantar

Sociological approach
• Assumptions:
– Individuals as utility satisficers: the choice of a course of action depends on the
interpretation of a situation; Individuals seek to define and express their identity in
socially appropriate ways
– Bounded rationality: individuals’ behavior is not fully strategic but bounded by their own
worldview
• Institutions as culture, including, not just formal rules, procedures or norms, but the symbol
systems, cognitive scripts, and moral templates that provide the “frames of meaning” guiding
human action
• Institutions are taken-for-granted to avoid scrutiny: Institutions are seen as culturally-specific
practices, akin to the myths and ceremonies devised by many societies, and assimilated into
organizations as a result of transmission of cultural practices
– Bureaucratic practices
• Institutions provide the cognitive scripts, categories and models to interpret others’ behavior
• Institutions assign role, meaning, value, image to actors
• Institutions are social construction: there is interactive and mutually-constitutive relationship
between institutions and individual action/ behavior; individual recognizes as well as
responds with institutions
• The logic of appropriateness: institution develops to enhance the social legitimacy of the
actors’ behavior