1. A COMMENT ON OPERATIONALIZING THE NORM CONCEPT.
- Author
-
Hebert, F. Ted and McLemore, Lelan E.
- Subjects
- *
NORMATIVITY (Ethics) , *PERSPECTIVE (Art) , *BELIEF & doubt , *BEHAVIOR , *CONFORMITY , *ATTITUDE (Psychology) - Abstract
The article focuses on the author's comment on the paper "The Effect of Organization Size Upon Normative Diversity," by D. Michael Betz, that appeared in the March 1972 issue of the journal "Social Science Quarterly." Conceptually, the norm construct is weakened to the point of triviality by reasoning that "where two or more individuals share a perspective or attitude such shared perspectives represent a normative environment for those individuals and other individuals in their midst." In standard usage, the norm concept has reference to widely shared sets of beliefs regarding appropriate behavior where these beliefs are not only shared but believed to be shared and are supported by social mechanisms encouraging conformity. Betz has examined attitude diversity, not norm diversity and has shown that with respect to three questions, diversity of attitudes is more common in large organizations than in small. Only Betz's unfortunate definition of the norm concept permits labeling these attitudes norms.
- Published
- 1973