Search

The appearance of impropriety is often linked to a perceived or potential conflict of interest, which is a situation in which someone in a position of trust has competing professional or personal interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the application of rationalization theory in relation to the medical profession. The widely known and extremely important developments affecting the medical profession include antitrust decisions, corporatization, conglomeration, bureaucratization, technological change and unionization. The article discusses the effects of contemporary social changes on medicine as a case study of the applicability of the Weberian theory of rationalization to the modern social world. The rational social changes are leading to greater external control over, and formal rationalization of, medicine and these, in turn, are contributing to the deprofessionalization of medicine. The theory of rationalization has allowed to see clear linkages among a series of disparate social changes and to understand how they are changing the nature of medicine and contributing to the deprofessionalization of physicians. Weberian theory is of great utility in helping understand the social changes in the medical profession and generating hypotheses about the future of medical profession.

The article reports on the concept of McDonaldization and its effect on American sociology. McDonaldization is one of the key causes of some recent developments in the sociology of the U.S. However, not all aspects of the modern world are McDonaldized to the same extent. McDonaldization is also one of the causes of a variety of problems that are plaguing the society. The negative aspects of McDonaldization are the rationalization of sociology, the irrationality of rationality and the McDonaldization of sociology textbooks. McDonaldization leads sociology further away from creativity and more towards predictability and uniformity of work on the academic assembly line. Another aspect of the McDonaldization of American sociological theory is the fact, that to succeed an American theorist has to be seen as part of an extant tradition. Historically, this has led to specialization within sociological theory and hence the development of metasociological analysis. However, such analysis also possesses certain limitations.

The article reports on the concept of hyperrationality, which is an extension of the Weberian and neo-Weberian theory of rationality. Hyperrationality involves the simultaneous existence of practical, theoretical, substantive and formal rationality. All of the subtypes of rationality are used in this case, in the same way they are conventionally used by Weber and neo-Weberians. Each of these subtypes exists to a high degree. That is, in a hyperrational system it is important not just that all four types of rationality exist, but that each of them flourishes. There is a high degree of practical, theoretical, substantive and formal rationality in the hyperrational system. Each of the subtypes of rationality is interrelated with all of the others. Out of this interaction a new level and type of rationality emerges. This means that there is synergism among the four types of rationality, allowing for the emergence of an extraordinarily high level of rationality. Hyperrationality is a methodological utopia, but it is not an ideal in the sense that society, all societies, should move toward hyperrationality.

The article focuses on sociologist Karl Mannheim's theory on rationality and rationalization. Mannheim's conceptualization of substantial and functional rationalities is neater and easier to use than the Weberian concepts of formal and substantive rationalities. Mannheim's sense of substantial rationality yields a clearer and more defensible than Weber's notion of substantive rationality. While Mannheim's sense of the relationship between substantial and functional rationalities is a significant advance, his ideas on substantial and functional irrationalities appear to add little, largely because they are defined residually. Of mixed significance, at least from the point of view of McDonaldization, are his notions of self-rationalization and self-observation. In the end, the understanding of McDonaldization is enhanced by rethinking it from the point of view of Mannheim's theory of rationality. The most important contribution of Mannheim's theory is to point towards the threat to the ability to think, rather than the Weberian threat to human values.

The article presents an introduction to the book "Explorations in Social Theory: From Metatheorizing to Rationalization." This is the first of two simultaneously published volumes that offer an overview of author's work over the last three decades, primarily in the areas of social theory and the sociology of consumption. While the chapters in this publication are mainly theoretical in nature, and those in the second volume focus on the substantive sociology of consumption, there really is no clear dividing line between these two bodies of work. In this book, the author used the concept of McDonaldization to do a meta-analysis of sociology. He demonstrated that sociology, like the rest of society, has undergone a process of McDonaldization and this helps to better understand some of the problems in the discipline as a whole and in sociological theory. In addition to laying out the basic dimensions of McDonaldization, he also discussed its relationship to a number of contemporary theoretical ideas--postindustrialism, postfordism, postmodemism and globalization theory.

This article discusses the theory of rationalization developed by Max Weber. Weber opened up rationalization processes to an encompassing empirical investigation without reinterpreting them in an empiricist manner so that precisely the aspects of rationality of societal learning processes would disappear. Weber analyzes the process disenchantment in the history of religion, which is said to have fulfilled the necessary internal conditions for the appearance of Occidental rationalism; in doing so he employs a complex, but largely unclarified concept of rationality. On the other hand, in his analysis of societal rationalization as it makes its way in the modern period, he allows himself to be guided by the restricted idea of purposive rationality. Weber shares this concept with Richard Marx, on the one hand, and with Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, on the other. Weber specifies empirical indicators for the formal rationalization of law, above all improvement of the formal qualities of law insofar as these can be seen in the analytic systematization of legal propositions and the professional treatment of legal norms by legal experts and in the reduction of legitimacy to legality. Weber is not able to fit both moments into the pattern of partial rationalization of developed capitalist societies so as to safeguard the consistency of his judgments of moral and legal development.