Social action
Social action, in contrast, is where people make different choices. Weber suggested that there were four ideals. Ideals models would not necessarily be favourable. One of these ideals was what he called instrumental rational actions, where people weigh up the choices that are open to them and then choose rationally what to do. This is comparable to the ideas of the economists in the perfect competition model. In practice, it seems difficult to reconcile the rational model with so much advertising, which clearly does not try to inform people. Identical products can be sold at widely different prices at different points of sale.
The second of Weber’s ideals was valuing rational actions where the ends are given, for example, with …show more content…
We can see that whereas many sociologists thought that progress was both desirable and inevitable other sociologists especially the postmodernists would dispute this.
Action Theories
Weber talked about social action theory. He wrote that there are an infinite number of subjective meanings which actors can give to their actions. He classifies four main types.
The first is called the instrumentally rational action which means that people calculate what is the most effective method of achieving a particular goal, whether it is desirable or not. In businesses this could include maximising profits. If we are looking for an evaluation of this we can see that at the present time some firms will supply arms to whatever countries claim that they need them and can even supply both sets of factions to all countries at the same time. There were complaints in 2014 by some churches and Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) that arms fairs still take place whereas protesters have been prevented from taking any action or even …show more content…
There is no way of calculating whether the means are effective. For example people in many religions have some idea of an afterlife and will have different methods of worship and clearly there is no way of testing whether these are effective or not.
The third type that Weber mentions is traditional actions. This is where people carry out routine customary actions without any thought or choice. We can see evidence for this in the ways that some organisations have failed to take account of changes around them even if the original ideas have been superseded. One of the points which some university students have commented about is that this criticism is not confined to business organisations. Some university students have commented that the credit crunch has been very important for many countries but academics, whether writing textbooks or teaching, have ignored this.
The fourth type of action which Weber mentions is that which expresses emotions. Emotion could lead to violence as people can get frustrated by issues within countries and organisations, for example automated repetitive phone messages.
Evaluation of