The Personal System and the Sociocultural System in Large-Scale Organizations

A central problem in social psychology concerns the relevance of individual (and modal) personality for the functioning of sociocultural systems. This problem is of especial interest in the case of the large-scale organization. However, little progress has been made despite the growing literature in this field. Empirical work is often overly narrow or conceptually sectarian. Greater attention should be given, we believe, to the development of a more comprehensive analytic scheme encompassing three major domains: (a) the individual personality; (b) the organization as a collective enterprise; and (c) the interrelations and reciprocal impact of individual and organization. We propose several areas of analysis (sets of variables) within each domain, and we cite two studies that indicate needed directions of further investigation.