People Processing Organizations: An Exchange Approach

Abstract

This paper sets forth a framework for analyzing the role of organization-environment relations in defining the classification-disposition functions of people-processing organizations. People processing organizations are defined as attempting to achieve changes in their clients not by altering basic personal attributes, but by conferring on them a public status and relocating them in a new set of social circumstances. The paper's basic proposition is that people-processing organizations employ classification-disposition systems that reflect, in part, organizational adaptations to the constraints of their exchange relations with various market units receiving the processed clients. Using a power-dependence paradigm, variables which increase or decrease the organization's dependence on its market units are identified. The consequences of these exchange relations on the organization's classification-disposition system are then explored.