The Large-Scale Formal Organization and the Family Primary Group

Author(s): Mihail Cernea

Source: Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 37, No. 4, Special Section: Macrosociology of
the Family (Nov., 1975), pp. 927-936
Published by: National Council on Family Relations
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/350843
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The Large-Scale Formal Organizationand the
Family Primary Group*
MIHAIL CERNEA**
Institute of Philosophy, Bucharest

The relationship between thefamily as a primary group and the large formal organi-
zation is examined in this paper, the emphasis being on the influence of the family
on theformal organization in which it participates. Data from Romanian coopera-
tive farms show that the introduction of the family as a work unit in the structure has
an important impact on the functioning of this type of organization. Data showing
preference for working in family teams as well as their organization and relationship
to the rural cooperative farm are presented and discussed.

A cardinal research problem both for the
sociology of organizations as well as family
sociology is the relationship between formal
large-scale organizations and primary groups.
Our age is one of an unprecedented
development of formal organizations, what-
ever their nature: economic, administrative-
bureaucratic, scientific, educational, etc., the
efficiency of which is differentially correlated
with the degree of integration of their
subgroups. When the family as a social
grouping is one of the types of groups
included in an organization, a very inter-
esting question comes up regarding the extent
of influence that the family system is able to
exert upon the formal organization.
William Goode (1963) has correctly
pointed out that the sociology of the family
should not confine itself to studying the
influence of the global society upon the family
as a microgroup. For family sociology to go
beyond parochialism and reach the point of
relevant theory-building, it has to reverse the
question and answer another one: in what
ways and to what extent does the family as an
institution influence and control the global
society? Under which circumstances does the
family act as an independent variable?
Of course, such broad theoretical questions
can be answered only through extensive
research on a large variety of specific
*The author is indebted to Professors William Goode,
Reuben Hill, Alex Inkeles, John Mogey, and H. H.
Stahl, as well as to the Editor of this special issue,
Professor Constantina Safilios-Rothschild, for their
valuable comments and suggestions on earlier versions of
this paper.
**Department of Sociology, Institute of Philosophy,
Bucharest, Romania.
instances, in which the relationship between
formal organizations and family systems can
be clearly identified and analyzed. The
present article undertakes the limited task of
analyzing certain specific aspects relevant to
this relationship.
The contemporary village in Romania
offers a propitious social setting for such a
study, since during recent years it has
undergone comprehensive social change due
to nationwide implementation in the country-
side of a large scale formal type of organiza-
tion: the agricultural producer cooperative.
In the following discussion, as far as the fam-
ily system is concerned, we will focus on the
peasant family, while the producer coopera-
tive farm organization will be viewed as the
specific exponent of the global society.
In Romania, at present, the agricultural
producer cooperatives account for 91 per cent
of peasant agricultural land. According to the
Romanian statistical yearbook, these coops
comprise about 3,500,000 families, which
amounts to 94 per cent of all peasant
families. All existing 4,500 producer coop-
erative farms are run on the basis of identical
by-laws. Therefore, the social patterns
'In Romania, the agricultural producer cooperatives
were constituted by the combining of several small or
very small peasant family farms. The collectivization
process started in 1949 in a handful of villages and was
completed throughout the country by 1962. Some 4,500
producer cooperative farms are currently operating.
Each comprises, on the average, about 760 families and
about 2,000 ha. (that is, 5,000 acres). The small farmers
transferred their land and production means to joint
ownership. Therefore, the main features of this type of
cooperative farm society are: (a) common ownership of
land and of the main means of production; (b) collective
organization of agricultural workers; (c) proportional

November 1975 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY 927

established within this type of large-scale
organization are more or less similar
throughout the country. Since the imple-
mentation of the cooperative farms was
essentially a politically-induced rural social
change, it can be inferred that the place
assigned to the family by the cooperative farm
organization mirrors the attitude of the
global social system toward the peasant
family's possible roles. Conversely, the
possible impact of the peasant family upon
the cooperative farm organization, if proven,
should be considered a relevant theoretical
issue.
The conceptualization of the relationship
between the formal organization and the
primary group has not yet been tackled
satisfactorily by modern sociology, possibly
because of some one-sided perspectives and
the small number of empirical investigations.
Litwak and Meyer (1967) were probably right
in pointing out that "sociologists have been
generally more concerned with the incompati-
bilities between bureaucratic organizations
and primary groups than with their comple-
mentarity." An example of this is Max
Weber's argument, endlessly resumed, that
the processes of industrialization and urbani-
zation are slowed down wherever the
extended family system displays a marked
cohesiveness. This one-sided outlook should
be reversed and completed by studying the
complementarity between formal organiza-
tion and primary group.
When I say one-sided, I am also referring
to the research perspectives which have
covered only a relatively limited range of
social situations. Some sociologists have
studied, for instance, the relationship
between the school as a modern organization
and the family as a primary group; but in this
case, the family is situated outside the
distribution of proceeds according to the amount of work
performed by each member. In addition, each family was
attributed by the initial statutes a small plot of land (less
than one acre) for the usufruct of the family household.
Thus, the scattered small, private peasant family farms
were replaced by a large-scale formal organization. The
implementation of this type of formal organization,
through a planned change, sponsored politically and
economically by the government, was meant precisely to
supply a new structure and organization for the human
and natural resources of the traditional village. The
social organization of the village was thus brought to be
consistent with the new socioeconomic and political
structures of the global society.
928 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
(school) organization. Quite a number of
studies concentrate on the relationship
between the industrial enterprise and the
informal primary groups within it, but here
another difference appears: the primary
group under study is not the family but
merely a group of friends within a certain
plant or enterprise.
In exploring the relationship between the
peasant family and the cooperative farm, we
also have the advantage of introducing a
distinct type of social situation, which has
been seldom examined so far. This type of
situation-agricultural-has a relatively low
rate of incidence in Western societies but
quite a high one in socialist societies. It thus
provides a new and fertile field for the
investigation of those interactions, congru-
encies, or incongruencies that exist between
the formal organization and the family-a
primary group within the former. This
facilitates the task of identifying the variety of
existing connections, including feedback,
between formal organizations and primary
groups such as the family.
In order to succeed in interrelating our
basic concepts-the primary group and the
formal organization-we must first define
their characteristic dimensions. According to
Weber's theory, developed by Blau, Mills,
Crozier, Katz, Kahn and others, the modern
formal organization is characterized by the
existence of a pyramidal, formal hierarchy of
authority, the use of formal rules in guiding
organizational behavior, the recourse to
experts in key positions, the appointment and
promotion of personnel on a merit basis to
ensure the competence needed for achieving
the tasks of the organization, impersonal
social relations based on role requirements, a
formal definition of the members' rights and
obligations, and the separation of strategic
decisions from current administrative deci-
sions. The producer cooperative farm
possesses essentially all these characteristics
of formal organizations (Cernea, 1973 and
1974).
As far as the structure of the primary group
is concerned, it is characterized, as pointed
out by Cooley, by dimensions diametrically
opposed to those mentioned above, namely:
face-to-face contact among its members;
personal relationships of a comprehensive,
noninstrumental nature; with goals stemming
from the multifaceted, diffuse interests of its
November 1975
members; an unlimited range of tasks; and
the admission of members on the basis of
such criteria as birth or affection with a
general disregard for competence. The family
is one of the most typical examples of a
primary group, and the peasant family we are
referring to has all these characteristics.
One of the main characteristics of the
socialist cooperative farm organization is its
twofold link with its members as: (1)
individuals and (2) members of family
groups. The identification and definition of
these internal structural links is of para-
mount importance for understanding the
organization, the problems related to its
operation, and the organizational behavior of
its members. On the other hand, the peasant
family finds itself in a dual situation: it exists
itself within the cooperative as a collective
member and at the same time outside the
formal cooperative organization as a semi-
autonomous economic unit, the family
household.
Our field researches led to the conclusion
that the peasant family has a very strong
twofold impact upon the functioning of the
organization: on the one hand, through its
activity outside the cooperative farm organi-
zation and on the other hand through the
activity carried on as a family unit within the
organization. Although both aspects are
closely interrelated and must be examined
together in order to convey the real measure
of the family's impact upon the organization,
within the scope of this paper only the
family's impact from within the organization
will be examined.
1. WORK GROUPS WITHIN THE
ORGANIZATION
By its very creation, the cooperative farm
organization did away with familism which
was, as Sorokin put it, the fundamental
traditional pattern of carrying on agricultural
activities. The peasant family was actually a
work team which ran the family farm as a
small production/consumption unit. How-
ever, following the creation of the large-scale
agricultural organization, the "classic"work-
ing group ceased to be the peasant family
group; within the cooperative it was replaced
from the outset by the brigade (brigada) or
team (echipa). A brigade comprised up to
120-150 people; a team up to 25-30. The
members of each brigada or echipa were
November 1975 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
selected according to functional criteria and
no longer according to family ties. Although
all members of a particular peasant family
might have incidentally found themselves
within the same echipa, it was not any more
the family group or the kinship system which
was used as a matrix for the work unit. Thus,
members of the same family were often
scattered in different echipa and their mutual
family ties did not display any longer a
meaningful impact on their work behavior
and performance.
The substitution of the traditional family
group by this organizational structure was
also strengthened by the pay system based on
the "day work" (zi munca), that is, on the
measurement of the amount of work done
daily by each individual, and not by family
groups. In this way the formal organization of
the cooperative farm deliberately gave up
using the family structure as a work
organization matrix. The family group
structure which offered a micro-team pattern
for agricultural work was fragmented and
contested as an outmoded structure not fitted
to the new conditions.
These forms of work organization (bri-
gada, echipa) and pay (day-work) have been
used in the cooperative farms for about 20
years, from 1949 to 1970. They undoubtedly
represented a more modern operational
principle when compared to the traditional
forms existing before cooperativization. Yet,
as time went by, they revealed quite a number
of organizational shortcomings and a reduced
capacity as economic inducement for the
cooperative farm members (Ceausescu,
1971). It is not the purpose of this study to
deal in detail with the dysfunctional effects of
this system. Instead, we shall examine at
length the "contract payment system" (acord
global) first introduced on an experimental
basis and generalized after it became evident
that economically the old system not only
failed as an incentive for the cooperative farm
members but also drove them away from the
formal organization.
The new "contract payment system"2
radically improved the functioning of the
cooperatives and the organization of working
units and its introduction soon led to
spectacular results on a macrosocial scale.
2We will further refer to the new contract payment
system as the "C.P. system."
929
Between 1970 and 1972, the new C.P. system
was adopted by the overwhelming majority of
producer cooperative farms: 3,237 in 1971
(about 70 per cent of the 4,600 existing ones
at that time) and 4,367 in 1972 (or 96 per
cent). The new system was at first gradually
introduced and finally took over all basic sec-
tors of almost each single cooperative farm.3
Economists have shown that a sizeable part of
the raise in agricultural output for 1970-1973
was due to the new forms of organization and
renumeration introduced under the C.P. sys-
tem (Sandu, 1973) and they emphasize that
this new pay system has mobilized important
labor resources and led to increased yields
without supplementary financial investments.
What are the changes brought about by this
new system in the relationships between the
organization and the family?
The essentially new element introduced
under the team work system is a labor
contract between the cooperative farm
organization and its members. Under this
contract, each year the cooperative assigns a
part of its land (livestock as well) for
cultivation. A lump payment is always
allocated for performing all the tasks on the
assigned land. Those to whom the land is
assigned assume the obligation of guaran-
teeing a certain output for which remunera-
tion is established in advance and which
increases progressively with the quantity
exceeding the limit set under the contract.
Machinery, selected seed, and other facilities
are guaranteed by the cooperative. The
cooperative farm members who are party to
the contract carry on the manual labor
needed in crop growing, weeding, or
harvesting. The more efficient and complete
the manual labor, the better the results.
The written, contractual form of this
mutual understanding institutionalizes more
firmly the relationship between the coopera-
tive farm organization and its members, a
fact which contributes to a closer internal
cohesion of the organization. The contract
lays down mutual obligations in the sense
that the organization is bound to supply all
mechanical work in due time, seeds and
chemical fertilizers in specified quantities,
3In 1972, 75 per cent of the producer cooperative
farms operated under the C.P. system in all the basic
sectors of their activity: 16 per cent in the vegetal sector,
and only 5 per cent in animal husbandry. The share of
each sector went up noticeably in 1973.
930 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
and to pay in cash or in cash and kind. The
cooperative members are under the obliga-
tion to carry out the necessary manual labor
so as to obtain a specified level of agricultural
output.
The institution of such an agreement,
representing a concrete legal formalization,
brings up new types of social and organiza-
tional problems in the life of the cooperative.
The first major problem is: with whom should
the cooperative farm organization conclude
these contracts? In other words, how should
the groups of cooperative members likely to
assume these contractual obligations be
constituted?
The structure under which an organiza-
tion's activity (administrative, military, and
so on) is carried out molds certain types of
groups and creates normative patterns for
their constitution. The work teams can be
made up in several ways. In the case of the
producer cooperative farm, the transition
from the old pay system to the new one made
possible a change from the old classic types of
groups-the brigade, the team-to new types
of groups.
2. THE INTEGRATION OF THE
FAMILY SYSTEM WITHIN THE
STRUCTURE OF THE FORMAL
ORGANIZATION
After initial experiments were carried out
in some producer cooperative farms, the
central authorities in charge of agriculture
decided that such agreements can be
concluded between the cooperative and:
(1) teams made up of 25-30 coop members;
(2) families;
(3) groups of families willing to carry out
joint work;
(4) individuals (members of the coopera-
tive).
Depending on the preference of the
cooperative farm members and on the nature
of the work to be performed, any one of these
units could be constituted as a work unit.
Their very formation is of outstanding
importance as they bring about a deep
restructuring of interpersonal relations and
membership groupings within the cooperative
farm organization.
Since the new rules made possible such a
wide range of options, it is of obvious
sociological interest to investigate the nature
November 1975
 -4 ~. C') 000
of preferred arrangements by the organiza-
1-
C) C000000(oO -IN
"o
v
tion members. In order to identify these
preferences we resort to data from a
t-- -4C .- 14 comprehensive survey conducted in 1972 on a
,:
c) sample of 316 producer cooperative farms
C' selected from all counties. The survey was
cr-
04
0000 C carried out under the sponsorship of the
C- .
40. _n C- C') 00 Ministry of Agriculture, Food Industry, and
Z
Water. Table 1 presents comparative data for
t0 C? 1971 and 1972.
K-. Within the theoretical framework of the
e - C;10
present article, the figures clearly indicate a
Z differential acceptance by the members of
the proiducer cooperative farms of the new
=: O 00 C14-4 - work formations. Although the new system
cl W; -i
CV was fairly quickly accepted by the majority of
the cooperative farm members, who found it
0oo t r- 00 r-
advantageous, their preferences regarding
00
-
the type of working group are unequally
-c, C O-- 'c distributed.
The main significance of the changes from
eg - oC- 00
the organization's point of view could be
Z; oo
0 O0 described as follows : the producer coopera-
tive farm as a large-scale formal organization
oo - has found a way of using the existing family
0 cr (e
\o
cZ
o
, 00 oo
-In --C^
relations among the cooperative members as
a functional equivalent to the previous
organizational structures likely to lead to
a)()
>
-
) O_-4
/-1 tn
0^ 0\ GCO000
vi- , - Cm ON
better performance. In their turn the
cooperative farm families were given the
-t

--r-- o
opportunity (which they did not have for 20
years) to assert themselves as a primary group
F0 or-> ^ 07 6 with productive capability within the organi-
~ sDo' r- - r-
Z C zation, and to use their microgroup cohesion
for the benefit of both the family and the
0
organization.
(-.4
The following conclusions can be drawn
from the figures presented in Table 1.
. . r *a First, the pattern of nonfamily team
o C O
(echipa) is still maintained to a certain
0t o or extent. The team represents a functional
collection of people consisting of members of
0 ^ C'- - 00^ various family groups.4 This type of working
c^ cr unit within the formal organization existed in
the previous period as well and it is generally
S1
00.2
0e c000
K-
0
- characteristic of a modern organization
03
00?
-a 5
K-'
-- dedicated to productive goals.
00 '-3 s 0 00
Secondly, we notice a revival of the family
0 as a social matrix of productive activity but
s:
not within the modern organization. This
seems to be the most significant finding
resulting from this survey.
>a 4The presence of members of the same nuclear family
in the same team is possible but is only sporadic and in
no way defines this type of work team.

November 1975 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY 931

 In all the coops under study, there has been
a noticeable revitalization of the family
system as a working unit, either as an
autonomous family or as a group of families
which takes upon itself the collective function
of a production subsystem. The type called
"group of families" is usually made up of
kin-related nuclear families, but sometimes
of neighboring families (the relative frequency
of these two possible patterns could not be
ascertained in the survey).
Thirdly, it seems that the initial tendency
of the peasants as well as of the formal
organization to resort to the family structure
has become much stronger during the second
year of the C.P. system (1972). The rates of
growth in one year of the work units based on
family ties (the single family and the group of
families) were the highest: 89.1 per cent and
86.6 per cent respectively, compared to only
28.2 per cent for the echipa (see column 12).
The total number of cooperative farm
members working in these two types of family
units in 1972 exceeded by far the number of
those clustered in nonfamily teams (see
column 8). Furthermore, out of the total
number of cooperative farm members who
first worked under the C.P. system in 1972,
39.5 per cent chose the family forms while
only 12.4 per cent entered nonfamily teams.
Last, but not least, a great number of
cooperative farmers (around 50 per cent) tend
to establish an official contractual relation-
ship with the cooperative farm organization
as individuals. At first glance, this last
finding might appear to diminish the
importance of the previous ones about family
revitalization. Four in-depth case studies,
conducted in order to find out the motivation
behind the preference for individual contrac-
tual relationships with the organization (as
opposed to the family type contract) and in
order to assess the family situation of those
favoring individual agreements with the
cooperative, shed more light on the dynamics
involved. These studies were conducted in
1973 in the producer cooperative farms of
Manasia and of Girbovi (Ilfov County), of
Cobadin (Constanta County) and in a group
of coops from Brasov County. They were
intended to identify the signatories of the
individual agreement and their motivations;
their family and professional status; and to
investigate whether the actual work was
932 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
performed by just these individuals or
whether they were assisted by others.
The in-depth case studies helped uncover
dynamics that the national survey could not
reveal. The main finding was that, in most
instances, behind the formal contractual
relationship established by a single individual
with the organization lies this person's family
as the real working agent. The following three
types of situations were identified behind the
aparently uniform legal relationship between
the cooperative and the individual, namely:
(a) relations between the coop and one
single cooperative farm member;
(b) behind the member who formally signs
an individual contract is actually
his family who is the actual working
unit;
(c) two members of the same family (hus-
band-wife, mother-daughter, etc.) sign
two separate individual contracts with
the cooperative for different plots of
land, yet actually they do not work
separately but as a single family group
successively on both plots. Here, too,
the de facto situation contradicts the
de jure one: in reality, the actual re-
lationship of the cooperative is with the
family as a work unit.
Very interesting results were obtained by
the case study conducted at the producer
cooperative farm of Cobadin.5 When the
individual-cooperative farm contractual rela-
tionships were submitted to scrutiny, it was
found that the signatory of the contract for
maize growing does not work alone but is
helped by one or two members of his family.
In 50 per cent of the cases the signatory is not
even the one who puts in the largest amount
of labor. Typical cases were identified in
which the signatory of the individual contract
is currently assigned a quite different job
within the producer cooperative farm of
Cobadin (such as warehouse keeper, teamster
or member of the vegetable growing team).
He (or she) has, in addition, concluded an
individual work contract for which he (or she)
works during leisure time and in which he (or
she) is usually helped by the family on
Sundays. (For instance, one who is a member
in a team of 25 working in the vegetable
section of the coop receives no help from his
family in his work on the coop team. But in
5This study was done with the assistance of Georgeta
Bilici.
November 1975
working the plot of land assigned under the
C.P. system, he is helped by several
members of the family on a rotation basis.)
Another finding of the case study of
three cooperative organizations in Brasov
County is that in certain cases the cooperative
organizations conclude agreements with
noncoop members, that is, workers or
employees who are not members of the
producer cooperative farm but happen to live
in the same village. What is significant is the
fact that these noncoop workers also resort
to a family pattern in order to carry out the
work on the assigned plot of land during their
leisure time.
In light of these findings, the situations
discussed under "b" and "c," which are
recorded in the official statistics of the coops
as an individually-performed activity, are in
fact a concerted effort of family groups.
Many individuals cannot otherwise be
mobilized to work directly by the cooperative
farm. Obviously, given the contraction
between the de jure situation statistically
recorded and the de facto situation, no
aggregate estimates are available regarding
the prevalence of this phenomenon through-
out the country. However, it has been
identified in all the coops studied in depth.
Another interesting finding from the
in-depth case studies stems from the
possibility of checking the number of
signatories of family contracts or of contracts
of groups of families against the actual
number of persons who work in the fields. As
can be seen in Table 1 (columns 5 and 10),
the average number of cooperative members
nominally listed for each family contract is
1.5. It seems that in almost 50 per cent of the
cases the written agreement concluded on
behalf of the family is signed by a single
member who "officially" represents the
others in the formal relationship with the
cooperative. In fact, however, the actual
average number of persons working on the
basis of family contracts was found in in-
depth case studies to be much higher than
that indicated in the national survey. The
same holds true with respect to the groups of
families: the average number of persons was
5.3 and 5.6 respectively for the two years
examined, but in the case studies it was found
to vary between 7 and 10 persons. These
groups are multifamily units, made up
voluntarily of three to five families (some-
November 1975 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
times even seven to eight) who are either kin
related or neighboring/friend families.
3. SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS OF FAMILY
GROUPS WITHIN THE
FORMAL ORGANIZATION
We shall elaborate on the above-mentioned
findings since, undoubtedly, they have a
macrosocietal significance. Because of the
mass rural-urban migration which occurred
in recent years, many coops have experienced
a great shortage of manpower and constantly
need more intense effort from their members
in order for the needed work to be performed.
As a result of the new C.P. system, the
cooperative farm organization receives valua-
ble help from the family system in mobilizing
potential labor resources.
A significant evolution and departure from
initial patterns is to be noted. The formal
coop organization did not have from the
outset such a flexible policy towards the
family institution. When the producer coop-
erative farms were first created, their official
rules did not take into account the possibility
of using the organizational capability of the
family primary group. On the contrary, some
spontaneous, local attempts to use the family
as a work matrix were discouraged for ideo-
logical or technical reasons. During 1959-
1961, for instance, some cooperative farms
spontaneously resorted to assigning plots of
land to family groups, who were held wholly
responsible for working them. This trend was
blocked, however, by a decision adopted at
the National Conference of collectivist
peasants of December, 1961, following
criticism against this formula. The official
"recommendations" adopted by the confer-
ence specified:
. . .the need has arisen to give up the distribu-
tion of the land to families-a method used in
some collective farms-because it leads to a scat-
tering of the fields, to inadequate use of agrotech-
nical rules, to delays in the execution of agricul-
tural labors and prevents the supplementary re-
muneration in accordance with the yields obtained.
(Consfatuirea pe tara a taranilor collectivisti,
1962)
The contract between the coop and the
family stimulates the family members to carry
out a certain amount of work in due time on
the cooperative's land assigned under
contract. Since as a rule additional labor
investments bring about increases in output
and income, the signatory of the contract
933
becomes interested in mobilizing the other
members of his family (the contract does not
stipulate this, but does not formally prevent it
either). As a matter of fact, the coop member
knows from the outset (when he signs up for
the contract) that he will have to rely on other
members of his family. They often cannot
work full days since they may be employed by
state enterprises or they may be attending
school. However, they can work part-time
and only occasionally full days. A now
common sight in the village are the noncoop
employees hurrying to the fields after they
have completed their working day, in order to
help a family member in his work for the
coop. The clustering of these fragmentary
labor resources makes up a sizeable labor
force and, under certain conditions, plays a
decisive role in the completion of agricultural
work.
Because of its complex and bureaucratic
nature the cooperative farm organization
cannot directly mobilize these fragmentary
resources which are not available on a regular
basis. The family is the only "organization"
capable of doing this for the cooperative
farm. The organization is unable to measure
such irregular contributions in order to
reward them, whereas the family is not even
concerned with this problem. In this sense,
the family system fulfills a function necessary
to the formal bureaucratic organization
which the latter cannot accomplish by itself.
Thus, the family system has a considerable
impact upon the functioning of the formal
organization and upon the agricultural sector
of the national economy.
We can conclude that this impact is rooted
in some of the specific characteristics of the
family primary group which are not typical of
the bureaucratic organization which enable
the family to achieve what the formal
organization cannot. These characteristics
are: the specific solidarity of the family; the
common interests and goals of the primary
group; parental authority; affective relations
among family members which prove to be an
efficient factor in unitary action; the elasticity
of the primary group and its capacity for
adjustment to nonstandardized tasks (Lit-
wak, 1968); and the ability of the family
system to accommodate its role-set and
existing patterns to new demands of outside
agencies (Hill, 1972). These characteristics of
the family have had a substantial bearing
934 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
upon work performance within the coop and
eventually they resulted in changing the
organization itself: the organization has
widened the range of behavior accepted
within its hierarchy, in order to reassign an
official status to family ties as work matrix.
Thus, intrafamily connections operate as a
micronetwork that collects and directs frag-
mentary and variable labor resources which
would otherwise be wasted. The convergence
of the family and the organization appears to
be at the present stage beneficial to both. On
a nationwide scale this has led to a marked
increase in work attendance and to higher
yields in recent years as compared with the
past.
The complementarity of the primary group
and of the bureaucratic organization thus
achieved heightens the latter's efficiency in
implementing its ultimate functions. This
no longer represents an isolated phenomenon
confined to a few scattered coops, but is a
feature common to all producer cooperative
farms throughout the country, a tendency
that points to the impact of the family upon
other social institutions.
One might ask whether this rise in
efficiency is obtained at the expense of
slackened rules in the formal organization,
caused by its acceptance of the principle of
familism. The answer to this question
depends on the type of assessment criterion.
If the strength of the cooperative farm organi-
zation is defined in terms of its degree of goal
attainment (goals which are assigned to the
coop both by its members and by the global
social system), the answer will be negative.
The record of recent results obtained from
the widespread acceptance of the C.P. system
indicates a nationwide rise in output and,
more significantly, the increased work atten-
dance of coop members. This amounts to a
closer identification of the individuals with
the formal organization, a stronger social
cohesion within the cooperative and an
increased normative convergence of the
organization and the family primary group.
The result of this process is a telling
example of the way in which some properties
of the informal social organization are' used
by the formal bureaucratic organization. If
we define as informal the interaction patterns
which evolve in response to those formally
prescribed, it becomes clear that in the new
system the cooperative farm organization
November 1975
successfully relates these interaction patterns
with its goals. The difference lies in the fact
that the primary social group to which this
paper refers (the family) did not come into
existence within the organization (as is true
with primary groups in industrial enter-
prises). Instead, it precedes the formal
organization and it operates outside it; yet the
problem confronting the formal organization
is similar.
By relying for certain tasks on the family
primary group, the cooperative farm assigns
part of the global functions of the organiza-
tion to this group, formalizing this primary
group as a work matrix within the
organization and as one of its subsystems.
Undoubtedly, the acceptance of the family
work matrix introduces a certain flexibility
within the "pure," classic, modern, "bureau-
cratic" organization, but it does not alter the
nature of the organization. Of course, this
process is limited to only certain levels of the
organizational bureaucratic hierarchy. The
family action pattern is incorporated at just
one of the levels of organizational hierarchy,
namely, at the level of execution of
production tasks. In other words, it is incor-
porated in the productive-technical sub-
system of the cooperative, but not in all of its
subsystems. Thus, we do not find an invasion
of the family structure at all the hierarchical
levels of the organization. To be more
precise, the family decision-making pattern is
not absorbed within the management sub-
system of the cooperative organization. The
main characteristics of the cooperative as a
formal bureaucratic organization remain
unaltered: the cooperative is an impersonal
organization built on the principles of
specialization and separation of functions in
management, administration, production;
the authority structure of the formal organi-
zation remains intact and so does its decision-
making system. Thus, if on the one hand,
family patterns would spread to all the levels
of the formal organization, the very nature of
the organization would change. On the other
hand, the obliteration of the family pattern
would remove a social structure with a
built-in mobilization potential. Therefore, we
can conclude that within certain limits the
coordination of the family system with the
bureaucratic cooperative provides a method
of maximizing the efficiency of the modern
cooperative organization.
November 1975 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
It would be wrong to conclude that, given
the stronger position of the organization in its
relationship with the family, the latter has no
direct means of imposing penalties on the
organization in case it falls short of fulfilling
its obligations to its member families. Some
basic means of control upon the organization
lie with the families: namely, its members'
participation or non-participation in the
activities of the cooperative. The family holds
a sort of command post over the labor
resources of its members; the very function-
ing of the organization is influenced and
"controlled" by the family's decisions about
the utilization of its labor resources.6
In light of this, we may say that the
productive economic function of the peasant
family was not wholly obliterated through the
creation of the large cooperative farms. The
macrosocietal changes achieved in Romania
wrought a profound transformation in the
functions and structures of the peasant
family, as we have shown in another study
(Cernea, 1971). However, it would be wrong
to assume that the peasant family has
completely ceased to act as a productive unit
(remaining only a consumer unit) and fails to
exert a constant feedback upon the formal
cooperative farm organization. On the
contrary, it still plays a very important role in
the production process within the large-scale
organization.
Under new institutional circumstances and
constraints, the family maintains its vitality
as a work unit and provides a primary group
type of matrix which proves to be functional
for the organization, for its individual
members, and for the global society as well.
There are definite types of activities, like
mobilization of fragmentary resources, ac-
complishment of nonstandardized tasks, and
provision of motivation, for the fulfillment of
which the primary group is better suited than
the bureaucratic large-scale organization.
tnder certain circumstances, like those
described in the present paper, the accomp-
lishment of such activities becomes critical
for the organization or even for the society as
6Through occasional infringement on their specific
agreements with the member families, the cooperative
farms display a kind of organizational pathology, quite
common to various kinds of bureaucratic organizations.
By doing so, they elicit a negative climate within the
organization which in turn affects the behavior of these
families in the future cycle of production.
935
a whole. Thus, the family acts as an
independent variable and the formal organi-
zation becomes dependent or partially
dependent on the family, at least until it finds
an appropriate substitute.
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