Bureaucratization and Goal Succession in Alternative Organizations

Abstract

A review of the literature of counterculture-inspired efforts at organizing alternatives to commercialism and technocracy reveals that the duration of many of these organizations was quite short. However, in spite of a general fading away of the larger counterculture, some of these efforts did indeed survive. Among the survivors are the crisis centers, organizations originally seeking to provide nondirective, empathetic, problem-solving help to individuals undergoing a personal crisis. An analysis of a sample of crisis centers based in midwestern states reveals that the internal structure of most of them has, with the passage of time, become increasingly formalized. Furthermore, many of these alternative organizations now serve persons who are less socially marginal and more socially acceptable than were the centers' original clients. Our results seem to suggest that, for both internal organizational reasons and external societal reasons, such groups may provide feelings of worth for their members but often change their initial goals somewhat. Also, despite their initial commitment to a less bureaucratic structure alternative organizations in fact become more bureaucratic.