Content area
Abstract
Massachusetts' state-funded community residential programs for mentally handicapped persons have become increasingly subjected to state regulations and other external demands pressuring them to rationalize their internal behavioral and normative structures. The study is a qualitative examination of organizational rationalization and its effects on the social interactions within one such program as contrasted with another program which is comparable in purpose and structure except that it is privately funded, has significantly less exposure to state regulatory pressures and has significantly less rationalized internal structures.
Field observations were conducted over a seven month period in combination with semi-structured depth interviews and document studies. A historical and theoretical framework is provided as a context for the presentation and to assist in the analysis of data.
The study describes the members, formal structures and physical environments of the subject programs. It contrasts the perceptions and relationships observed in the more regulated and rationalized program with those observed in the other site. It also compares the external and internal organizational constraints and the internal normative structures operating upon the members of the two programs.
The study finds significant differences between the two programs with respect to how the staff and handicapped residents perceive and interact with one another. The staff of the more rationalized program more frequently describe their handicapped members in positivistic terms; their interactions with these individuals are more frequently of an instrumental nature. Although both subject programs state the decrease of social distance between the handicapped residents and others to be a goal, the study finds that the handicapped residents within the more rationalized program experience significantly less affective, expressive interaction not only with the staff, but also with each other and with persons in the surrounding community. Other implications of the findings are discussed. The study concludes that the rationalized structures of the state-funded and regulated subject program work generally to restrain the affective, expressive social integration of the program's handicapped members and to maintain the social stigma assigned to them.
