Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-24T16:13:04.539Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Queues: Tensions between Institution and Organization

from Part 2 - Organization in and around Markets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2019

Göran Ahrne
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
Nils Brunsson
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
Get access

Summary

The formation of queues is an institution: it is created and managed largely by the emergent norms of those in the queue. Research on queues has demonstrated that it is more and more common for organizations to intervene in the ordering of queues. In this chapter we investigate why and how queues are organized and the tensions that arise when a strong institution becomes the subject of partial organization. As an institution, the idea of how to form a queue has strong legitimacy resting on commonly accepted values of equality and fairness. The fact that a queue is organized with one or several organizational elements does not necessarily mean that the queue as an institution is replaced by organization; on the contrary, organizational decisions may support the queue as an institution. In other cases, however, organization is a challenge to the legitimacy of the queue; instead it is the organization that uses its power to further its own interest in selecting the preferred customers from a larger number of people standing in a line. When an organization decides the order in which people are admitted, little remains of the institution of the queue.

Type
Chapter
Information
Organization outside Organizations
The Abundance of Partial Organization in Social Life
, pp. 177 - 188
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahrne, G. (1990) Agency and Organization. Towards an Organizational Theory of Society. London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Alexander, M., MacLaren, A., O`Gorman, K., & White, C. (2012) Priority Queues: Where Social Justice and Equity Collide. Tourism Management 33: 875–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allon, G. & Hanany, E. (2012) Cutting in Line: Social Norms in Queues. Management Science 58(3): 493506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brady, F. (2002) Lining up for Star-Wars Tickets: Some Ruminations on Ethics and Economics Based on an Internet Study of Behavior in Queues. Journal of Business Ethics 38(1): 157–65.Google Scholar
Ehn, B. & Löfgren, O. (2010) The Secret World of Doing Nothing. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Elster, J. (2009) Norms. In Bearman, P. and Hedström, P. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. 195217.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hraba, J. (1985) Consumer Shortages in Poland: Looking beyond the Queue into a World of Making Do. The Sociological Quarterly 26(3): 387404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J., & Thaler, R. (1986) Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics. The Journal of Business 59(4): 285300.Google Scholar
Larson, R. C. (1987) Perspectives on Queues: Social Justice and Psychology of Queueing. Operations Research 35(6): 895905.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liang, C-C. (2017) Enjoyable Queuing and Waiting Time. Time & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X17702164.Google Scholar
Mann, L. (1969) Queue Culture: The Waiting Line as a Social System. The American Journal of Sociology 75(3): 340–54.Google Scholar
Rafaeli, A., Kedmi, E., Vashdi, D., & Barron, G. (2005) Queues and Fairness. A Multiple Study Experimental Investigation (manuscript). Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa: Israel.Google Scholar
Sandel, M. J. (2012) What Money Can´t Buy. The Moral Limits of Markets. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Sartre, J.-P. (1976) Critique of Dialectical Reason. Volume 1. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Schwartz, B. (1974) Waiting, Exchange, and Power: The Distribution of Time in Social Systems. American Journal of Sociology 79(4): 841–69.Google Scholar
Thompson, J. D. (1967) Organizations in Action. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Wexler, M. (2015) Re-thinking Queue Culture: The Commodification of Thick Time. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 35(3/4): 165–81.Google Scholar
Williams, D. (2009) Grounding the Regime of Precarious Employment: Homeless Day Laborers’ Negotiations of the Job Queue. Work and Occupations 36(3): 209–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zohar, E., Mandelbaum, A., & Shimkin, N. (2002) Adaptive Behavior of Impatient Customers in Tele-Queues: Theory and Empirical Support. Management Science 48(4): 566–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×