Functionalism Revisited 22
A practice based Functionalism
This suggests that functionalism/structuralism might hold some valuable points; not because they
represent axiomatic, law-like regularity that exerts the power onto every individual in society; but
because what they find is what individuals achieve in their lives, locally and collectively. Mouzelis also
argues that regularities found in social and economic life cannot be denied over voluntarism because
“they often play a crucial role in shaping the world we live in” (1995, p. 112). Creativities in such regular
practices should also be emphasized. However, in most cases, people achieve what they think are regular
and common in a very “taken-for-granted” manner (Giddens, 1979, p.219). As a result, changes (de-
routinization, in Giddens’ term, 1979, p.220) of such regularity are mostly gradual through a time span –
e.g., music and language.
Rice and Gattiker (2000) propose a similar approach. They devise a temporal phase of
structuration processes – adoption, transformation (use), and institutionalization.
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They are aware of the
possibility of weakening the original ideas of structuration by introducing such time phase (See Lea,
O'Shea, & Fung, 1995); but argue that actors tend to integrate habitual practices across time and places;
thus, they do not perceive inseparable nature of structuration (See also Haines, 1988). On one hand, this
confirms the notion of regularity of human actions. That is, they also realize the durable nature of
structured practices, which becomes an important feature of structuration. Hence, the regularity becomes
almost a causal agent not because they have a causal power, but because human actors mostly act upon it.
On the other hand, their phases indicate that a contextual moment of social organizational life may
provoke different expectations about outcomes. For example, in the phase of adoption and
implementation of information technology, organizations are more likely to face possibilities of
organizational change, which may involve in both attributes of Computer information System (CIS;
attributes triggers motifs) – i.e., e-mail has certain qualities that separate itself from other communication
technologies – and cultural context of the organizations – i.e., e-mail (carbon-copying) can be used in a
political content in a specific organizations. Institutionalization may involve more structured practices
around CIS use. More importantly they point out that the existing research bodies about the CIS impacts
may represent frames of different aspects of structuration.
Functions are derived from human actions rather than axiomatic principles. People, actors,
facilitate regularity of structural properties in their interaction and live within a continuity as long as they
can be satisfied with, feel competent in, and tolerate situational circumstances. It is also sustained unless
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DiMaggio and Powell (1983) also propose similar processes as structuration: 1) interaction among
organizations; 2) emergence of interorganizational structure; 3) increase in the information load; and 4)
the development of mutual awareness (p. 148).
Convention