Managerial Ideology and the Social Control of Deviance in Organizations

Weiss examines the disease model of alcoholism and how bureaucratically rigid organizations use it to justify their control of employee behavior. He looks at the relations among control programs encountered by management and their inclination to have an alcoholism program based on this disease model. The results of his research suggest that those companies faced with greater control problems tend to have a more bureaucratic organizational structure and are more likely to base their alcoholism program on the view that it is a progressive, fatal disease characterized by poor on-the-job performance.