Another early attempt at classifying organizations was undertaken by Blau and Scott (1962). They categorized organizations on the basis of who benefits (cui bono? is the Latin phrase) and came up with four types:

1. Businesses where owners were the major beneficiaries.

2. Mutual Benefit organizations which distributed benefits among the membership (mutual insurance companies, housing co-operatives).

3. Service organizations in which clients were the beneficiaries (schools, universities, hospitals).

4. Commonweal organizations that benefited society at large ( United Way ).

As Marx noted, it is always useful to ask who benefits most from a particular type of organization (or from a societal state of affairs such as, today, limited availability of day care), but it is obvious that there is considerable overlap among Blau and Scott's types. For example, universities are service organizations as well as commonweal organizations, in that society at large benefits from an educated populace. Businesses benefit their owners, but also their employees and, by generating purchasing power, the community in which they are situated, and, potentially, the whole society. Not just the shareholders are affected when a GM plant is shut down, as, unfortunately, we might see in the near future given what is going on in the economy.

Question:

Take each of the categories defined by Blau and Scott. Think of additional examples. does the examples fit neatly into a particular category or is there overlap with other categories? After you share your ideas with your group, the chairperson will communicate a summary of your discussion to the rest of the class.