ABSTRACT
In their activities and relationships people constitute societies. They also, simultaneously, constitute organisations and other groups. This paper is a consideration of the connections, overlaps and tensions between the processes by which societies and organisations are constituted. The paper argues that it is valuable to distinguish organisational processes of constitution from societal ones, to analyse these processes into their separate components and to consider the extent to which they are interconnected. To do this, a good deal of social theory (classical and contemporary) is reviewed and criticised, and then, following a critical discussion of some of the work of Anthony Giddens (1984; 1985; 1990; 1992), a realist analysis of organisation and their relations with society is developed (cf. Sayer 1992; 2000; Layder 1990; Ranson et al. 1980; Greenwood and Hinnings 1988).
