ABSTRACT
The Weber-social action-institutional strand of sociological thinking takes into account both the meaningful activity of the individual and the larger-scale questions of historical change and economic and political conflicts. Marx's key concepts of class, exploitation, labour process and alienation played a growing part in the sociology of work and organisation after the mid-1960s, sometimes being used as analytical instruments and sometimes in a more directly Marxist way when their discussion is tied to an interest in actually affecting consciousness. Scott observes, however, that the tendency for institutionalism to emphasise 'convergence, conformity and isomorphism' at the expense of attention to power and conflicting interests has been countered by a new emphasis on human agency in institutional shaping. Discourses are sets of concepts, statements, terms and expressions which constitute ways of talking or writing about a particular aspect of life, thus framing the way people understand and act with respect to those areas of existence.
