The Old Order Amish Steering Committee: A Case Study in Organizational Evolution

• Published in: Social forces Vol. 69; no. 2; pp. 603 - 616
• Main Author: Olshan, Marc A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chapel Hill, N.C The University of North Carolina Press 01.12.1990; University of North Carolina Press; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: Amish; AMISH COMMUNITY; Amish culture; Associations; Case studies; Case Study; Christianity; Churches; Committees; Communities; Conscription; Corporate profiles; Draft; Environmental aspects; Evolution; Formal organization; Government bureaucracy; Government regulation; Laws, regulations and rules; Mennonite; Minority & ethnic groups; Organization; Organizational research; Organizations; Religion (Amish); RELIGION (IN GENERAL); Social life & customs; Social research; Steering
• ISSN: 0037-7732; 1534-7605
• DOI: 10.1093/sf/69.2.603

The founding of the Old Order Amish Steering Committee provides an unusual opportunity to identify environmental factors that may pressure collectivities to formally organize. Amish communities, despite a normative stance antithetical to central authority and hierarchy, felt compelled to create a national organization as the best means of effectively articulating their views to a proliferating array of government bureaucracies. The Amish's perceived need to create the Steering Committee makes clear that the legal environment may be coercive independent of the substantive character of particular laws. The mere pervasiveness of government standards, codes, regulations, and programs forces collectivities subject to them to adopt bureaucratic structures. The Steering Committee's evolution confirms the pervasiveness and decisiveness of the legal infrastructure, features only sporadically appreciated in the organizational literature.