Some Sociological Observations on the Response of Israeli Organizations to New Immigrants

Preliminary observation suggests that the contact between Israeli officials and newly arrived immigrants from traditional societies is considerably less "bureaucratic" than might have been predicted. For example, analysis of several cases of such bureaucrat-client relationships indicates that officials often add the role of teacher to their relatively specific roles as bureaucrats by teaching newcomers how to perform in the role. Moreover, the official often becomes not only a teacher but also a kind of informal leader. This indicates that under certain conditions, formal organizations may give birth to incipient social movements, a direction of organizational change wholly unanticipated in the theoretical literature. The case material is analyzed in terms of (1) a theory of role impingement in which bureaucratic roles are seen to become intertwined with roles that are bureaucratically irrelevant to the conduct of formal organization and (2) a theory of socialization where the official serves as socializing agent for his clients. Elihu Katz is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago; S. N. Eisenstadt is professor of sociology and chairman of the department in the Eliezer Kaplan School of Economics and Social Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.'