1st Edition

Organizing the Blind The case of ONCE in Spain

By Roberto Garvía Copyright 2017
132 Pages
by Routledge

132 Pages
by Routledge

132 Pages
by Routledge

This book is a case study which narrates the history of the National Organization of the Spanish Blind (ONCE), established in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Contrary to other affluent countries where most blind people live on welfare benefits, the Spanish blind enjoy full employment. Furthermore, the average income of the Spanish blind is higher than that of the sighted. Why is this so? Why... Read more

Introduction

Chapter 1. Origins

Chapter 2. The Challenge of the Original Goals

Chapter 3. A New Organizational Culture

Chapter 4. The Blind and People with Other Disabilities

Chapter 5. Gigantism and Containment

Chapter 6. The Future of the ONCE

Biography

Roberto Garvía is Professor of Sociology at the University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain. His research has focused on the sociology of organizations, comparative historical sociology, economic sociology, and sociolinguistics.

'This book is institutional theory at its best. It is on a par with the classics in that school. Garvia’s book shows the importance of historical case studies to unravel the evolutionary dynamics of organisations and their embeddedness in large institutional contexts. It is above all a fascinating account of the process of 'displacement of goals' in one organization. We are surrounding by them and yet they are so poorly studied. Organizing the Blind helps to fill that void thanks to the enormous research craft of the author.' - José Luis Alvarez, INSEAD, France 

'In Organizing the Blind, Garvía shows that organizations are malleable tools that adapt to changing circumstances, and depart from their original purposes in order to survive and thrive. Drawing on a prodigious amount of archival work and interviews with key decision-makers, he dissects the Spanish National Organization for the Blind, praising its achievements and exposing its failings and contradictions. A major contribution to the sociology of organizations and to political sociology, which echoes and amplifies the theoretical insights of Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance and Robert Michels’s iron law of oligarchy.' - Mauro F. Guillen, University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A