Organizations in the context of Secret society

A social movement is either a loosely or carefully organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and may involve individuals, organizations, or both. Social movements have been described as "organizational structures and strategies that may empower oppressed populations to mount effective challenges and resist the more powerful and advantaged elites". They represent a method of social change from the bottom within nations. On the other hand, some social movements do not aim to make society more egalitarian, but to maintain or amplify existing power relationships. For example, scholars have described fascism as a social movement.

Political science and sociology have developed a variety of theories and empirical research on social movements. For example, some research in political science highlights the relation between popular movements and the formation of new political parties as well as discussing the function of social movements in relation to agenda setting and influence on politics. Sociologists distinguish between several types of social movement examining things such as scope, type of change, method of work, range, and time frame.

Peacekeeping comprises activities intended to create conditions that favor lasting peace. Research generally finds that peacekeeping reduces civilian and battlefield deaths, as well as reduces the risk of renewed warfare.

Within the United Nations (UN) group of nation state governments and organizations, there is a general understanding that at the international level, peacekeepers monitor and observe peace processes in post-conflict areas, and may assist ex-combatants in implementing peace agreement commitments that they have undertaken. Such assistance may come in many forms, including confidence-building measures, power-sharing arrangements, electoral support, strengthening the rule of law, and economic and social development. Accordingly, the UN peacekeepers (often referred to as Blue Berets or Blue Helmets because of their light blue berets or helmets) can include soldiers, police officers, and civilian personnel.

James Gardner March (January 15, 1928 – September 27, 2018) was an American political scientist, sociologist, and economist. A professor at Stanford University in the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Graduate School of Education, he is best known for his research on organizations, his (jointly with Richard Cyert) seminal work on A Behavioral Theory of the Firm, and the organizational decision making model known as the Garbage Can Model.

A social movement or popular movement is either a loosely or carefully organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and may involve individuals, organizations, or both. Social movements have been described as "organizational structures and strategies that may empower oppressed populations to mount effective challenges and resist the more powerful and advantaged elites". They represent a method of social change from the bottom within nations. On the other hand, some social movements do not aim to make society more egalitarian, but to maintain or amplify existing power relationships. For example, scholars have described fascism as a social movement.

Political science and sociology have developed a variety of theories and empirical research on social movements. For example, some research in political science highlights the relation between popular movements and the formation of new political parties as well as discussing the function of social movements in relation to agenda setting and influence on politics. Sociologists distinguish between several types of social movement examining things such as scope, type of change, method of work, range, and time frame.

Management cybernetics is concerned with the application of cybernetics to management and organizations. "Management cybernetics" was first introduced by Stafford Beer in the late 1950s and introduces the various mechanisms of self-regulation applied by and to organizational settings, as seen through a cybernetics perspective. Beer developed the theory through a combination of practical applications and a series of influential books. The practical applications involved steel production, publishing and operations research in a large variety of different industries. Some consider that the full flowering of management cybernetics is represented in Beer's books. However, learning continues (see below).

An adaptive system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole that together are able to respond to environmental changes or changes in the interacting parts, in a way analogous to either continuous physiological homeostasis or evolutionary adaptation in biology. Feedback loops represent a key feature of adaptive systems, such as ecosystems and individual organisms; or in the human world, communities, organizations, and families. Adaptive systems can be organized into a hierarchy.

Artificial adaptive systems include robots with control systems that utilize negative feedback to maintain desired states.

In sociology, macrostructures, often simply called 'structure', correspond to the overall organization of society, described at a rather large-scale level, featuring for instance social groups, organizations, institutions, nation-states and their respective properties and relations. In this case, societal macrostructures are distinguished from societal microstructures consisting of the situated social interaction of social actors, often described in terms of agency. This distinction in sociology has given rise to the well-known macro-micro debate, in which microsociologists claim the primacy of interaction as the constituents of societal structures, and macrosociologists the primacy of given social structure as a general constraint on interaction.

One important macrostructure is patriarchy, the traditional system of economic and political inequality between women and men in most societies.

The ISO 14000 family is a set of international standards for environment management systems. It was developed in March 1996 by International Organization for Standardization. The goal of these standards is to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations (processes, etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land); (b) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (c) continually improve in the above. The standards were designed to fit into an integrated management system.

ISO 14000 is similar to ISO 9000 quality management in that both pertain to the process of how a service/product is rendered, rather than to the service/product itself. As with ISO 9001, certification is performed by third-party organizations rather than being awarded by ISO directly. The ISO 19011 and ISO 17021 audit standards apply when audits are being performed. The current version of ISO 14001 is ISO 14001:2015, which was published in September 2015.

The ISO 9000 family is a set of international standards for quality management systems. It was developed in March 1987 by the International Organization for Standardization. The goal of these standards is to help organizations ensure that they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within the statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. The standards were designed to fit into an integrated management system. The ISO refers to the set of standards as a "family", bringing together the standard for quality management systems and a set of "supporting standards", and their presentation as a family facilitates their integrated application within an organisation. ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals and vocabulary of QMS, including the seven quality management principles that underlie the family of standards. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard must fulfill. A companion document, ISO/TS 9002, provides guidelines for the application of ISO 9001. ISO 9004 gives guidance on achieving sustained organizational success.

Third-party certification bodies confirm that organizations meet the requirements of ISO 9001. Over one million organizations worldwide are independently certified, making ISO 9001 one of the most widely used management tools in the world today. However, the ISO certification process has been criticised as being wasteful and not being useful for all organizations.