The Theory and Operation of Social Intermediate Organizations

Author: Zhang Yunde
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: Over a decade ago, people were still quite unfamiliar with intermediary organizations and did not understand what they were. Today, they have become active in all aspects of society, economy, and daily life, becoming an indispensable component for modern people to engage in orderly communication, transactions, work, and life. Under the past planned economy system, resources were allocated top-down by the government and enforced rigidly through administrative orders, with the public often playing a passive role in economic activities. The failure of the planned system led us to shift toward a market economy. The market mechanism is the most effective way to allocate resources to date. It functions like a delicate machine, unconsciously coordinating people's economic activities through prices, competition, and supply-demand relationships. The development of the market economy has brought about changes in property rights systems and adjustments in interest relationships, while changes in the economic sphere have, in turn, driven changes in other aspects of society. Many specific reforms, such as the development of the non-public sector, the decentralization of government power and the transformation of its functions, and the autonomous choice of personal lifestyles, have created and expanded spaces of freedom, leading to the differentiation of the structure between the state and society. The economic system reform, centered on property rights diversification and independent enterprise operations, has fostered the formation of a relatively autonomous society, transforming China from a homogeneous, single-minded society into a heterogeneous, diverse one. In such a relatively autonomous and diverse society, the numerous social affairs that have been separated from both enterprises and the government, as well as the vast social affairs that have long been ignored or excluded by them but objectively exist, will converge and form a vast social sphere. Within this sphere, there are abundant human and material resources that require specific mechanisms for allocation; there are numerous tasks that need organizations with specific social functions to undertake; and to ensure the orderly conduct of activities in this sphere, there is also a need for specific systems to coordinate. Against this backdrop, social intermediary organizations have emerged and rapidly risen. Social intermediary organizations are an inevitable product of the civic society fostered by the market economy and a new type of social organization that has developed in recent years. Modern society distinguishes between the political sphere, the economic sphere, and the public social sphere, with significant differences in their subjects, outputs, sources of resources, and organizational goals. The subjects of activities in the political sphere are the government, in the economic sphere they are enterprises, and in the public social sphere, they are social intermediary organizations. Social intermediary organizations are one of the three major types of social organizations, alongside the government and enterprises, and hold an important position and role in modern society. Due to the fact that China's market economy is still in its early stages and civic society is underdeveloped, although China's social intermediary organizations have developed rapidly, this development is merely preliminary, with many issues remaining in terms of scale, quality, and standardized operations. There is still a lack of a unified understanding in society regarding the nature, role, and responsibilities of social intermediary organizations, and their functioning has not met expectations, with a significant gap compared to advanced intermediary organizations in market economy-developed countries. Therefore, actively cultivating and strengthening social intermediary organizations and establishing a comprehensive social intermediary service system is an important and urgent task facing the entire society. With the prominence of the status and role of social intermediary organizations, many universities have offered courses on them in public administration programs. However, to date, there is still a lack of systematic and accessible textbooks on the subject. To meet the needs of teaching, the author has compiled this reader titled "The Theory and Operation of Social Intermediary Organizations." As a textbook, this book has incorporated many existing research findings from academia during the writing process, but due to limitations in format, it has not been possible to list them all. The author would like to express sincere gratitude to these authors and hope for their understanding. Due to the underdeveloped nature of social intermediary organizations and the limitations of the author, this book has many omissions and shortcomings, and the author sincerely hopes for criticism and corrections from colleagues in the theoretical community and readers. Author, May 2003, Hangzhou