In several blogs I have used an obvious
form of analysis. While my form of analysis is obvious, it didn't have
a name and it wasn't recognized as an analytic tool until I named it
and described it first in 1986. I went to the Library of Congress to
see if it had been written about before. It hadn't, despite its
obviousness.
I call my analytic tool Social Sorting and I identified the three main components: the flag, the screen and the overflow.
Social Sorting is the mechanism that determines the composition of all voluntary and commercial human institutions.
*The flag is what attracts people to join, select-in or buy. The flag can be a brand, a reputation, an historic association, an idea, a story, an image or anything else known about the institution positive negative or neutral. Before we go to a particular Home Depot, a PTA meeting, a church, a job opening or pickup a free newspaper, we know something about the institution...sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. What we know is the flag that attracts us.
* We always encounter a
screen. For a job the screen can be a test, a series of interviews or
a response to our resume. The screen can be the price of admission to
a movie or theater or to purchase an object. Some screens are minimal
such as we would encounter going to a political party rally or a new
church. Some screens are virtually impenetrable such as a university
graduate school, the medical profession or frontline service on a space
shuttle.
* Any organization or institution will have an
overflow. We will become part of the institution because we want to, or we will
leave; it will keep us or reject us. We are likely to be part of the
overflow for most organizations at some point, sometimes age sometimes
as with the PTA because our children have graduated. We may leave the
institution voluntarily because we don't fit in after weeks months or
years, as with a job, a club, a neighborhood, a city, a country, a
political party or even a telephone service when we miss too many
payments. We can be fired or made to feel uncomfortable or unwanted and
leave for that reason.
The people who are in an institution, all institutions, are the ones who came to the flag, passed the screen and haven't overflowed.
Several uses of social sorting are given in future blogs.