This paper argues that the traditional Weberian concerns about complex organizations require refinement and extension for the understanding of organizations designed for social development. Six ideal type modes of looking at development bureaucracies are proposed: (1) that the organization is theoretically oriented; (2) that the organization is designed to provide latent structures to meet the changing contingencies of the development process; (3) that the organization is client centered and is consequently designed to work with the entire social system(s); (4) that the organization is designed to perform a socialization or resocialization function; (5) that social detvelopment organizations are ideally committed to a norm emphasizing experimental design as the primary consideration in program design; (6) and that the organization for social development is constrained by the limited alternatives for change available at any given time. In addition, brief attention is given to the great importance of community disintegration and ego impairment as critical constraints on attempts to repair and/or modernize a social system. Berton H. Kaplan is associate professor of mental health and epidemiology, School of Public Health, and is a research associate in the Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
