- Adaptation: organizations oriented to economic production - business firms.
- Goal attainment - organizations oriented to political goals - government agencies, banks.
- Integration - integrative organizations - courts, political parties, social control agencies.
- Latency - pattern maintenance organizations - museums, educational organizations, and religious organizations.
What is a goal for a specific organization is a function for the larger society. An organization may expect to get resources and approval based on the importance of its function in society. This goal/function system can also be reproduced at the formal organizational level through examination of subunits. While he didn't insist that specific subunits will be created, he does imply they will form based on these four divisions because the various functional needs is somewhat in conflict. .
Looking at Parson's action systems and their basic assumptions we can see the functionalists concern with order. The actions systems are cultural, societal, behavioral, and personality. Parsons posits several assumptions about these systems. The first assumption says that systems have order and interdependent parts. The second one states that systems lean toward self-maintaining order or equilibrium. The third assumption claims that the system may be static or involved in an ordered process of change. The fourth assumption sees the nature of one part of the system as having an impact on the form that the other parts can take. The next of Parson's assumptions says that systems maintain boundaries with their environments. Parson's sixth assumption about systems says that allocation and integration are necessary for a given state of equilibrium of a system. This assumption show how view change as a slow process. The last of his assumptions views systems as tending toward self-maintenance involving the maintenance of boundaries and of the relationship of the parts to the whole, control of environmental, variations, and control of tendencies to change the system from within.
