Robert Merton's Latent And Manifest Functions

According to Robert Merton, the distinctive features are intentional and conscious. These are functions that people expect, and expect the system to achieve. For example, schools should educate children about the knowledge and skills that children need. List functions are obvious, recognized, and generally acclaimed. Potential features are unrecognizable and unconscious features. These are unexpected results of the organization.

For example, schools not only educate young people but also mass public entertainment. Potential functions of a part of an organization or structure can support inventory functions such as the provision of recreational activities and opportunities for courtship to young people, such as the potential functions of religious facilities in modern society. Potential features may not be relevant to inventory management functions, such as the possibility that large functions of the school organization will not affect the purpose of education.

Potential features may even destroy obvious functions. For example, the obvious function of civil service regulations is to secure talented civil servants to make the government more efficient. However, civil servants may have the potential to build a more stringent bureaucracy. The difference between the list and the potential function is basically relative rather than absolute. For some people in the social system, the features look obvious, but for others it is potential.

Agency features: There are two (from Robert Merton). It is obvious and potential. List functions are expected. Potential features are hidden and are not intentional. For example, what is the obvious function of education? - Education is aimed at providing training that enables individuals to play a role in society. - It is designed to teach young people. What is the potential function of education? It allows their mothers to sit down from the baby so that the children leave the house and they can enter the labor market

Sociologist Robert Merton suggested that social systems such as school education have obvious and potential functions. The obvious function is the function that society intends to have in these agencies. Potential features are not intentional, even if they are so. In the case of school education, the most obvious function is to educate the students. Society needs members with education and skills to make them economically viable. Another obvious feature of today is to plant certain value. We are hoping that the school teaches children that they are patriotic.