A utilitarian organization is a social system formed by agents giving over their agency based on their own perceived interests within relations of mutual exchange. People engage in this type of organization because they have something to gain, thus the culture is one of productivity and efficiency, legitimacy is based on the organization’s or person’s capacity to deliver in the exchange. Modern societies are dominated by utilitarian organizations, with the Enlightenment came the idea of reason and people as rational self-interested agents driven to maximize their utility, on this new understand of the individual we built a whole new set of social institutions that are utilitarian in nature, they are designed to provide people with as much return on their investment of time, energy, money or freedom as possible. Utilitarian organizations are often bureaucratic in nature, that is to say, an organizational model that is rationally designed to perform complicated tasks efficiently.
