The difference between society and community is the sum of the organizational criteria that allow the choice between one and another modality when undertaking a certain project.
It is common for society and community to be concepts used interchangeably in common and everyday language.
However, both terms reflect different meanings. Especially when facing the existing forms of social grouping, both at a sociological, economic and organizational level.
What is a partnership? And a community?
From a social point of view, communities comprise small groups of people, who organize themselves and fulfill a common mission.
In this way, it is possible to find neighboring communities that develop cultural or other projects.
On the other hand, society, formally speaking, can include the members of a certain territory, for example, the inhabitants with a certain nationality.
In the most business or economic aspect, commercial companies include those forms of organization with profit motive, which people set up for the development of economic activities.
Difference between society and community
Within the elements that separate the concepts of society and community, it is possible to classify the following noteworthy points:
- Number of members : Commercial companies can range from sole proprietorships to those made up of numerous shareholders, this being the case of large companies with shareholding. For their part, the communities have a large number of members.
- Heterogeneity : In associations, fewer common ties are shared in terms of values and culture than in communities. Thus, it occurs at the same time with economic, political and cultural ties.
- Interrelation: In the communities there is a common level of interrelation between the participants under equal conditions.
- Hierarchy : That said, another difference is that hierarchy criteria are established in companies. So they have more complex organizational structures.
- Feeling of belonging : Compared to what happens in societies with lucrative objectives, belonging to a community is more subjective and valued by the members, since they share goals and values.
- Location : Although a company can cover wide and diverse territories when decentralized, the communities act in a unitary and localized way from the geographical point of view.
Having said the above, it is possible to note that a community is part of a society in its broadest sense sociologically speaking. However, in the case of commercial companies this is not the case.
Paradoxically, a commercial company can be part of an organization. This is the case when creating business associations or sustainable communities, for example.