A Study On The Association Of College Honor Societies

Association of College Honor Societies (short in ACHS) is an indispensableforce in the association of American Higher Education. It is not only a key part in the highereducation system, but it plays an irreplaceable role in higher education of United States.ACHS with its elite characteristics, has great theoretical significance in assisting tounderstand the American higher education and higher education organizations, and has greatpractical significance for China’s higher education reform, by combing the history of itsdevelopment, reading the reason for its establishment and the establishment of theinstitutional environment, as well as, in terms of organization sociology to analyze thelegitimacy and operational mechanism.This study mainly discussed from four aspects. Association of College Honor Societies isa joint organization of the Honor Societies, full understanding in membership societies help tounderstand ACHS itself, so the first part is the origin of Honor Society as well as theemergence and development of the Association. The second part, through the introduction ofthe goals, the tasks and the nature of organization, to comprehend its organizational structureand operational mechanism, the article make a full analysis of the ACHS’ own situation. Thethird part is the core in this article. According to organizational sociology theory, legitimacyhas three aspects, the Regulative Legitimacy, the Normative Legitimacy and the CognitiveLegitimacy. From the three aspects, the article specifically analyses the legitimacy of ACHSand also makes the depth analysis of how ACHS takes the legitimacy in the institutionalenvironment. During in the process of the establishment and the development, ACHSexperienced from lacking of legitimacy, getting some legitimacy and taking the wholelegitimacy from external institutional environment and organizational itself. The third sectionsummarizes the characteristics of this organization. Based on the first three parts, in the lastpart which is a brief review the overall legitimacy of the organization, researcher extracts thesolution of its legitimacy crisis. Based on the analysis of the developing status of highereducation associations of China, researcher also provides some positive measures.