This perspective was famous among American sociologists. Many of the European functionalists focused on the inner workings of the social order whereas American functionalists focused on what is the purpose of the behavior in human beings. Robert Merton was a popular functionalist among American sociologists.
But many of the sociologists criticized it because of its negative perspective related to social order. Functionalism's negative perspective was that it does not encourage people to take an active part in changing the environment yet to know it is in benefits of that person. Even it seems that functionalism is agitated by changing the environmental conditioned of a person.
