Bureaucracy is the combined organizational structure, procedures, protocols, and set of regulations in place to manage activity, usually in large

organizations. As opposed to adhocracy, it is often represented by standardized procedure (rule-following) that guides the execution of most or all processes within the body; formal division of powers; hierarchy; and relationships, intended to anticipate needs and improve efficiency. A bureaucracy traditionally does not create policy but, rather, enacts it. Law, policy, and regulation normally originates from a leadership, which creates the bureaucracy to implement them. In practice, the interpretation and execution of policy, etc. can lead to informal influence but not necessarily. A bureaucracy is directly responsible to the leadership that creates it, such as a government executive or board of directors. Conversely, the leadership is usually responsible to an electorate, shareholders, membership or whoever is intended to benefit. As a matter of practicality, the bureaucracy is where the individual will interface with an organization such as a government etc., rather than directly with its leadership. Generally, larger organizations result in a greater distancing of the individual from the leadership, which can be consequential or intentional by design. Maximilian Carl Emil "Max" Weber (German pronunciation: [ maks ve b ](VABer); 21 April 1864 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist and political economist, who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself.[1] Weber's major works dealt with the rationalization and "disenchantment" he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity.[2] Weber was, along with his associate Georg Simmel, a central figure in the establishment of methodological antipositivism; presenting sociology as a non-empirical field which must study social action through resolutely subjective means.[3] He is typically cited, with mile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science,[4] and has variously been described as the most important classic thinker in the social sciences.[5][6] Weber is most famous for his thesis in economic sociology, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this text, Weber argued that ascetic Protestantism particular to the Occident was one of the major "elective affinities" in determining the rise of capitalism, bureaucracy and the rational-legal nation-state. Contrary to Karl Marx, Weber did not consider the development of capitalism in purely material terms; he instead emphasised religious influences embedded in culture.[7] The Protestant Ethic formed the earliest work in Weber's broader project in the sociology of religion: he would go on to examine the religion of China, the religion of India, and Ancient Judaism, with particular regard to the apparent non-development of Capitalism, and to differing forms of social stratification. In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity which claims a "monopoly on the legitimate use of violence", a definition that became pivotal to the study of modern Western political science. His analysis of bureaucracy in his Economy and Society is still central to the modern study of organizations. Weber was the first to recognize several diverse aspects of social authority, which he respectively categorized according to their charismatic, traditional, and legal forms. His analysis of bureaucracy thus noted that modern state institutions are based on a form of rational-legal authority. Weber's thought regarding the rationalizing and secularizing tendencies of modern Western society (sometimes described as the "Weber Thesis")

would come to facilitate critical theory, particularly in the work of thinkers such as Jrgen Habermas. After the First World War, Weber was among the founders of the German Democratic Party. He was one of the key drafters of the ill-fated, post-World War I Weimar Constitution of Germany, and specifically of the Article 48 which would have far-reaching consequences over the destinies of the country. Weber was born in 1864, in Erfurt in Thuringia, the eldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr., a wealthy and prominent politician in the National Liberal Party (Germany) and a civil servant, and Helene Fallenstein, a Protestant and a Calvinist, with strong moral absolutist ideas.[8] Weber Sr.'s engagement with public life immersed the family home in politics, as his salon received many prominent scholars and public figures. The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who also became a sociologist and economist, thrived in this intellectual atmosphere. Weber's 1876 Christmas presents to his parents, when he was thirteen years old, were two historical essays entitled "About the course of German history, with special reference to the positions of the emperor and the pope" and "About the Roman Imperial period from Constantine to the migration of nations".[9] At the age of fourteen, he wrote letters containing references to Homer, Virgil, Cicero, and Livy, and he had an extended knowledge of Goethe, Spinoza, Kant, and Schopenhauer before he began university studies. In 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student.[10] Weber joined his father's duelling fraternity, and chose as his major study Weber Sr.'s field of law. Along with his law coursework, young Weber attended lectures in economics and studied medieval history and theology. Intermittently, he served with the German army in Strasbourg. In late 1884, Weber returned to his parents' home to study at the University of Berlin. For the next eight years of his life, interrupted only by a term at the University of Gttingen and short periods of further military training, Weber stayed at his parents' house; first as a student, later as a junior barrister, and finally as a dozent/professor at the University of Berlin.[citation needed] In 1886 Weber passed the examination for "Referendar", comparable to the bar association examination in the British and American legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of history. He earned his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a doctoral dissertation on legal history entitled The History of Medieval Business Organisations.[10] Two years later, Weber completed his Habilitationsschrift, The Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law.[11] Having thus become a "Privatdozent", Weber was now qualified to hold a German professorship. In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in contemporary social policy. In 1888 he joined the "Verein fr Socialpolitik",[12] the new professional association of German economists affiliated with the historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as the solving of the wide-ranging social problems of the age, and who pioneered large scale statistical studies of economic problems. He also involved himself in politics, joining the left leaning Evangelical Social Congress.[13] In 1890 the "Verein" established a research program to examine "the Polish question" or Ostflucht, meaning the influx of foreign

farm workers into eastern Germany as local labourers migrated to Germany's rapidly industrialising cities. Weber was put in charge of the study, and wrote a large part of its results.[12] The final report was widely acclaimed as an excellent piece of empirical research,[weasel words] and cemented Weber's reputation as an expert in agrarian economics. In 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist and author in her own right,[14] who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death. The couple moved to Freiburg in 1894, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at Freiburg University,[11] before accepting the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1896.[11] Next year, Max Weber Sr. died, two months after a severe quarrel with his son that was never resolved.[15] After this, Weber became increasingly prone to nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor.[11] His condition forced him to reduce his teaching, and leave his last course in the fall of 1899 unfinished. After spending months in a sanatorium during the summer and fall of 1900, Weber and his wife traveled to Italy at the end of the year, and did not return to Heidelberg until April 1902. After Weber's immense productivity in the early 1890s, he did not publish any papers between early 1898 and late 1902, finally resigning his professorship in late 1903. Freed from those obligations, in that year he accepted a position as associate editor of the Archives for Social Science and Social Welfare[16] next to his colleagues Edgar Jaff and Werner Sombart.[17] In 1904, Weber began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It became his most famous work,[18] and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems.[19] This essay was the only one of his works that was published as a book during his lifetime. Also that year, he visited the United States and participated in the Congress of Arts and Sciences held in connection with the World's Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition) at St. Louis. Despite his successes, Weber felt that he was unable to resume regular teaching at that time, and continued on as a private scholar, helped by an inheritance in 1907.[16] In 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing political party to combine social-democrats and liberals. This attempt was unsuccessful, presumably because many liberals feared social-democratic revolutionary ideals at the time. During the First World War, Weber served for a time as director of the army hospitals in Heidelberg.[16][21] In 1915 and 1916 he sat on commissions that tried to retain German supremacy in Belgium and Poland after the war. Weber's views on war, as well as on expansion of the German empire, changed throughout the war.[20][21][22] He became a member of the worker and soldier council of Heidelberg in 1918. In the same year, Weber became a consultant to the German Armistice Commission at the Treaty of Versailles and to the commission charged with drafting the Weimar Constitution.[16] He argued in favor of inserting Article 48 into the Weimar Constitution.[23] This article was later used by Adolf Hitler to institute rule by decree, thereby allowing his government to suppress opposition and obtain dictatorial powers. Weber's contributions to German politics remain a controversial subject to this day. Weber resumed teaching during this time, first at the University of Vienna, then in 1919 at the University of Munich.[16] In Munich, he headed the first German university institute of sociology, but ultimately never held a personal sociology appointment. Many colleagues and students in

Munich argued against him for his speeches and left-wing attitude during the German Revolution of 1918 and 1919, with some right-wing students holding protests in front of his home.[20] Max Weber contracted the Spanish flu and died of pneumonia in Munich on 14 June 1920.

Achievements
Weber's most famous work relates to economic sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of religion. Along with Karl Marx and mile Durkheim,[24] he is regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology. In his time, however, Weber was viewed primarily as a historian and an economist.[24][25] The breadth of Weber's topical interests is apparent in the depth of his social theory: The affinity between capitalism and Protestantism, the religious origins of the Western world, the force of charisma in religion as well as in politics, the all-embracing process of rationalization and the bureaucratic price of progress, the role of legitimacy and of violence as offsprings of leadership, the 'disenchantment' of the modern world together with the neverending power of religion, the antagonistic relation between intellectualism and eroticism: all these are key concepts which attest to the enduring fascination of Weber's thinking. Radkau, Joachim Max Weber: A Biography 2005[26] Whereas Durkheim, following Comte, worked in the positivist tradition, Weber created and worked like Werner Sombart, his friend and then the most famous representative of German sociology in the antipositivist, hermeneutic, tradition.[27] These works pioneered the antipositivistic revolution in social sciences, stressing (as in the work of Wilhelm Dilthey) the difference between the social sciences and natural sciences.[27] We know of no scientifically ascertainable ideals. To be sure, that makes our efforts more arduous than in the past, since we are expected to create our ideals from within our breast in the very age of subjectivist culture. Max Weber Economy and society 1909[28] Weber presented sociology as the science of human social action; action which he differentiated into traditional, affectional, value-rational and instrumental.[29] [Sociology is ] ... the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces. By 'action' in this definition is meant the human behaviour when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful ... the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) the meaning actually intended either by an individual agent on a particular historical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a pure type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the 'meaning' to be thought of as somehow objectively 'correct' or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. This is the difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as

sociology and history, and any kind of priori discipline, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their subject-matter 'correct' or 'valid' meaning. Max Weber The Nature of Social Action 1922, [30] Weber began his studies of rationalisation in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he argued that the redefinition of the connection between work and piety in Protestantism, and especially in ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, [31] shifted human effort towards rational efforts aimed at achieving economic gain. In Calvinism in particular, but also in Lutheranism, Christian piety towards God was expressed through or in one's secular vocation. Calvin, in particular, viewed the expression of the work ethic as a sign of "election". The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with and larger than the religious, and so the latter were eventually discarded.[32] Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on bureaucracy and on the classifications of authority into three typeslegitimate, traditional, and charismatic. In these works Weber described what he saw as society's movement towards rationalization. What Weber depicted was not only the secularization of Western culture, but also and especially the development of modern societies from the viewpoint of rationalization. The new structures of society were marked by the differentiation of the two functionally intermeshing systems that had taken shape around the organizational cores of the capitalist enterprise and the bureaucratic state apparatus. Weber understood this process as the institituionalization of purposive-rational economic and administrative action. To the degree that everyday life was affected by this cultural and societal rationalization, tradional forms of life - which in the early modern period were differentated primarily according to one's trade - were dissolved. Jrgen Habermas Modernity's Consciousness of Time, [2] Many of Weber's works famous today were collected, revised, and published posthumously. Significant interpretations of his writings were produced by such sociological luminaries as Talcott Parsons and C. Wright Mills. Parsons in particular imparted to Weber's works a functionalist, teleological perspective; this personal interpretation has been criticised for a latent conservatism.[33]

[edit] Sociology of religion

Weber's work in the field of sociology of religion started with the essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which grew out of heavy "field work" among Protestant sects in America, and continued with the analysis of The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, and Ancient Judaism. His work on other religions was interrupted by his sudden death in 1920, which prevented him from following Ancient Judaism with studies of Psalms, Book of Jacob, Talmudic Jewry, early Christianity and Islam.[34] His three main themes were the effect of religious ideas on economic activities, the relation between social stratification and religious ideas, and the distinguishable characteristics of Western civilization.[35]

His goal was to find reasons for the different development paths of the cultures of the Occident and the Orient, although without judging or valuing them, like some of the contemporary thinkers who followed the social Darwinist paradigm; Weber wanted primarily to explain the distinctive elements of the Western civilization.[35] In the analysis of his findings, Weber maintained that Calvinist (and more widely, Protestant) religious ideas had had a major impact on the social innovation and development of the economic system of Europe and the United States, but noted that they were not the only factors in this development. Other notable factors mentioned by Weber included the rationalism of scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematization of government administration, and economic enterprise.[35] In the end, the study of the sociology of religion, according to Weber, merely explored one phase of the freedom from magic, that "disenchantment of the world" that he regarded as an important distinguishing aspect of Western culture. Max Weber has probably been one of the most influential users of the word in its social science sense. He is well-known for his study of bureaucratization of society; many aspects of modern public administration go back to him; a classic, hierarchically organized civil service of the continental type is if perhaps mistakenly called Weberian civil service several different years between 1818 and 1860, prior to Weber's birth in 1864. Weber described the ideal type bureaucracy in positive terms, considering it to be a more rational and efficient form of organization than the alternatives that preceded it, which he characterized as charismatic domination and traditional domination. According to his terminology, bureaucracy is part of legal domination. However, he also emphasized that bureaucracy becomes inefficient when a decision must be adopted to an individual case. According to Weber, the attributes of modern bureaucracy include its impersonality, concentration of the means of administration, a leveling effect on social and economic differences and implementation of a system of authority that is practically indestructible. Weber's analysis of bureaucracy concerns:
y y y y

the historical and administrative reasons for the process of bureaucratization (especially in the Western civilisation) the impact of the rule of law upon the functioning of bureaucratic organisations the typical personal orientation and occupational position of a bureaucratic officials as a status group the most important attributes and consequences of bureaucracy in the modern world

A bureaucratic organization is governed by the following seven principles: 1. official business is conducted on a continuous basis 2. official business is conducted with strict accordance to the following rules: 1. the duty of each official to do certain types of work is delimited in terms of impersonal criteria 2. the official is given the authority necessary to carry out his assigned functions

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

3. the means of coercion at his disposal are strictly limited and conditions of their use strictly defined every official's responsibilities and authority are part of a vertical hierarchy of authority, with respective rights of supervision and appeal officials do not own the resources necessary for the performance of their assigned functions but are accountable for their use of these resources official and private business and income are strictly separated offices cannot be appropriated by their incumbents (inherited, sold, etc.) official business is conducted on the basis of written documents

A bureaucratic official:
y y y y y

is personally free and appointed to his position on the basis of conduct exercises the authority delegated to him in accordance with impersonal rules, and his or her loyalty is enlisted on behalf of the faithful execution of his official duties appointment and job placement are dependent upon his or her technical qualifications administrative work is a full-time occupation work is rewarded by a regular salary and prospects of advancement in a lifetime career

An official must exercise his or her judgment and his or her skills, but his or her duty is to place these at the service of a higher authority; ultimately he/she is responsible only for the impartial execution of assigned tasks and must sacrifice his or her personal judgment if it runs counter to his or her official duties. Weber's work has been continued by many, like Robert Michels with his Iron Law of Oligarchy. Criticism As Max Weber himself noted, real bureaucracy will be less optimal and effective than his ideal type model. Each of Weber's seven principles can degenerate:[citation needed]
y y

Competences can be unclear and used contrary to the spirit of the law; sometimes a decision itself may be considered more important than its effect; Nepotism, corruption, political infighting and other degenerations can counter the rule of impersonality and can create a recruitment and promotion system not based on meritocracy but rather on oligarchy;

Even a non-degenerated bureaucracy can be affected by common problems:

y y

Overspecialization, making individual officials not aware of larger consequences of their actions Rigidity and inertia of procedures, making decision-making slow or even impossible when facing some unusual case, and similarly delaying change, evolution and adaptation of old procedures to new circumstances;

y y

y y y y

y y

y y

y y

y y

A phenomenon of group thinking - zealotry, loyalty and lack of critical thinking regarding the organisation which is perfect and always correct by definition, making the organisation unable to change and realise its own mistakes and limitations; Disregard for dissenting opinions, even when such views suit the available data better than the opinion of the majority; A phenomenon of Catch-22 (named after a famous book by Joseph Heller) - as bureaucracy creates more and more rules and procedures, their complexity rises and coordination diminishes, facilitating creation of contradictory and recursive rules, as described by the saying "the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy". Not allowing people to use common sense, as everything must be as is written by the law. Max Weber - Bureaucracy Description At roughly the same time, Max Weber was attempting to do for sociology what Taylor had done for industrial operations. Weber postulated that western civilization was shifting from "wertrational" (or value oriented) thinking, affective action (action derived from emotions), and traditional action (action derived from past precedent to "zweckational" (or technocratic) thinking. He believed that civilization was changing to seek technically optimal results at the expense of emotional or humanistic content. Viewing the growth of large-scale organizations of all types during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Weber developed a set of principles for an "ideal" bureaucracy. These principles included: fixed and official jurisdictional areas, a firmly ordered hierarchy of super and subordination, management based on written records, thorough and expert training, official activity taking priority over other activities and that management of a given organization follows stable, knowable rules. The bureaucracy was envisioned as a large machine for attaining its goals in the most efficient manner possible. Weber did not advocate bureaucracy, indeed, his writings show a strong caution for its excesses: "the more fully realized, the more bureaucracy "depersonalizes" itself, i.e., the more completely it succeeds in achieving the exclusion of love, hatred, and every purely personal, especially irrational and incalculable, feeling from the execution of official tasks" or: "By it the performance of each individual worker is mathematically measured, each man becomes a little cog in the machine and aware of this, his one preoccupation is whether he can become a bigger cog." Environment Weber, as an economist and social historian, saw his environment transitioning from older emotion and tradition driven values to technological ones. It is unclear if he saw the tremendous growth in government, military and industrial size and complexity as a result of the efficiencies of bureaucracy, or their growth driving those organizations to bureaucracy. Successes While Weber was fundamentally an observer rather than a designer, it is clear that his predictions have come true. His principles of an ideal bureaucracy still ring true today

and many of the evils of today's bureaucracies come from their deviating from those ideal principles. Unfortunately, Weber was also successful in predicting that bureaucracies would have extreme difficulties dealing with individual cases. It would have been fascinating to see how Weber would have integrated Mayo's results into his theories. It is probable that he would have seen the "group dynamics" as "noise" in the system, limiting the bureaucracy's potential for both efficiency and inhumanity.

Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German academic and sociologist who provided another approach in the development of classical management theory.

As a German academic, Weber was primarily interested in the reasons behind the employees actions and in why people who work in an organization accept the authority of their superiors and comply with the rules of the organization.
Legitimate Types of Authority by Max Weber

Weber made a distinction between authority and power. According to Weber power educes obedience through force or the threat of force which induces individuals to adhere to regulations. In contrast, legitimate authority entails that individuals acquiesce that authority is exercised upon them by their superiors. Weber goes on to identify three types of legitimate authority: Traditional authority Traditional authority is readily accepted and unquestioned by individuals since it emanates from deeply set customs and tradition. Traditional authority is found in tribes and monarchies. Charismatic authority Charismatic authority is gained by those individuals who have gained the respect and trust of their followers. This type of authority is exercised by a charismatic leader in small and large groups alike. Rational-legal authority Rational-legal authority stems from the setup of an organization and the position held by the person in authority. Rational-legal authority is exercised within the stipulated rules and procedures of an organization.
The Key Characteristics of a Bureaucracy

Weber coined this last type of authority with the name of a bureaucracy. The term bureaucracy in terms of an organization refers to the following six characteristics: Management by rules. A bureaucracy follows a consistent set of rules that control the functions of the organization. Management control the lower levels of the organization's hierarchy by applying established rules in a consistent and predictable manner. Division of labor. Authority and responsibility are clearly defined and officially sanctioned. Jobs descriptions are specified with responsibilities and line of authority. All employees have thus clearly defined rules in a system of authority and subordination.

Formal hierarchical structure. An organization is organized into a hierarchy of authority and follows a clear chain of command. The hierarchical structure effectively delineates the lines of authority and the subordination of the lower levels to the upper levels of the hierarchical structure. Personnel hired on grounds of technical competence. Appointment to a position within the organization is made on the grounds of technical competence. Work is assigned based on the experience and competence of the individual. Managers are salaried officials. A manager is a salaried official and does own the administered unit. All elements of a bureaucracy are defined with clearly defined roles and responsibilities and are managed by trained and experienced specialists. Written documents. All decisions, rules and actions taken by the organization are formulated and recorded in writing. Written documents ensure that there is continuity of the organizations policies and procedures.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Weber s Bureaucracy

Webers bureaucracy is based on logic and rationality which are supported by trained and qualified specialists. The element of a bureaucracy offers a stable and hierarchical model for an organization. Nevertheless, Webers bureaucracy does have its limitations since it is based on the roles and responsibilities of the individuals rather than on the tasks performed by the organization. Its rigidity implies a lack of flexibility to respond to the demands of change in the business environment.

Read more at Suite101: Max Weber Bureaucracy Theory http://businessmanagement.suite101.com/article.cfm/max-weber-bureaucracy-theory#ixzz0wn9ubT1A

Bureaucratic Form According to Max Weber His Six Major Principles

Before covering Weber's Six Major Principles, I want to describe the various multiple meanings of the word "bureaucracy." 1. A group of workers (for example, civil service employees of the U. S. government), is referred to as "the bureaucracy." An example: "The threat of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings cuts has the bureaucracy in Washington deeply concerned."

2. Bureaucracy is the name of an organizational form used by sociologists and organizational design professionals. 3. Bureaucracy has an informal usage, as in "there's too much bureaucracy where I work." This informal usage describes a set of characteristics or attributes such as "red tape" or "inflexibility" that frustrate people who deal with or who work for organizations they perceive as "bureaucratic." As you read about the bureaucratic form, note whether your organization matches the description. The more of these concepts that exist in your organization, the more likely you will have some or all of the negative by-products described in the book "Busting Bureaucracy." In the 1930s Max Weber, a German sociologist, wrote a rationale that described the bureaucratic form as being the ideal way of organizing government agencies. Max Weber's principles spread throughout both public and private sectors. Even though Weber's writings have been widely discredited, the bureaucratic form lives on. Weber noted six major principles. 1. A formal hierarchical structure Each level controls the level below and is controlled by the level above. A formal hierarchy is the basis of central planning and centralized decision making. 2. Management by rules Controlling by rules allows decisions made at high levels to be executed consistently by all lower levels. 3. Organization by functional specialty Work is to be done by specialists, and people are organized into units based on the type of work they do or skills they have. 4. An "up-focused" or "in-focused" mission If the mission is described as "up-focused," then the organization's purpose is to serve the stockholders, the board, or whatever agency empowered it. If the mission is to serve the organization itself, and those within it, e.g., to produce high profits, to gain market share, or to produce a cash stream, then the mission is described as "in-focused." 5. Purposely impersonal The idea is to treat all employees equally and customers equally, and not be influenced by individual differences. 6. Employment based on technical qualifications

(There may also be protection from arbitrary dismissal.) The bureaucratic form, according to Parkinson, has another attribute. 7. Predisposition to grow in staff "above the line." Weber failed to notice this, but C. Northcote Parkinson found it so common that he made it the basis of his humorous "Parkinson's law." Parkinson demonstrated that the management and professional staff tends to grow at predictable rates, almost without regard to what the line organization is doing. The bureaucratic form is so common that most people accept it as the normal way of organizing almost any endeavor. People in bureaucratic organizations generally blame the ugly side effects of bureaucracy on management, or the founders, or the owners, without awareness that the real cause is the organizing form.

The last century saw the perfection of the bureaucracy -- a form of organization that has been enormously successful and is the result of thousands of years of trial and error evolution. Max Weber outlined the key characteristics of a bureaucracy: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. specification of jobs with detailed rights, obligations, responsibilities, scope of authority system of supervision and subordination unity of command extensive use of written documents training in job requirements and skills application of consistent and complete rules (company manual) assign work and hire personnel based on competence and experience

Today, many of these principles seem obvious and commonplace. However, they are all inventions --- organizations did not always have these features. Today we also think of bureaucracies as inefficient, slow and generally bad. In Weber's time, they were seen as marvelously efficient machines that reliably accomplished their goals. And in fact, bureaucracies did become enormously successful, easily outcompeting other organization forms such as family businesses and adhocracies. They also did much to introduce concepts of fairness and equality of opportunity into society, having a profound effect on the social structure of nations. However, bureaucracies are better for some tasks than others. In particular, bureaucracies are not well-suited to industries in which technology changes rapidly or is not yet well-understood. Bureaucracies excel at businesses involving routine tasks that can be well-specified in writing and don't change quickly.

Weber's Rational Bureaucracy

(this discussion based on the discussion in "The Organizational Age" by Rodney Stark in Sociology, 3rd Edition)

At the turn of the century a sociologist named Max Weber began to study the new forms of organization being developed for managing large numbers of people in far-flung and complex activities. Since he was German, he was very familiar with Moltke's development of the General Staff (see course packet material on 19th Century Bureaucracies). Furthermore, Germany had been an early leader in developing a civil service. At the same time, German industry was beginning to adopt the organizational methods developed in the United States. Surveying this scene, Weber attempted to isolate the elements common to all of these new organizations. Weber concluded that all these new large-scale organizations were similar. Each was a bureaucracy. Today many of us regard bureaucracy as a dirty word, suggesting red tape, inefficiency, and officiousness As we shall see, bureaucracies can develop these features, especially if authority is highly centralized. Weber's purpose, however, was to define the essential features of new organizations and to indicate why these organizations worked so much better than traditional ones. Let us examine the features that Weber found in bureaucracies. Above all, Weber emphasized that bureaucratic organizations were an attempt to subdue human affairs to the rule of reason-to make it possible to conduct the business of the organization "according to calculable rules." For people who developed modern organizations, the purpose was to find rational solutions to the new problems of size Weber saw bureaucracy as the rational product of social engineering, just as the machines of the Industrial Revolution were the rational products of mechanical engineering. He wrote:
"The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical superiority over any former organization. The fully developed bureaucratic mechanism compares with other organizations exactly as does the machine with non-mechanical modes of production." [Weber, 1946].

For Weber the term bureaucracy was inseparable from the term rationality. And we may speak of his concept as a "rational bureaucracy" But what were the features developed to make bureaucracies rational? We have already met them: (1) functional specialization (2) clear lines of hierarchical authority, (3) expert training of managers, and (4) decision making based on rules and tactics developed to guarantee consistent and effective pursuit of organizational goals. Weber noted additional features of rational bureaucracies that are simple extensions of the four just outlined, To ensure expert management, appointment and promotion are based on merit rather than favoritism, and those appointed treat their positions as full-time, primary careers. To ensure order in decision making, business is conducted primarily through written rules records, and communications. Weber's idea of functional specialization applies both to persons within an organization and to relations between larger units or divisions of the organization. We have already seen how this applied to Swift & Co. Within a Swift packing plant, work was broken down into many special tasks, and employees were assigned to one or a few such tasks, including the tasks involved in coordinating the work of others. (Such coordination is called administration or management.) Furthermore, Swift was separated into a number of divisions, each specializing in one of the tasks in the elaborate process of bringing meat from the ranch to the consumer. Weber argued that such specialization is essential to a rational bureaucracy and that the specific boundaries

separating one functional division from another must be fixed by explicit rules, regulations, and procedures. For Weber it was self-evident that coordinating the divisions of large organizations requires clear lines of authority organized in a hierarchy. That means there are clear "levels of graded authority." All employees in the organization must know who their boss is, and each person should always respect the chain of command; that is, people should give orders only to their own subordinates and receive orders only through their own immediate superior In this way, the people at the top can be sure that directives arrive where they are meant to go and know where responsibilities lie. Furthermore, hierarchical authority is required in bureaucracies so that highly trained experts can he properly used as managers. It does little good to train someone to operate a stockyard, for example, and then have that manager receive orders from someone whose training is in advertising. Rational bureaucracies can be operated, Weber argued, only by deploying managers at all levels who have been selected and trained for their specific jobs. Persons ticketed for top positions in bureaucracies are often rotated through many divisions of an organization to gain firsthand experience of the many problems that their future subordinates must face. [Recall how Moltke rotated his General Staff officers through various regiments.] Finally, Weber stressed that rational bureaucracies must be managed in accordance with carefully developed rules and principles that can be learned and applied and that transactions and decisions must be recorded so that rules can he reviewed. Only with such rules and principles can the activities of hundreds of managers at different levels in the organization be predicted and coordinated. If we cannot predict what others will do, then we cannot count on them. Moltke had to be sure that staff officers faced with an unexpected crisis would solve it as he would. To ensure that, officers had to be trained in Moltke's tactical principles and rules. Similarly Gustavus Swift had to know that his stockyards would not buy meat faster than his packing plants could process it or that more meat would not be shipped than his eastern refrigerators could accommodate, of course, it is impossible to spell out detailed rules to fit all contingencies. Therefore, decision makers must be highly trained and must report their decisions promptly and accurately to their superiors. For a long time, Weber's rational bureaucracy model dominated social science thinking about large, modern organizations. If organizations did not operate quite as Weber had said a bureaucracy should, then the solution was to bring them in line with the ideal bureaucratic procedures. However by World War II, sharp criticism of Weber's ideas began to surface. social scientists began to argue that Weber had ignored much of what really went on in organizationsthe conflicts, the cliques, and the sidestepping of rules and the chain of command. The problem, according to Philip Selznick 1948,1957), lay in the fact that bureaucracies were not and could not be like machines because they consisted of human beings. In the final analysis, people will simply not imitate machines.

The Ideal Bureaucracy - Max Weber (1864 - 1920)

Bureaucracy is the division of labour applied to administration. 'Bureau', is a French word meaning desk, or by extension, an office; thus, 'Bureaucracy' is rule through a desk or office, that is, a form of organization built on the preparation and dispatch of written documents. In contrast to the commonly held view of bureaucracies, they do not 'rule' in their own right but are the means by which a monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, or other form of authority, rules. Observing the changes that were taking place during the industrial revolution, Weber saw Capitalism as 'rational' way to organize activities: rational in the sense that all decisions could based on the calculation of their likely return to the enterprise. Weber's Ideal bureaucracy was therefore devoted to the principle of efficiency: maximizing output whilst minimizing inputs. By studying the organizational innovations in Germany at the turn of the 20th century, Weber identified the core elements of this new form of organization in " The Theory of Social and Economic Organization ". For Weber, the ideal bureaucracy was characterized by impersonality, efficiency and rationality. The key feature of the organization was that the authority of officials was subject to published rules and codes of practice; all rules, decisions and actions were recorded in writing. The structure of the organization is a continuous hierarchy where each level is subject to control by the level above it. Each position in the hierarchy exists in its own right and job holders have no rights to a particular position. Responsibilities within each level are clearly delineated and each level has its own sphere of competence. An appointment to an office, and the levels of authority that go with it, are based solely on the grounds of technical competence. Weber believed that, due to their efficiency and stability, bureaucracies would become the most prevalent form of organization in society. However, he was also concerned that bureaucracies shared so many common structures it could mean that all organizations would become very much alike, which in turn could lead to the development of a new class of worker, the professional bureaucrat.
VIII. Bureaucracy I: Characteristics of Bureaucracy MODERN officialdom functions in the following specific manner:

I. There is the principle of fixed and official jurisdictional areas, which are generally ordered by rules, that is, by laws or administrative regulations. 1. The regular activities required for the purposes of the bureaucratically governed structure are distributed in a fixed way as official duties. 2. The authority to give the commands required for the discharge of these duties is distributed in a stable way and is strictly delimited by rules concerning the coercive means, physical, sacerdotal, or otherwise, which may be placed at the disposal of officials.

3. Methodical provision is made for the regular and continuous fulfilment of these duties and for the execution of the corresponding rights; only persons who have the generally regulated qualifications to serve are employed. In public and lawful government these three elements constitute 'bureaucratic authority.' In private economic domination, they constitute bureaucratic 'management.' Bureaucracy, thus understood, is fully developed in political and ecclesiastical communities only in the modern state, and, in the private economy, only in the most advanced institutions of capitalism. Permanent and public office authority, with fixed jurisdiction, is not the historical rule but rather the exception. This is so even in large political structures such as those of the ancient Orient, the Germanic and Mongolian empires of conquest, or of many feudal structures of state. In all these cases, the ruler executes the most important measures through personal trustees, tablecompanions, or court-servants. Their commissions and authority are not precisely delimited and are temporarily called into being for each case. II. The principles of office hierarchy and of levels of graded authority mean a firmly ordered system of super- and subordination in which there is a supervision of the lower offices by the higher ones. Such a system offers the governed the possibility of appealing the decision of a lower office to its higher authority, in a definitely regulated manner. With the full development of the bureaucratic type, the office hierarchy is monocratically organized. The principle of hierarchical office authority is found in all bureaucratic structures: in state and ecclesiastical structures as well as in large party organizations and private enterprises. It does not matter for the character of bureaucracy whether its authority is called 'private' or 'public.' When the principle of jurisdictional 'competency' is fully carried through, hierarchical subordination--at least in public office--does not mean that the 'higher' authority is simply authorized to take over the business of the 'lower.' Indeed, the opposite is the rule. Once established and having fulfilled its task, an office tends to continue in existence and be held by another incumbent. III. The management of the modern office is based upon written documents ('the files'), which are preserved in their original or draught form. There is, therefore, a staff of subaltern officials and scribes of all sorts. The body of officials actively engaged in a 'public' office, along with the respective apparatus of material implements and the files, make up a 'bureau.' In private enterprise, 'the bureau' is often called 'the office.' In principle, the modern organization of the civil service separates the bureau from the private domicile of the official, and, in general, bureaucracy segregates official activity as something distinct from the sphere of private life. Public monies and equipment are divorced from the private property of the official. This condition is everywhere the product of a long development. Nowadays, it is found in public as well as in private enterprises; in the latter, the principle extends even to the leading entrepreneur. In principle, the executive office is separated from the household, business from private correspondence, and business assets from private fortunes. The more consistently the modern type of business management has been carried through the more are these separations the case. The beginnings of this process are to be found as early as the Middle Ages.

It is the peculiarity of the modern entrepreneur that he conducts himself as the 'first official' of his enterprise, in the very same way in which the ruler of a specifically modern bureaucratic state spoke of himself as 'the first servant' of the state. The idea that the bureau activities of the state are intrinsically different in character from the management of private economic offices is a continental European notion and, by way of contrast, is totally foreign to the American way. IV. Office management, at least all specialized office management-- and such management is distinctly modern--usually presupposes thorough and expert training. This increasingly holds for the modern executive and employee of private enterprises, in the same manner as it holds for the state official. V. When the office is fully developed, official activity demands the full working capacity of the official, irrespective of the fact that his obligatory time in the bureau may be firmly delimited. In the normal case, this is only the product of a long development, in the public as well as in the private office. Formerly, in all cases, the normal state of affairs was reversed: official business was discharged as a secondary activity. VI. The management of the office follows general rules, which are more or less stable, more or less exhaustive, and which can be learned. Knowledge of these rules represents a special technical learning which the officials possess. It involves jurisprudence, or administrative or business management. The reduction of modern office management to rules is deeply embedded in its very nature. The theory of modern public administration, for instance, assumes that the authority to order certain matters by decree--which has been legally granted to public authorities--does not entitle the bureau to regulate the matter by commands given for each case, but only to regulate the matter abstractly. This stands in extreme contrast to the regulation of all relationships through individual privileges and bestowals of favor, which is absolutely dominant in patrimonialism, at least in so far as such relationships are not fixed by sacred tradition.

Reference ::: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization

By Max Weber