PhD in Business Administration and Quantitative Methods

Management – Homework #1

André Manuel Teixeira

1. Half-page biography of Anthony Giddens

Anthony Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is a British sociologist who is known for his

theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. Giddens received his

undergraduate academic degree (in joint sociology and psychology) at Hull University

(1959), followed by a Master's degree at the London School of Economics. Later on,

he would gain a PhD at King's College, Cambridge.

His academic life has gone through three notable phases. The first one involved

outlining a new vision of what sociology is, presenting a theoretical and

methodological understanding of that field, based on a critical reinterpretation of the

classics. In the second stage, Giddens developed the theory of structuration, an

analysis of agency and structure, in which primacy is granted to neither. Finally, the

most recent stage concerns modernity, globalization and politics in which Giddens

critized postmodernity by analyzing the impact of modernity on social and personal

life.

2. Definition of informal organization, describing which type of authority is

present.

Informal organization refers to a small group in which members are tied to one

another as persons. Informal and face-to-face relations, mutual aid, cooperation and

companionship characterize this type of organization. As such, members often share

their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows. This means that informal organizations

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consist of only rules and not statuses. Thus, because there is no authority but only

leadership, informal organizations have their own unwritten norms of behavior to

correct and punish the violators of the norms in order to assure a smooth and effective

functioning.

3. Describing Weber’s ideal of bureaucracy and reflecting about its existence

nowadays.

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.

Weber described it as a more rational and efficient form of organization than the

alternatives that preceded it, which he characterized as “charismatic domination” and

“traditional domination”.

The German itself did not provide any formal definition for buraucracy. Instead,

Weber described the main principles or characteristics that a modern bureaucracy

should pursuit. According to him, the attributes of modern bureaucracy include its

impersonality (equal threatment of employees and customers, ignoring individual

differences), concentration of the means of administration (formal hierarchical

structure to allow central planning and centralized decision making), an “up-focused”

or “in-focused” mission (defining a clear objective of either serving an institution that

empowered the organization or to serve the organization itself), a leveling effect on

social and economic differences (employment based on technical qualifications and

organization by functional speciality), and the implementation of a system of

authority (management by rules to ensure execution).

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Anwering to the second part of the question, “ideal bureaucracy” seems to be the

most ubiquitous form of dividing labor among members of an organization, town,

state, or nation. This is indeed the hallmark of modern societies throughout the world.

Thus, even if bureaucracies may not always function in the ideal form that Weber

described, the bureaucratic system seems to offer the most efficient method of

maintaining a social institution by purging self-centered pursuits.