hierarchy of specialized offices defined by systematic rules • an impersonalized routinized structure wherein legitimate authority rests in the office and not in the person of the incumbent • inescapable if systems of human collaboration are developed beyond a certain size (Lyndall Urwick); “complexity produces bureaucracy” ( Dimock) • “In its conceptual purity, the mutual construct [b] cannot be found anywhere in reality. It is a utopia.” (Weber) ELEMENTAL FUNCTIONS DYSFUNCTIONS (unintended CONCEPTS consequences)
Hierarchy Structure & positions are Displacement of goals/ objectives;
defined; leads to leads to bifurcation of interest `competence, authority, (Gordon) responsibility & order Division of Labor Specialization; leads to Narrow-perspectiveness & over- increased productivity specialization; may lead to Veblen’s trained incapacity; Dewey’s occupational psychosis; Warnotte’s professional deformation; Peter principle; “people may be unfitted by being fit in an unfit fitness” (Kenneth Burke: Permanence & Change) Career Aspects (tenure, Partial democracy; Empire-building; self-perpetuation; pension rights, free selection opportunity for job is open bureaucrats’ expertise/ understanding based on ability, individual to all; top positions may be make it difficult for them to be is subject to authority, fixed filled based on non- replaced; often, changes in top pay based on job demands) democratic grounds administration have minimal effect on lower levels of bureaucracy ELEMENTAL CONCEPTS FUNCTIONS DYSFUNCTIONS (unintended consequences)
Rules, Regulations, Stability, predictability, Rigidity, inertia, red tape;
Procedures (records, files, discipline & control responsibility avoidance; routine) innovations are seen as disturbances; G and C
decisions are made according bureaupathology (bureautic & to objectives & agreed upon bureaupathic behavior); anxiety; criteria, and not by caprice, changes in personality whims or patronage