Leadership and Organization Structure

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Leadership and Organization Structure
All organizations have structure; criminal justice is much like the military in regards to having a chain of command that delegates his/her authority downward from the major command element (Stohr & Collins, 2014).
Max Weber defined the characteristics of a bureaucracy as the following: there must be a hierarchy of authority that has several levels each controlled by the one above them, each position is divided with no overlap of duties or responsibilities, there must be formal rules and procedures, the work environment must be impersonal and employment decisions must be based on technical qualifications (Stillman, 2010; Stohr & Collins, 2014).
In a bureaucratic system, communication and policies flow down to employees as directives. To better understand the hierarchy of such organization we must look at what it entails. A bureaucratic management system is a centralized, rigid system that contains parts of a military structure, whereas, employees are armed, wear uniforms, badges, patches and other items (Stohr & Collins, 2014).
Organizations can be formal or informal, open or closed however most law enforcement and courts operate under an open system and corrections operate under a closed system (Stohr & Collins, 2014). Prisons can be compared to military installations; both are off limits to the general public thus creating an air of secrecy about the things that transpire behind the fences.
Although the different criminal justice organizations have similar attributes there are certain characteristics that determine the structure: how work is assigned, tasks employees are assigned, how far organizational control reaches, if organizations fall under one authority or is delegated to l...

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