The Weberian bureaucracy that has emerged in the early 20th century, due to Max Weber’s works on bureaucracy, is now widely spread throughout public and private sectors. However, it is not a perfect structure and has several disadvantages which this essay will cover. This called for a shift to a new, improved way of organizing work. It is widely believed that post-bureaucracy has stepped in now as an organizational structure which eliminates the negative sides of bureaucracy, but we need proof in favour of that argument. In this essay I will try to show that a new form of organisation is now used by doing a comparison on how is managerial work done now and before the stepping in of post-bureaucracy.
In the rise of industrialization, administration of work has not faced a lot of problems, but with the expansion of the structures this led to the need of new and more complex organization. Offe (1976) argued there are two types of organization, “task continuous” and “task discontinuous”. The first is typical for small enterprises where the employees are involved in running the firm. Large-scale organizations are recognized as the latter, people that do the work in these organizations are not involved at all in the administrative structures of the business. Today in our economic life we observe the most common form of “task discontinuous” organization – bureaucracy. The works of Max Weber on bureaucracy have a massive influence on our understanding of organizational structures and how they are implemented in enterprises. He outlined the basic characteristics which are as follows: division of labour which means that every individual has a specific task assigned, responsibilities are carefully laid out. Hierarchical structure...
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...priate examples of information-based organization will give a better understanding of the concept. As a good example we can consider hospitals where “each specialty has its own knowledge, its own training, its own language” Drucker, P. (1988). In each department there are specialists which “report directly to the top and there is little middle management” Drucker, P. (1988) and every individual takes responsibility for information. Drucker (1988) argues that large business organizations need to change in order to last, but a comparative study needs to be done to show if any changes have undergone in enterprises through the years.
Works Cited
Drucker, P. (1988). The coming of the new organization. Harvard Business Review, January-February: 45.
Chapter 12 in Fincham, R. and Rhodes, P. (2005). Principles of Organizational behaviour. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Max Weber, German sociologist, social theorist, and economist, explicated the theory of bureaucracy in which he details the monocratic bureaucracy “as an ideal form that maximized rationality” (Bolman & Deal, 2008, p. 48). He provided his most complete exposition of theory in his 1922 tome Economy and Society (Casey, 2004). This classic form of bureaucracy is characterized by the following (a) well-defined official functions; (b) specialization of function; (c) clearly defined hierarchy of offices; (d) rules governing performance, which require training to administer; (e) impersonal treatment of clients, in that all are treated equally; (f) merit as the basis of promotion or appointment; (g) compensation based on rank; (h) separation of personal and company assets and interests; (i) discipline and control of daily work; (j) files and record keeping for decisions, acts, and rules (Bolman & Deal, 2008; O’Connor, 2011). There are numerous shorthand versions of Weber’s theory including Harmon and Mayer (1986) in Organization Theory for Public Administration and Heady (2001) in Public Administration: A Comparative Perspective (O’Connor, 2011).
Bureaucracy is a specific type of secondary group that are everywhere in one's life. Max Weber identified Bureaucracy with six different types of characteristics. Areas in my life that have been Mcdonaldized can first fit in with the Specialization part. Specialization is where all members of a bureaucracy are assigned specialized roles and tools, an example of this in my life can fit in with voluntary work I do in hospitals. Everyone who voluntaries to work each have their own roles to help out with. When I go to stores or to restaurants Hierarchy is something I see the most. The reason as to why is because both stores and restaurants have supervision by higher-ranking managers and bosses. Another area in my life that has been Mcdonaldized is my school. My school fits under Rules and regulations because responsibilities are written down and are clearly stated. Almost student who starts school is given a handbook, the handbook has our responsibilities written down on
Though the bureaucracy began simply, with George Washington’s creation of the Department of Foreign Affairs, over the last 226 years, its size and power have increased exponentially. From homeland security to the delivery of mail, this “fourth branch of government” possesses a wide scope of responsibilities. However, the necessity for such a structure often comes into question. According to Max Weber, who believed that “the bureaucracy was likely to acquire an ‘overpowering’ power position, the bureaucracy is an “inevitable consequence” of modern day life (“The Rise of the Bureaucratic State”, Wilson). A specialized bureaucracy provides valuable expertise, an asset which the Founders did not take for granted, as they had suffered a committee
The Case for Bureaucracy, published in 2004, is more academic than the other book. It demonstrates that the quality of the public services in America has been underestimated with positive literature. The author believes that bureaucracy is not the cause of the crisis of public services. Beating the System, published in 2005, focuses on the perspectives of citizens who were beaten by the system (bureaucracy) and their strategies of fighting
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).
The criminal justice system and America in general has a lot of bureaucracy. The bureaucracy can sometimes become a hindrance to the people that the system is supposed to be helping. Rarely, do we hear anyone state they are glad for bureaucracy or the red tape bureaucracy seems to create. I think myself and many Americans at first glance dislike bureaucracy; however this appears to be the most prevalent organizational model in most businesses.
Weber believed that bureaucracy created stable, and predictable actions and outcomes because it allowed organizations to work in a rational manner, like a machine, and helped account for the fact that humans had only limited intelligence. Though Weber discussed the perfect model of an organization, bureaucracy allows for even imperfect organizations to function in a more reliable and predictable way because it’s structure controls how individuals behave.
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Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2011). Essentials of Organizational Behavior. Harlow England: Pearson Education Limited.
Bureaucracy is an organizational design based on the concept of standardization. “It is characterized by highly routine operating tasks achieved through specialization, very formalized rules and regulations, tasks that are grouped into functional departments, centralized authority, narrow spans of control, and decision making that follows the chain of command” (Judge & Robbins, 2007, p.
A German sociologist Max Weber was the first person who describe about the term bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a means to create efficient institution staffed with trained experts who work permanently, whose jurisdiction is prearranged by laws and regulations, and whose responsibility comprises of applying plain broad rules to specific circumstances (Weber, 1946).