Bureaucracy, In our everyday lives we all have dealt with bureaucracy one way or another and even though we don’t personally encounter or personally deal with a bureaucratic official we are still being monitored by a bureaucratic system somewhere, despite the fact, most people still have very little knowledge of how it works and its significance. To understand bureaucracy more it is a collection or group of official who engage in administrative and policy making duties.It is a system of government or business that has many complicated rules and ways of doing things. Bureaucracy can be considered to be a particular case of rationalization, or rationalization applied to human organization. It’s difficult for students to engage into this topic, …show more content…
Bureaucracy, which is commonly known as red tape, complicates things by excessively following the recommended method of the entailed job. In this paper were going to talk about the major problems of bureaucracy both in the government and in business organizations. Topics mostly about bureaucracy being formalistic, rule bound and impersonal or dehumanizing. Formalistic, because the organization doesn’t run on personal but on office, which means everything the employee does are only entailed on the job description provided. And anything beyond the contract which an employee does is not allowed. Secondly, It is impersonal and dehumanizing, because Official positions are free from personal involvement, emotions and sentiments. Thus, decisions are governed by reasonable factors rather than personal factors. And lastly it is rule bound,bureaucratic organization conducts a process that is continuous and governed by official …show more content…
It would make them feel dishonorable and immoral. Even though the employee is only required to do his/her job which is mentioned in their job description, they are also entitled to follow what is right and even if it is unethical to the employee. Hierarchy, it may be in favor for the company or government organization, it is not fair mainly because employees’ deserve to be put in a higher position as well as other employees being equal and no bias to others who are below the number one ranked on top of their organization. Impersonal rules on the operations of the organization produce impersonal rules that state duties, responsibilities, standardized procedures and conduct of office holders. Offices are highly specialized. The Capacity of the person’s job is limited to the entailmentsof the job title, According to Michael Sinaghian, an Anthropologist;The production of bureaucracy should be more efficient and controllable as possible. It does this by defining roles for human-employees: a person's job title is meant to define the ways in which time and energy are spent
Often, when the discussion of American bureaucracy is broached in conversation, those holding these conversations often think of the many men and women who operate behind the scenes within the government. This same cross section of Americans is looked upon as the real power within the federal government and unlike the other branches of government, has little to no oversight. A search of EBSCO resulted in the following definition, an organization “structure with a rigid hierarchy of personnel, regulated by set rules and procedures” (Bureaucracy, 2007). Max Weber believed that a bureaucracy was technically the most efficient form of organization, one structured around official functions that are bound by rules, each function having its own specified competence (2007). This wide ranging group of Americans has operated within the gaps, behind the scenes, all under the three core branches of government: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The division of government into three branches and separate powers gives each branch both exclusive powers and some additional power...
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).
Modern Bureaucracy in the United States serves to administer, gather information, conduct investigations, regulate, and license. Once set up, a bureaucracy is inherently conservative. The reason the bureaucracy was initiated may not continue to exist as a need in the future. The need or reason may change with a change in the times and the culture needs. A bureaucracy tends to make decisions that protect it and further it’s own existence, possibly apart from the wishes of the populace. It may not consistently reflect what might be optimal in terms of the needs and wants of the people. Local governments employ most of the United States civil servants. The 14 cabinet departments in the U.S. are run day-to-day by career civil servants, which have a great deal of discretionary authority.
I certainly agree to the author and McNerney that the unethical dysfunctional company norm is the root cause of the ethical issue. It is this norm created by the predecessors who never set good ethical examples that influences the employees. They believed the politically safest way of executing tasks would be mimicking how their superiors get their jobs done.
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 the voluntary work I do in hospitals. Everyone who volunteers to work each has their own role to help out with. When I go to stores or to restaurants, hierarchy is something I see the most.
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.
Weber’s uses his theory of Bureaucracy to point out that it is what society is becoming and how it creates social older in society. This theory is
Hierarchy: A major feature of bureaucracy is that there is an organizational structure arranged in a pyramidal or hierarchical form where each official has a clearly defined area of competence with a clear division of labour; each individual is answerable for his or her performance to a superior
Wilson’s “The Study of Administration,” is insightful. His essay gives a foundation and greater understanding that administration is a field of business and in need of separation from politics. His view on both politics and matters of administration can be frequently intertwined, causing convolution with systems. Wilson addresses the necessity to improve and organize to eliminate disorder and perplexities. Perhaps the emphasis on why Wilson encourages the study of the “science of administration”.
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.
If an employee is not performing to the best of his ability and in turn shifts his responsibilities to others, this makes them accountable for mistakes made on his behalf. If a boss does not recognize this and take action against the employee who shuns his responsibility, it can create animosity in the workplace, and diminish the respect of his loyal employees.
According to Sapru R.K. (2008) p370-371 the traditional ideal of public administration which inclined to be firm and bureaucratic was based on processes instead of outcomes and on setting procedures to follow instead of focusing on results. This paradigm can be regarded as an administration under formal control of the political control, constructed on a firmly ranked model of bureaucracy, run by permanent and neutral public servants, driven only by public concern. In emerging nations the administration was true bureaucracy meaning government by officers. In this perspective Smith (1996) p235-6 perceived that“the bureaucracy controls and manages the means of production through the government. It increases chances for bureaucratic careers by the creation of public figures,demanding public managers, marketing boards.
Post bureaucracy does constitute and advance on bureaucratic organization because it is the answer to the flaws of the bureaucratic system. Post-bureaucracy was aimed to fix the issues with the bureaucratic system. An important feature of post bureaucracy is Trust because it has a lot of advantages. Though it can be costly for the business. Trust refers to a lack of discipline as employees are motivated to do well for the organization. By implying rules it could prove negative for the organizations relationship with its employees and customers. Trust in post bureaucracy is designed so that stakeholders of the organization feel as if they are a vital part and essential to that organizations function. Trust is used to the ensure happiness of all the people related to the organization. A successful occurrence of this is at Homebase where the managers allow staff to issue discounts to customers when appropriate. This trust could easily be betrayed and could be misused and cause Homebase a lot of financial loss if the staff used this to their own advantage. A decline that has been largely attributed to piracy is websites that have illegal movie downloading which lead to a decrease in sales mention veronica mars movie. It is evident from these figures that the ability to download copyrighted material is being abused, and the confidence of organizations has been broken. This conveys that the trust aspect of post bureaucracy is inconsistent.
Max Weber mentions that bureaucracy is characterized by impersonality (Weber, 1997), and this is another reason why it is an irrelevant phenomenon in the study of organizations. The relationships between the executive officials and their juniors in an organization that adopts a bureaucratic system of leadership in usually impersonal. Although impersonality of bureaucracy is praised as important in promoting equality by some scholars, it is a bureaucratic characteristic that cause infuriation in organizations as individual treatment of people is overridden by generalization, something that Gajduschek (2003) attests to. An important point to bear in mind is that offended employees are ultimately unproductive employees. Bureaucracies are often
Efficiency, on the other hand, is the practice of basing appointments on ability and performance, rather than politics. The individual rights of employees are often preserved by national and regional laws, such as the Constitution in the United States; merit systems; and collective bargaining systems, if applicable. Social equity guarantees that groups that cannot compete fairly are given preferences in job selection and promotion decisions.