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Criticisms levelled against Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy
Criticisms levelled against Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy
Criticisms levelled against Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy
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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.
The prime directive and raison d’être of the bureaucracy is to act as a bulwark against the forces of chaos, irrationality, and disorganization that constantly jeopardize an organization (Casey, 2004). In this sense, bureaucracy can be seen as necessary to the survival of groups. It is, however, a term that is vilified in popular culture, used pejoratively even by some researchers, and reviled as nearly blasphemous and certainly anti-democratic by many reform-minded persons. To the Weberian observer, in contrast, bureaucracy is not only as equal to all other organizational forms, but is ...
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
The mainstream view of bureaucracy identifies problems of poor motivation, poor customer service and resistance to change, while the critical view accuses its instrumental rationality and narrow focus on efficiency to not only be demotivating but also dehumanising. With regard to post-bureaucracy, the mainstream approach critiques its problems of fragile control, risk and bias, while the critical perspective contends that its method of normative control is still an exertion of power over employees carried out by senior
Robbins , Stephen P. and Judge, Timothy, A. Organizational Behavior. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Prentice Hall. Pearson Custom Publishing. 2008 Print
Langton, Nancy, Stephen Robbins, and Timothy Judge.Organizational Behaviour: Concepts, Controversies, Applications. Fifth Canadian Edition. Toronto: Pearson Canada, 2009. 141, 574-84. Print.
pp. 146-170. Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A., (2004). Organizational Behavior (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Mullins, L. J. (2005). Management and organizational behavior (7th ed.). Harlow, England: Prentice Hall/Financial Times.
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
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.
McShane, S.L., Olekalns, M. & Travaglione, A. 2013, Organizational Behavior: Emerging Knowledge, Global Insights 4th ed., McGraw-Hill, Sydney.
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.
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.
Similarly in Weber’s bureaucratic approach, organizations are divided into different echelons with each varying in its degrees of influence. Each unit being commanded by the one above it, a system that promotes stability and has a predictable line of communication. Both approaches of management rely heavily on regulated control. Whether governing task scientifically of people authoritatively. A solid form of control is mus...
Traditional public administration is traced back to the works of scholars like Max Weber, Woodrow Wilson and Fredrick Taylor. This form of administration was mostly influenced by Max Weber with his bureaucratic model and theory. Max Weber was a well-known sociologist born in Germany in the year 1864. He came up with his bureaucratic model as a way to try to improve management in organizations. ‘Weber emphasized on top-down control in the form of monocratic hierarchy that is a system of control in which policy is set at the top and carried out through a series of offices, whereby every manager and employee are to report to one person in top management and held accountable by that manager’ (Pfiffner, 2004, p. 1).