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Is bureaucracy dead?. Bureau means office in French, so bureaucracy roughly translates as rule by office . Weber's bureaucracy The term, bureaucracy, was introduced by Max Weber One of Weber's interests was in how to manage large industrial organizations.
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Is bureaucracy dead? • Bureau means office in French, so bureaucracy roughly translates as rulebyoffice. • Weber's bureaucracy • The term, bureaucracy, was introduced by Max Weber • One of Weber's interests was in how to manage large industrial organizations. • He proposed seven principles which, when applied, would lead to rational and efficient operations. • A number of his proposals are structural, others are behavioral.
Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • He taught both before and during the first world war at the universities of Freiburg, Heidelberg and Munich. • He wrote on a wide range of topics, extending from religion and capitalism through to Chinese social organization. • “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” and “The Theory of Social and Economic Organization” Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German sociologist
Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • 1.Division of labor: division of job into simple, routine and well-defined tasks. job specialization • 2.Well-defined authority hierarchy: each lower position is under the supervision and control of a higher one. • 3.High formalization. There is dependence on formal rules and procedures to ensure uniformity and to regulate the behavior of job holders.
Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • 4. Impersonal nature: Sanctions are applied uniformly and impersonally to avoid personal preferences of members. • 5. Employment decisions based on merit: Selection and promotion decisions are based on technical qualifications, competence and performance of the candidates. • 6. Career tracks for employees: Members are expected to pursue a career in the organization.
Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • Distinct separation of members' organizational and personal lives. The demands and interests of personal affairs and kinship ties are kept completely separate from work-related activities. • Positive qualities in Weber's 'ideal type' • the focus on merit when selecting employees; • security of employment to protect employees against the exercise of arbitrary authority and changes in skill demands; • rules and regulations to promote impartiality(neutrality) in decision making; • the establishment of clear lines of authority and responsibility.
Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • Weber's bureaucracy had its structural elements. These include: • division of labor, • rules and regulations to cover all eventualities, • a management hierarchy with clearly defined areas of responsibility.
Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • Summarizing Weber's contribution • The central theme in Weber's bureaucratic model is standardization. • In this we can see that many of its features are present in the machine bureaucracy. • The behavior of people in bureaucracies is predetermined by standardized structures and processes.
Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • The model itself can be divided into three groups of characteristics: • those that relate to the structure and function of the organization, • those that deal with means of rewarding effort, • those that deal with protection for individual members.
The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • Goal displacement: • Bureaucracy is attacked most often for encouraging goal displacement—that is, the displacement of organizational goals by subunit or personal goals. • The rules and procedures become more important than the ends they were designed to serve, the result being goal displacement and loss of organizational effectiveness.
The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • Another criticism of bureaucracy proposes that high formalization bureaucracy creates insecurities in those in authority that lead to what has been called bureaupathic behavior. • Decision makers use adherence to rules to protect themselves from making errors.
The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • Inappropriate application of rules and regulations: • Related closely to the problem of goal displacement is the undesirable effect of members' applying formalized rules and procedures in inappropriate situations. • Employee alienation: • Members perceive the impersonality of the organization as creating distance between them and their work.
The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • High specialization further reinforces one's feeling of being irrelevant: routine activities can easily be learned by others, making employees feel interchangeable and powerless. • In professional bureaucracies formalization must be lessened, otherwise the risk of employee alienation is very high. • Concentration of power: • It is a fact that bureaucracy generates an enormous degree of power in the hands of a very few.
The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • Inability to adapt to change: • Bureaucracies have a well-deserved reputation for being slow to change. • Environments can change around them, but bureaucracies tend to be always lagging in introducing new ways of doing things. • Overstaffing: • Because of the reluctance to reduce workforces, at least in former years, many bureaucracies suffer from a reputation for being overstaffed and for those employed by them being underworked.
The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • Tendency towards large size and low productivity: • Until the waves of downsizing in the 1980s and 90s bureaucracies, in both business and government, had a reputation for being too big and costing too much to run. • Too many people were doing too many unnecessary things and there was enormous resistance to do anything about it. • Non-member frustration: • The last negative consequence that we address relates to thoseoutside the organization who must deal with the bureaucracy.
