Weber on Bureaucracy
Spring 2006
One, Two, Three
• Ideal type
• “Why bureaucracy?”
• Superiority
7 Characteristics of Bureaucracy
• 1. The business is an ongoing concern
• 2. Offices function according to rules
• 3. Offices are organized hierarchically
• 4. Officials do not own tools & resources
• 5. Work and home are strictly separated
• 6. Office is not owned by the incumbent.
• 7. Business based on written documents
Business is an ongoing concern
• vs. organized group activity of the moment
• There is an “entity” or “concern” that exists
independently of particular task
• Members have full-time jobs with the entity
• Basis for our thinking about
“organizations” as things
Office functions guided by rules
• vs. ad hoc divisions of labor or “Three
Musketeers” organization (cf. Saturday
morning cartoons)
• Job descriptions. Jurisdictions.
Qualifications. Authority (available means
of coercion ) defined.
• This is big part of what makes an
organization work like a well-oiled machine
Offices Organized Hierarchically
• vs. anybody at level 1 can boss people at level 2
• Super and sub-ordination
• Monocratic (everybody has only one boss)
• Chains of command
• Spans of control
Officials do not own tools
• Vs. private craftsperson (“must have own
tools”)
• Emphasizes human capital (you come to
do a job using our materials)
Work and home strictly separate
• vs., say, family enterprise (e.g. farm)
• Office distinguished from home, household
from private correspondence
– cf. CNE book Home and Work
• Further emphasizes impersonality of job
fulfillment
Office not owned by incumbent.
• Vs. feudal titles or privs like “tax farming”
• Offices cannot be appropriated by their
incumbents (inherited, sold, etc.)
• “acceptance of a specific duty of fealty to
the purpose of the office”
• Salary rather than wages for officials.
Career track. Fixed career lines. Grades,
ranks, moving up the ladder
Written documents
• vs. “informal” organization
• Records, paper trails
• Memos and staff to process them (clerks,
“paper pushers”). Office management as
specific skill set
Another Way to Look at Weber
• Three groups of characteristics
1. Structure and function of organization
2. Means of rewarding effort
3. Protections for the individuals.
Structure & function of organization
• Hierarchy : orders/channels
• Jurisdictions
• Job descriptions
• Written records
Means of rewarding effort
• Salary.
• Advancement based on tenure,
qualifications.
• Security.
Protections for the individuals
Job security – tenure unless “cause” (vs.
serving “at the pleasure of X”)
Explicit Definitions of what is “job relevant”
Descrimination
Sexual harassment
So, “Why bureaucracy?”
• Usual associations
• Red tape, inefficient, impersonal,
inflexible, slow, meaningless requirements
“…the sins generally attributed
to bureaucracy are either not
sins at all or are consequences
of the failure to bureaucratize
sufficiently.”
Charles Perrow
Failures of Bureaucracy
• Job descriptions unclear
• Jurisdictional overlaps
• Skills/credentials not matched to
requirements of job
• Communication channels unclear or not
observed
• Exceptions made for friends
• Failure to document or inability to find
records
Superiority of Bureaucracy
• “the means of transforming social action into
rationally organized action” (189b7)
• Instrument of power
• Member stuck in apparatus (“cog in the
machine”)
• Members generally can’t derail the organization
• Resistance can’t simply break in
• Mechanism can work for anybody/anything
• Organization as TOOL
Failures of Bureaucracy
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Nepotism
Favoritism in hiring
“Hostile environment”
Inconsistency
Failure to follow own rules
Contradictory orders from two “bosses”
Confusion over what job has authority to
control
• Corruption
Failures of Bureaucracy
• Overly tall structures (word never gets
from top to bottom)
• Officials who hide behind office
• Use of paper trails to hide rather than
document accountability
Other Organizational Pathologies
• Over-specialization
• Rigidity and inertia reduces innovation
• Group think
• Catch-22: rules leads to contradictions
• Goal ambiguity – allegiance to what?
Questions
• What is the relationship between “class,
status, and party” and “bureaucracy”?
• How is bureaucracy “rational”?
Books You Should Read
Perrow, Charles Complex Organizations: A Critical
Essay
Gouldner, Alvin Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy