JOKO1102 Introduction to Management and Organization
Bureaucracy
Fabrizio Bertoglio
fbertogl@ulapland.fi
(Numbers of words 6952)
Introduction
As Etzioni puts it we are born in organisations, educated by organizations, and most of us
spend much of our lives working for organisations.
This simple sentence let us understand the importance of bureaucracy in our daily life and
the reason that push me to study them.
Ive been interested in it and decided to more deeply study the characteristic of this type of
organizations, interest that drive me in writing this essay. The writing was constantly
following my research of information, this give to my essay the following structure:
1. HISTORICAL OUTLOOK
2. DEFINITION OF BUREAUCRACY AND MAIN CHARACTERISTIC
3. THE CLASSICAL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF BUREAUCRACY:
Weber Political Sociology
4. CONCLUSION ON WEBER
5. BUREAUCRATIZATION AND RATIONALIZATION: INTO THE IRON CAGE
6. THE POST-WEBERIAN THEORIES OF BUREAUCRACY:
Taylorism
7. SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AND THE MCDONALD CASE
8. THE HUMAN RELATION SCHOOL
9. TOWARDS A BROADENING SCOPE
The structure of my essay follow different theories of organization, each of them found
numerous advantages or disadvantages of certain system. I will deeply them and end with
a general conclusion.
1 HISTORICAL OUTLOOK
Bureaucracy is nowadays a terms associated with a negative meaning. The word is often
utilized to describe inefficient organisation incapable to take rapid decision, costly and
paralyzed by their complex system of work. In few words a clock-work-orange moving a
lot of gears in a synchronized manner, but producing no movement at all.
It has not always been like that, on the opposite the bureaucratic system was introduced by
Napoleon for the exact opposite reason.
Decisions had to be taken, also in the huge macro system of the national state French
organisation:
* Within the state legal system,
* Within a hierarchical organisation,
* With a clear communication Top-Down
* Within the power of attorney assigned to a new professional governmental-figure, civil
servant, removing those from the control of the aristocracy.
In order to define and to control the civil servant decision-power it was developed a
complex system capable to work within a package of rules. The aim was also to release the
civil servant of his direct personal responsibility generated by the use of the power of his
post. If you act by correct application of the norms you are not responsible for the
outcome.
Bureaucracy, in its initial meaning, was in fact in the transfer of the responsibility from the
individual to the bureau, releasing in this way the individuals from the personal burden of
their decision. It represents a step in the modern age were the individual responsibility is
limited to the respect of a set of rules or to a particular area.
Bureaucracy may be objectively defined as administration over an organization, using
written regulations and centralized procedures. In nineteenth century liberals have utilized
the word to criticize rigid rules and mismanagement in authoritarian governments.
A first approach to the bureaucracy was done by Max Weber. In his view bureaucracy is a
rational organisation based on competence and specialisation required by the needs of the
modern industrial complex society. Bureaucracy is due to expand inevitably to all sector of
state organisation, inside the political parties and in public and private companies Max
Weber.
After Weber a lot of criticism was expressed with the description of the dangers linked to
an excess of bureaucratisation, which could damage the democratic functioning of the
society and the state. Strict links between totalitarian Russian policy and bureaucratic
management of the power capable to by-pass the democratic control of the state were
analysed by Bruno Buozzi in Il Collettivismo Burocratico and James Burnham.
Degeneration of the original concept (act within rules) created in the time any type of
abuse of the bureaucratic system up to the justification of the most criminal decisions
taken in respect of the set of rules such as Nazism and other totalitarian governments.
The mismanagement of the power, the complexity of the rules and uncertainty of the
allocation of the personal responsibility in the bureaucratic system created often point of
power generating bribery, corruption, nepotism,
Last potential anti-democratic evolution of bureaucracy is what has been defined in the
after war period the techno-bureaucracy. This is represented by the power of
techno-agencies (public and private) owner of highly sophisticated and specialized know
ledges capable to operate in absolute independency. Herbert Marcuse stated that techno
bureaucracy is one of the major dangers for the modern democracy. It is so dangerous that
it would be preferable to step back in some of the new technologies made available. Alain
Tourain instead in is has a more pessimistic view, concluding that in the post industrial age
these risks are not avoidable.
Niskamen (1971) has probably centred the core of the problem in the modern bureaucracy
emphasizing that in a bureaucratic system all managers generate the base for the
strengthening of their own department by maximizing the budget of their own office
regardless of public economy or interest generating in this way goods and services in
excess towards the demand. A circle of again a sort of self- feeding clock work-orange.
2 DEFINITION OF BUREAUCRACY AND MAIN CHARACTERISTIC
Definition of association and bureaucracy
Firstly we distinguish the difference between association and bureaucracy that are often
confused. An association is defined as a group of individual with a common goal who have
come together and formed themselves into an institution with explicit rules and regulations
governing membership (Elliot Jaques, 1976).
Associations differ from their time-span; permanent associations are trade-unions,
employers associations, institutionalized clubs, churches, universities, political parties and
institutions. MacIver and Page include also nations, topic subjected to great discussions,
for the nations particular power over their citizens. Elliot Jaques considering nation as
association, explain easily the interrelation between association and bureaucracy.
Association in order to pursue their aim can authorize their governing body to employ
outsiders to help (Elliot Jaques, 1976). Here we can distinguish bureaucracies from
associations that establish them. Different author make confusion on this limit that divide
bureaucracies from associations, instead Weber uses a more consistent definition based on
the principle of appointment. As he explains election makes it impossible to attain a
stringency of discipline even approaching that in the appointed type (Weber, 1947).
Bureaucracy is defined for our purposes as a hierarchically stratified managerial
employment system in which people are employed to work for a wage or salary; that is to
say, a stratified employment hierarchy with at least one manager who in turn has a staff of
employed subordinates.
They are secondary as they cannot be formed directly in their own right, dependent in the
sense that their continued existence depends upon the continued existence of the
employing body.
We need to make different distinction and exclusion on bureaucracy.
* The distinction between the corporate group (association) and the administrative staff
(bureaucracy). We refer to Webers central concept of rationalization, the establishment in
society of more and larger bureaucracies, thereby increasing the number of role
relationships governed by bureaucratic rules and regulations.
* We dont use the term bureaucratic for all organizations that has become monolithic and
ensnared by its regulations and hamstrung by red tape that as Crozier puts it, cannot learn
from its own errors (M Crozier; 1965).
* The term bureaucratic is applied to all employment hierarchies.
* Our definition exclude those systems of professional colleagues such as doctors in
hospitals, teaching staffing universities, lawyers in partnerships as Parsons points out in his
introduction to The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, such considerations
would alter Webers perspective of several issues.
All this distinctions have to be taken in our study of bureaucracies.
Our definition is limited to Webers concept of bureaucratic administrative staff. The
alternative usage in which all institution are brought together in only one called
bureaucracy could be misleading, putting bureaucracies and association in the same
analytic category.
The employment contract and human judgment
The employment contract is a fundamental part of my theoretical introduction.
To join a bureaucracy you must apply for a job, be selected and appointed to that job. The
mode of appointment is to be given a contract of employment. The employment contract
indicates-either explicitly or implicitly- the kind of work a person is expected to do, the
role he will occupy to begin with, and the conditions of his employment, including his
remuneration. With the employment contract the employee agrees to be accountable to the
governing body for the quality of his work, and to recognize that if the governing body is
not satisfied it is entitled to dispense with his services
The security of his employment will depend to a large degree upon the way the institution
is financed.
Concerned with the subject of human judgment, basic issue is the case of disagreement
about the adequacy of the employees work with the governing body then it is the
judgement of the governing body which has the overriding force. Its the judgment of the
governing body that counts; there are no processes that make the decisions automatically.
Its becoming common the process of technocracy, where the traditional judgment is
substituted with automatic processes, but the human ability is lost in the process.
The judgment for a head of a government department or of a social service its more hard
that for an industrial company. Industrial companies have clear profits and return of
capital, while public enterprises not. It is possible to understand how many services a
