Bureaucracy

892 Words2 Pages

Bureaucracy

Max Weber’s work on Bureaucracy focuses on the formation of a large, structured, and impersonal organization that will influence the lives of everyone born in the modern era we are in. The formal organization concept is the skeleton of Weber’s Bureaucracy. As an introduction there three different types of formal organization: there is the voluntary type where in the sense that people may freely join them or withdraw from them like religious movements, professional associations and political parties. Some are coercive, in the sense that people are forced to join them like primary level schooling or prisons. Other organizations are utilitarian which is probably very important in a capitalist world since people enter these types of organization to join a business in order to earn a living.

Bureaucracy is the response to the problem posed by larger and more complex formal organization because an extensive organization will need a form of order of the ranks or chain of command to coordinate the activities of its members. Bureaucracy provides a hierarchical authority structure that is supposed to operate under certain rules and procedures. Understanding bureaucracy is the key to the analysis of formal organizations. The word “bureaucracy” connotes negative images in everyday speech. It usually brings to mind images of, “red tape” or “buck passing” where the organization requires forms in triplicate; files are often lost, incorrect statements of accounts, and the ...

Open Document