Discussion on Change in Bureaucratic Control in Business Management
1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to understand what “bureaucratic control” is, and identify and explain what happen to there are changes in the development of bureaucratic control under the context of the development of modern management techniques.
Mockler (1967) defined management control as the systematic effort in setting performance standards that are in line with the planning objectives of the company, with the purpose of designing feedback system, making comparison in the actual performance under the predetermined standards, evaluating whether there is any deviations to their significance, thus to ensure the resources to be under effective and efficient management. Bureaucratic control is the use of the rules, hierarchies, and policies of authority that is the form of written documentations, rewarding systems and other formal mechanisms that can impact the behaviour of the employee and also conduct assessment on the performance of the employees. Bureaucratic control can be adopted when the behaviour of the employees can be controlled with the market mechanisms or the pricing strategy (Chenhall, 2003). It is a system of standardized rules, methods, and process verified, with the purpose of achieving the management goals.
The bureaucratic control would be demolished under the context of the changing business environment, the ways and reasons are identified and explained in the part2, before the conclusion to be achieved in part three.
2. Identification and Explanation in the Change of Bureaucratic Control
Bureaucratic control helps to shape the behaviour of the departments, the functions and individual employees. It can guarantee the s...
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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
In controlling, organization has lots of risk factors .Manager take some employee who is able to control and handling risk factors.
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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...
The report highlight’s the essential aspects of the control process. In terms of concurrent feedback as well as feed forward, that companies can use to implement so that they can have better outcomes in terms of efficiency of the business. Consequently the report underlines as well as emphasizes of the many contributing factors of these controls. The authors have contrasting views on the control models of an organization, they believe that in order to create an effective control process, and organization first needs to determine its strategic plans for instance in terms of what it is and where is it going.
There are three well-established theories of classical management: Taylor?s Theory of Scientific Management, Fayol?s Administrative Theory, Weber?s Theory of Bureaucracy. Although these schools, or theories, developed historical sequence, later ideas have not replaced earlier ones. Instead, each new school has tended to complement or coexist with previous ones.
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).
She conveys that business administration should avoid troublesome internalization by using an integrative technique. Unfortunately, Follett does not elaborate further on the context of what might this integration method appear to be. She changes the direction of her focus back onto the preparation of giving orders. Now, giving orders is a significant component to management but Follett should have provided additional information revolving the integration of management and the giving of orders. Fairholm suggests, “they misunderstand the evolving nature of authority derived from changing social structures, and because they have missed opportunities to tie in research procedures and focuses from intellectual interests such as psychology, sociology, history, and political science, not just scientific management, Weberian bureaucracy, and the like.” (Fairholm. 2004). Follett provides psychological perspectives, however maybe she misunderstands other perspectives, why further development is needed for her to examine. Follett later admits there is additional psychological, learning about the development of habits and the preventative measures of giving orders greatly surpasses than what she can explain in this article. It would be interesting if, she has examined and considered other theories and philosophies surrounding giving orders and
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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.
Felstead, Jewson and Walters (2003) conclude that managerial control is directly related to the visibility and presence of employees in the office because it enables managers to ascertain that employees are actually working and enables managers more discretion on how the job is completed and an ease in monitoring the productivity levels of employees. When these control strategies are linked back to managerial prerogative it is easy to see that managers’ discretion is increased because the decisions relating to tasks in the workplace are decided on without consultation with employees or unions. This is because the employment contracts do not establish the details relating to the completion of tasks in the organisation. (Bray, Waring and Cooper, 2011)
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.