BUREAUCRACY

BY MAX WEBER

GROUP 3
Deniar Aeisya P. ( 14030119190
Kaulian Kris Ponty S. ( 14030119190137 )
Nasya Zelika H. ( 14030119190
Naufan ( 14030119190

INTERNATIONAL UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM BUSINESS

ADMINISTRATION 2019
Introduction :
Bureaucracy is a widely disseminated concept in Sociology and in
Organizational Theory studies, and it currently has an image where negative
aspects are often highlighted. However, for Max Weber, bureaucracy has very
specific features that differ, in varied situations, from the representation and
application often ascribed to this model of organizational administration.

Bureaucracy :
Weber operated with two conception of bureaucracy, that is -the legal
rational and the charismatic- but he never fully clarified about it. Consequently,
he failed to see that a charismatic bureaucracy could be a ruling class, as in
pharaonic Egypt, Incan Peru, and Soviet Russia. One of the analysis of the
historical evidence suggest that charismatic bureaucracies do not ultimately
transform themselves, as Weber assumed, into legal-rational types but they
remain totalitarian structures, deviating significantly from the ideal type of
bureaucracy. “Charismatic bureaucracy are ends themselves and irresponsible;
legal-rational bureaucracy, however, can be democratically controlled and are
more rational”. (AJC, 1958, p.400)
To understand Weber's ideas about bureaucracy, it is necessary to begin
with the framework of his political sociology in which the concept of
bureaucracy finds its place. Weber felt that all power requires a belief in its
legitimacy if it is to become stabilized. One of the key concept in Weber's
sociological system and probably one of his best-known ideas is charisma.
Charisma must necessarily transform itself in order to serve as a durable basis
of political order. The routinization or institutionalization of charisma may
process in either of two directions :
 1. The hereditary line, in which charisma transfer itself from the original
person in whom it was believed to inhere to someone designated as the
charismatic leader's successor, typically a hereditary successor, or
2. Charisma may attach itself to the office and not the person. This latter
road, according to Weber, leads into a bureaucratic order on an (eventual) legal-
rational basis. (AJC, 1958, p.401)
Thus, Gouldner (1966) suggests that Weber implicitly referred not to one
but to two types of bureaucracy:
1. The «representative form of bureaucracy», based on the rules laid down by
agreement and technically justified and administered by specialists;
2. called «punitive bureaucracy», based on the imposition of norms and on pure
and simple obedience (Gouldner, 1966, p. 58)

For Weber, the irresistible diffusion of bureaucracy resulted from its

purely technical superiority, in comparison with the remaining forms of
organization:
Precision, speed, clarity, knowledge of the archives, continuity, discretion,
unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and costs with material and
personnel – are brought to the optimum level in the strictly bureaucratic
administration, especially in its monocratic form [...] bureaucracy is
―dehumanized‖ insofar as it manages to eliminate from official business love,
hate, and all the personal, irrational, and emotional elements that escape
calculation. This is the specific nature of bureaucracy, praised as its special
virtue (Weber, 1982 [1948], pp. 249-251).
In Weber's view, bureaucracy may come about by either of two routes.
Either a bureaucracy is built up as the logical staff of a legal-rational order (with
all this implies about impersonality, rationality, technical competence, etc.) or it
comes about as the result of the institutionalization of charisma in a bureaucratic
direction rather than a hereditary one. The original charismatic "staff" (hardly a
staff in the proper sense of the term, since it consists of disciples with no status
or office) is transformed into a hierarchy of charismatic offices. The catholic
church provided the most famous example of this latter possibility up until
Weber's day. (AJC, 1958, p.402)
Bureaucracy may be seen as being embedded in a process of
formalization, that is, a way of redefining, reinterpreting reality and
reclassifying its elements, focused on increasing the capacity for control and
direction, enabling the extension of the modern institutions’ field of action.
Formalization, by being based on the classification «method», sorts and
catalogues certain phenomena of reality by ascribing them a linguistic
expression, requiring the construction of concepts that represent certain aspects
of the world. Through classification tasks, the norms of inclusion and exclusion
are established and possibilities for action are structured (Wagner, 1997).

Bureaucracy is the most typical example of legal domination. It is based

on the following principles:
 1. The existence of defined services, and therefore of competences
strictly determined by laws or regulations, in such a way that the
functions are clearly divided and distributed, as well as the decision-
making powers necessary for the accomplishment of the corresponding
tasks;
2. The protection of employees in the performance of their
functions, by virtue of a statute (for example, the irremoveability of
judges). In general, those who become civil servants do so for life, so that
the service of the State becomes the main profession rather than a
secondary occupation, along with another profession;
3. The hierarchy of functions, which means that the administrative
system is heavily structured in subordinate services and management
positions, with the possibility of appealing from the lower instance to the
higher instance; in general, this structure is monocratic and not collegial
and evidences a tendency toward maximum centralization;
4. Recruitment takes place through tenders, exams or diplomas,
which requires that candidates have specialized training. In general, the
employee is appointed (seldom elected) on the basis of free selection and
contractual commitment;
5. The employee’s wage in the form of a fixed salary and a
retirement when he/she leaves the service of the State. The salaries are
ranked according to the internal hierarchy of the administration and the
importance of the responsibilities;
6. The right of the authority to control the work of its subordinates,
possibly through the establishment of a disciplinary committee;
7. The possibility of employees’ promotion on the basis of
objective criteria and not at the discretion of the authority;
8. The complete separation between the function and the
individual who performs it, since no employee can be the owner of
 his/her position or of the means of the administration (Aroon, 1994, p.
550)

For Weber, impersonality and formality, ensured by bureaucratic

rationalization, guarantee that organizational objectives are not confused with
personal motivations or other interests (Godoi et al., 2017). Impersonality and
formality allow dealing with situations and not exactly with people, treating all
in the same formal way (Cruz, 1995). Furthermore, it would increase
predictability in the functioning of any organization (Ferreira, 2004; Filleau &
Marques-Ripoull, 2002).

Although Weber discussed two alternative genetic bases for the growth of
bureaucracy structures, and what would seem to be, therefore, two different
types of bureaucracy, he himself did not view them as essentially different at
all. Instead, he saw them in terms of a system of historical continuity; or
specifically, he saw them from an evolutionary standpoint and therefore as two
examples, primitives and advanced, of the same basic phenomenon:
bureaucracy. The ideal type construct of bureaucracy created by Weber was one
in which the staff was based on a legal-rational order, and the typical features of
Weber's bureaucratic model were held to be most nearly approximated by
historical cases with such as a basis. This ideal type has been followed by
subsequent researchers without question. The result is that Weber's criteria for
the choice of official and their bureaucratic functioning have become standard
in all discussions on this topic. His criteria are stated as follow :
1. They are personally free and subject to authority only with respect to
their impersonal official obligations.
2. They are organized in a clearly defined hierarchy of offices.
3. Each office has a clearly defined sphere of competence in the legal
sense.
4. The office is filled by free contractual relationship. Thus, in principle,
there is free selection.
5. Candidates are selected on the basis of technical qualifications. In the
most rational case, this is tested by examination or guaranteed by
diplomas certifying technical training, or both. They are appointed, not
elected.
6. They are remunerated by fixed salaries in money, for the most part
with a right to pensions. Only under certain circumstances does the
employing authority, especially in private organizations, have the right to
terminate the appointment, but the official is always free to resign. The
salary scale is primarily graded according to rank in the hierarchy; but in
addition this criterion, the responsibility of the position and the
requirement of the incumbent's social status may be taken into account.
7. The office is treated as the sole, or at least the primary, occupation of
the incumbent.
8. It [the office] constitutes a career. There is a system of "promotion"
according to seniority or to achievement, or both. Promotion is dependent
on the judgement of superiors.

Weber’s bureaucracy theory has been widely applied in the era of

the 1900s by the business entities, government organizations and political
associations.

The benefits of this approach are explained in detail below:

1. Specialization or Expertise: In bureaucracy management, the
work is divided among the employees according to their skill,
capabilities and expertise, which results in job specialization in
the organization.
2. Skill-Based Recruitment: The employees are recruited by
matching their skills and experience with that required for the
vacant job position to ensure that the right person is placed at
the right job.
3. Predictability: When there is a systematic hierarchy and defined
rules and methods of performing the complicated tasks in the
organization, actions in similar situations become somewhat
predictable for the management.
4. Equality: The management remains unbiased towards the
employees and ensures a fair-judgement at the time of any issue
or problem in the organization.
5. Structure: A systematic organizational structure can be
developed through bureaucracy where the rules, regulations,
methods and procedures are pre-defined.
 6. Systematic Record Keeping: This approach focuses on
systematically recording all the business transactions and
operations in documents to be used by the other employees in
future.
7. Rationality: The recording of operations brings rationality, i.e.,
framing the laws, rules, regulations and procedures for future,
based on the experience.

When we talk of bureaucratic management, there are numerous

drawbacks of purely adopting this theory to run any organization.
Let us now elaborate over each of such shortcomings below:

1. One Way Communication: The bureaucracy theory

emphasizes on the passing of information, i.e., tasks, orders,
rules and regulations, from the top-level management to the
bottom level; however, feedback concerning the operational
issues and other suggestions are not taken from the
employees.
2. The exploitation of Power: In a bureaucracy, managers have
a higher authority which can be misused by them to meet
their interest or to dominate their subordinates.
 3. Wastage of Time, Efforts and Money: It involves the
recording of all the business transactions and operations to
create documents which require a lot of time, money and
efforts of the personnel.
4. Delay in Business Decision-Making: The top-level
management keeps the decision-making authority with itself.
Therefore, the lower-level managers have to rely upon the
top-level managers, even in the case of any emergency or
situations demanding immediate action.
5. Hinders Innovation and Creativity: The supervisor controls
every activity of the employees, which ultimately restrict the
subordinates to apply creativity and innovation to their work.
6. Inflexible and Rigid Methods: The bureaucracy theory does
not entertain any change or modification in the management
system, which makes it quite rigid.

Conclusion :
Bureaucracy is rooted in controlling something with the use of power or
authority; therefore, it is usually taken as a negative concept by many of us.
But, it is not so, the concept of bureaucratic management initiates the creation
of a proper hierarchy in the organization. Here, the power or authority is
distributed among the workers according to their position in the organization.
Every business operation is systematically penned down, and the
employees follow the stated rules and regulations.
However, in the present scenario, it is tough to have a pure bureaucratic
system in the organization. Still, a zest of it can be seen in the management of
civil department, political and government organizations.
 RESOURCES :

https://theinvestorsbook.com/max-webers-bureaucracy-
theory.html
file:///C:/Users/User/OneDrive/Documents/The_Concept_of
_Bureaucracy_by_Max_Weber.pdf