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Is bureaucracy dead?

Is bureaucracy dead?. Bureau means office in French, so bureaucracy roughly translates as rule by office . Weber's bureaucracy The term, bureaucracy, was introduced by Max Weber One of Weber's interests was in how to manage large industrial organizations.

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Is bureaucracy dead?

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  1. Is bureaucracy dead? • Bureau means office in French, so bureaucracy roughly translates as rulebyoffice. • Weber's bureaucracy • The term, bureaucracy, was introduced by Max Weber • One of Weber's interests was in how to manage large industrial organizations. • He proposed seven principles which, when applied, would lead to rational and efficient operations. • A number of his proposals are structural, others are behavioral.

  2. Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • He taught both before and during the first world war at the universities of Freiburg, Heidelberg and Munich. • He wrote on a wide range of topics, extending from religion and capitalism through to Chinese social organization. • “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” and “The Theory of Social and Economic Organization” Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German sociologist

  3. Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • 1.Division of labor: division of job into simple, routine and well-defined tasks. job specialization • 2.Well-defined authority hierarchy: each lower position is under the supervision and control of a higher one. • 3.High formalization. There is dependence on formal rules and procedures to ensure uniformity and to regulate the behavior of job holders.

  4. Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • 4. Impersonal nature: Sanctions are applied uniformly and impersonally to avoid personal preferences of members. • 5. Employment decisions based on merit: Selection and promotion decisions are based on technical qualifications, competence and performance of the candidates. • 6. Career tracks for employees: Members are expected to pursue a career in the organization.

  5. Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • Distinct separation of members' organizational and personal lives. The demands and interests of personal affairs and kinship ties are kept completely separate from work-related activities. • Positive qualities in Weber's 'ideal type' • the focus on merit when selecting employees; • security of employment to protect employees against the exercise of arbitrary authority and changes in skill demands; • rules and regulations to promote impartiality(neutrality) in decision making; • the establishment of clear lines of authority and responsibility.

  6. Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • Weber's bureaucracy had its structural elements. These include: • division of labor, • rules and regulations to cover all eventualities, • a management hierarchy with clearly defined areas of responsibility.

  7. Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • Summarizing Weber's contribution • The central theme in Weber's bureaucratic model is standardization. • In this we can see that many of its features are present in the machine bureaucracy. • The behavior of people in bureaucracies is predetermined by standardized structures and processes.

  8. Is bureaucracy dead?(cont.) • The model itself can be divided into three groups of characteristics: • those that relate to the structure and function of the organization, • those that deal with means of rewarding effort, • those that deal with protection for individual members.

  9. The Downside of Bureaucracy

  10. The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • Goal displacement: • Bureaucracy is attacked most often for encouraging goal displacement—that is, the displacement of organizational goals by subunit or personal goals. • The rules and procedures become more important than the ends they were designed to serve, the result being goal displacement and loss of organizational effectiveness.

  11. The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • Another criticism of bureaucracy proposes that high formalization bureaucracy creates insecurities in those in authority that lead to what has been called bureaupathic behavior. • Decision makers use adherence to rules to protect themselves from making errors.

  12. The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • Inappropriate application of rules and regulations: • Related closely to the problem of goal displacement is the undesirable effect of members' applying formalized rules and procedures in inappropriate situations. • Employee alienation: • Members perceive the impersonality of the organization as creating distance between them and their work.

  13. The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • High specialization further reinforces one's feeling of being irrelevant: routine activities can easily be learned by others, making employees feel interchangeable and powerless. • In professional bureaucracies formalization must be lessened, otherwise the risk of employee alienation is very high. • Concentration of power: • It is a fact that bureaucracy generates an enormous degree of power in the hands of a very few.

  14. The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • Inability to adapt to change: • Bureaucracies have a well-deserved reputation for being slow to change. • Environments can change around them, but bureaucracies tend to be always lagging in introducing new ways of doing things. • Overstaffing: • Because of the reluctance to reduce workforces, at least in former years, many bureaucracies suffer from a reputation for being overstaffed and for those employed by them being underworked.

  15. The Downside of Bureaucracy (cont.) • Tendency towards large size and low productivity: • Until the waves of downsizing in the 1980s and 90s bureaucracies, in both business and government, had a reputation for being too big and costing too much to run. • Too many people were doing too many unnecessary things and there was enormous resistance to do anything about it. • Non-member frustration: • The last negative consequence that we address relates to thoseoutside the organization who must deal with the bureaucracy.

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