Weber's Idea of Bureaucracy
- Official Jurisdiction on all areas are ordered by rules or laws already implemented.
- There is an office hierarchy; a system of super- and subordination in which there is supervision of lower office by higher ones.
- The management of the modern office is based upon written rule, which are preserved in original form.
- Office management requires that of training or specialization
- When the office is developed/established it requires the full working capacity of individuals.
- Rules are stable and can be learned. Knowledge of these rules can be viewed as expertise within the bureaucracy (these allow for the management of society)
When a bureaucracy is implemented, they can provide accountability, responsibility, control, and consistency. The hiring of employees will be an impersonal and equal system.
Although the classical perspective encourages efficiency, it is often criticized as ignoring human needs. Also, it rarely takes into consideration human error or the variability of work performances (each worker is different)
Challenger Tragedy: overlooked the possibility of human error. Three Mile Island Incident
Read more about this topic: Organizational Theory
Famous quotes containing the words weber, idea and/or bureaucracy:
“No sociologist ... should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time. One cannot with impunity try to transfer this task entirely to mechanical assistants if one wishes to figure something, even though the final result is often small indeed.”
—Max Weber (18641920)
“I dont think he has any idea hes a dog, not really. Of course, he thinks he has a rather odd figure for a man.”
—Dodie Smith, and Lewis Allen. Pamela Fitzgerald (Ruth Hussey)
“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.”
—Eugene J. McCarthy (b. 1916)