Bureaucracy And Organization

JOKO1102 Introduction to Management and Organization

Bureaucracy

Fabrizio Bertoglio

fbertogl@ulapland.fi

(Numbers of words 6952)

Introduction

As Etzioni puts it “we are born in organisations, educated by organizations, and most of us spend much of our lives working for organisations”.

This simple sentence let us understand the importance of bureaucracy in our daily life and the reason that push me to study them.

I’ve been interested in it and decided to more deeply study the characteristic of this type of organizations, interest that drive me in writing this essay. The writing was constantly following my research of information, this give to my essay the following structure:

1. HISTORICAL OUTLOOK

2. DEFINITION OF BUREAUCRACY AND MAIN CHARACTERISTIC

3. THE CLASSICAL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF BUREAUCRACY:

Weber Political Sociology

4. CONCLUSION ON WEBER

5. BUREAUCRATIZATION AND RATIONALIZATION: INTO THE IRON CAGE

6. THE POST-WEBERIAN THEORIES OF BUREAUCRACY:

Taylorism

7. SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AND THE MCDONALD CASE

8. THE HUMAN RELATION SCHOOL

9. TOWARDS A BROADENING SCOPE

The structure of my essay follow different theories of organization, each of them found numerous advantages or disadvantages of certain system. I will deeply them and end with a general conclusion.

1 HISTORICAL OUTLOOK

Bureaucracy is nowadays a terms associated with a negative meaning. The word is often utilized to describe inefficient organisation incapable to take rapid decision, costly and paralyzed by their complex system of work. In few words a “clock-work-orange” moving a lot of gears in a synchronized manner, but producing no movement at all.

It has not always been like that, on the opposite the bureaucratic system was introduced by Napoleon for the exact opposite reason.

Decisions had to be taken, also in the huge macro system of the national state French organisation:

• Within the state legal system,

• Within a hierarchical organisation,

• With a clear communication Top-Down

• Within the power of attorney assigned to a new professional governmental-figure, civil servant, removing those from the control of the aristocracy.

In order to define and to control the civil servant decision-power it was developed a complex system capable to work within a package of rules. The aim was also to release the “civil servant” of his direct personal responsibility generated by the use of the power of his post. If you act by correct application of the norms you are not responsible for the outcome.

Bureaucracy, in its initial meaning, was in fact in the transfer of the responsibility from the individual to the bureau, releasing in this way the individuals from the personal burden of their decision. It represents a step in the “modern age” were the individual responsibility is limited to the respect of a set of rules or to a particular area.

Bureaucracy may be objectively defined as administration over an organization, using written regulations and centralized procedures. In nineteenth century liberals have utilized the word to criticize rigid rules and mismanagement in authoritarian governments.

A first approach to the bureaucracy was done by Max Weber. In his view bureaucracy is a rational organisation based on competence and specialisation required by the needs of the modern industrial complex society. Bureaucracy is due to expand inevitably to all sector of state organisation, inside the political parties and in public and private companies Max Weber.

After Weber a lot of criticism was expressed with the description of the dangers linked to an excess of bureaucratisation, which could damage the democratic functioning of the society and the state. Strict links between totalitarian Russian policy and bureaucratic management of the power capable to by-pass the democratic control of the state were analysed by Bruno Buozzi in “Il Collettivismo Burocratico” and James Burnham.

Degeneration of the original concept (act within rules) created in the time any type of abuse of the bureaucratic system up to the justification of the most criminal decisions taken in respect of the “set of rules” such as Nazism and other totalitarian governments.

The mismanagement of the power, the complexity of the rules and uncertainty of the allocation of the personal responsibility in the bureaucratic system created often point of power generating bribery, corruption, nepotism,

Last potential anti-democratic evolution of bureaucracy is what has been defined in the after war period the “techno-bureaucracy”. This is represented by the power of techno-agencies (public and private) owner of highly sophisticated and specialized know ledges capable to operate in absolute independency. Herbert Marcuse stated that techno bureaucracy is one of the major dangers for the modern democracy. It is so dangerous that it would be preferable to step back in some of the new technologies made available. Alain Tourain instead in is has a more pessimistic view, concluding that in the post industrial age these risks are not avoidable.

Niskamen (1971) has probably centred the core of the problem in the modern bureaucracy emphasizing that in a bureaucratic system all managers generate the base for the strengthening of their own department by maximizing the budget of their own office regardless of public economy or interest generating in this way goods and services in excess towards the demand. A circle of again a sort of self- feeding “clock work-orange”.