Critical Appraisal Of Max Weber’S Bureaucracy As A Philosophy Of Management Today

1. Critical Appraisal of Max Weber’s Bureaucracy as a Philosophy of Management Today

Max Weber is the writer most often associated with the bureaucratic approach to organizations. Weber’s ideas of bureaucracy were a reaction to managerial abuses of power. He looked for methods to eliminate managerial inconsistencies that contributed to ineffectiveness, and his solution was a set of principles for organizing’ group effort through a bureaucratic organization. Although the term bureaucracy, has been popularized as a means of referring to organizations that “rule too rigidly by the book,” these principles are found in virtually every formal organization, today.

Max Weber proposed the development of ideal bureaucracy. Weber’s ideal bureaucracy was designed to eliminate inefficiency and waste in organizations. Many of the principles that he proposed many years ago are applied in the design of large organizations today. In fact, the term bureaucracy, that many consider similar to “red tape,” has a much broader and positive meaning because of Max Weber.

The basic principles of bureaucratic organization are:

1. A division of labor by functional specialization.

2. A well-defined hierarchy of authority.

3. A system of rules covering the rights and duties of employees.

4. A system of procedures for dealing with work situations.

5. Impersonal relations between people.

6. Promotion and selection based on technical competence.

One of the more dramatic examples of the strengths and weaknesses of bureaucratic organization is the civil service. A fact that sometimes escapes the demanding public is that usually services such as the issuance of the National ID card, birth certificate and many others can be delivered quickly and cheaply across the country. Coordinating the efforts of a large number of employees such as the civil service is possible only because the civil service has a workable set of rules and policies and a hierarchy of authority. These obvious strengths of bureaucracies can be seen in many organizations.

On the other hand, the civil service sometimes follows its rules and policies too rigidly. In the public’s image, public sector administration is bedeviled by overstaffing, inefficiency, red tapism, rigidity in adherence to rules on the one hand, and arbitrariness, delays, arrogance and corruption on the other. Attention is focused on processes and inputs (e.g. money expended) and sometimes on outputs but seldom on effects and impacts. Sometimes even though some public offices are uneconomical, bureaucratic procedures prevent their closing.

Advantages of Bureaucracy: Bureaucracy has many positive outcomes, but they occur only when the bureaucracy operates ideally. Some of the positive consequences are as follows:

1. Employee behavior is consistent because of set policies, procedures, and rules.

2. Overlapping or conflicting job duties are eliminated because jobs are defined clearly.

3. Behavior is predictable because there is a hierarchy of authority (supervision).

4. Hiring and promotion are based on merit or expertise.

5. Employees develop expertise in their jobs because they specialize in those jobs.

6. There is continuity in the organization because it emphasizes the position rather than the person (that is, when one person leaves a position, another person assumes that same position).

Although rules and policies can be enforced too strictly, they are needed for efficiency. Also, they provide the bases for coordinating many different managers and entities. For example, realistic dress-code policies and rules used by all supervisors may reduce employee complaints about inconsistent standards and personal bias. Without an official policy, each supervisor might have a