weber bureaucracy

Max Weber on bureaucracy
Max Weber has probably been one of the most influential users of the word in its social science sense. He is well-known for his study of bureaucratization of society; many aspects of modern public administration go back to him; a classic, hierarchically organized civil service of the continental type is — if perhaps mistakenly — called "Weberian civil service".

However, contrary to popular belief, "bureaucracy" was an English word before Weber; the Oxford English Dictionary cites usage in several different years between 1818 and 1860, prior to Weber's birth in 1864.

Weber described the ideal type bureaucracy in positive terms, considering it to be a more rational and efficient form of organization than the alternatives that preceded it, which he characterized as charismatic domination and traditional domination. According to his terminology, bureaucracy is part of legal domination. However, he also emphasized that bureaucracy becomes inefficient when a decision must be adopted to an individual case.

According to Weber, the attributes of modern bureaucracy include its impersonality, concentration of the means of administration, a leveling effect on social and economic differences and implementation of a system of authority that is practically indestructible.

Weber's analysis of bureaucracy concerns:

the historical and administrative reasons for the process of bureaucratization (especially in the Western civilisation)
the impact of the rule of law upon the functioning of bureaucratic organisations
the typical personal orientation and occupational position of a bureaucratic officials as a status group
the most important attributes and consequences of bureaucracy in the modern world
A bureaucratic organization is governed by the following seven principles:

official business is conducted on a continuous basis
official business is conducted with strict accordance to the following rules:
the duty of each official to do certain types of work is delimited in terms of impersonal criteria
the official is given the authority necessary to carry out his assigned functions
the means of coercion at his disposal are strictly limited and conditions of their use strictly defined
every official's responsibilities and authority are part of a vertical hierarchy of authority, with respective rights of supervision and appeal
officials do not own the resources necessary for the performance of their assigned functions but are accountable for their use of these resources
official and private business and income are strictly separated
offices cannot be appropriated by their incumbents (inherited, sold, etc.)
official business is conducted on the basis of written documents
A bureaucratic official:

is personally free and appointed to his position on the basis of conduct
exercises the authority delegated to him in accordance with impersonal rules, and his loyalty is enlisted on behalf of the faithful execution of his official duties
appointment and job placement are dependent upon his technical qualifications
administrative work is a full-time occupation
work is rewarded by a regular salary and prospects of advancement in a lifetime career
An official must exercise his judgment and his skills, but his duty is to place these at the service of a higher authority; ultimately he is responsible only for the impartial execution of assigned tasks and must sacrifice his personal judgment if it runs counter to his official duties.

Weber's work has been continued by many, like Robert Michels with his Iron Law of Oligarchy.


[edit] Criticism
As Max Weber himself noted, real bureaucracy will be less optimal and effective than his ideal type model. Each of Weber's seven principles can degenerate:

Vertical hierarchy of authority can become chaotic, some offices can be omitted in the decision making process, there may be conflicts of competence;
Competences can be unclear and used contrary to the spirit of the law; sometimes a decision itself may be considered more important than its effect;
Nepotism, corruption, political infighting and other degenerations can counter the rule of impersonality and can create a recruitment and promotion system not based on meritocracy but rather on oligarchy;
Officials can try to avoid responsibility and seek anonymity by avoiding documentation of their procedures (or creating extreme amounts of chaotic, confusing documents)
Even a non-degenerated bureaucracy can be affected by common problems:

Overspecialization, making individual officials not aware of larger consequences of their actions
Rigidity and inertia of procedures, making decision-making slow or even impossible when facing some unusual case, and similarly delaying change, evolution and adaptation of old procedures to new circumstances;
A phenomenon of group thinking - zealotry, loyalty and lack of critical thinking regarding the organisation which is perfect and always correct by definition, making the organisation unable to change and realise its own mistakes and limitations;
Disregard for dissenting opinions, even when such views suit the available data better than the opinion of the majority;
A phenomenon of Catch-22 (named after a famous book by Joseph Heller) - as bureaucracy creates more and more rules and procedures, their complexity rises and coordination diminishes, facilitating creation of contradictory rules
Not allowing people to use common sense, as everything must be as is written by the law.
In the most common examples bureaucracy can lead to the treatment of individual human beings as impersonal objects. This process has been criticised by many philosophers and writers (Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Hannah Arendt) and satirized in the comic strip Dilbert, Franz Kafka's novels The Trial and The Castle , Douglas Adams' story The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the film Brazil.