What Bureaucracy Is

Introduction
The classical theory developed in three streams- bureaucracy, administrative theory and scientific management. These were founded on almost similar assumptions and the practical effects of all three are essentially the same. They were developed during almost the same period (1900-1950) by separate groups of theorists working almost completely independent of each other. All three streams of thought are compatible, complementary, have common views about the nature of man and his organisations and emphasise the specialisation and organisational structure based on historical and functional criteria, with the basic unit of analysis varying. However, bureaucracy, as presented by Max Weber, is the focus of this paper.

Bureaucracy
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber, known simply as Max Weber, was a German political economist and sociologist. Born in Erfurt in Thuringia, Germany, the eldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr. and Helene Fallenstein, he lived from 1864 to 1920 and was one of the founders of the modern study of public administration. At age thirteen, Max's Christmas presents to his parents were two historical essays entitled "About the course of German history, with special reference to the positions of the emperor and the pope" and "About the Roman Imperial period from Constantine to the migration of nations". Along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim, Weber is regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology, although in his day he was viewed primarily as a historian and an economist. Weber's early work was related to industrial sociology, but he is most famous for his later work on the sociology of religion and sociology of government. He began his studies of rationalisation in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he shows how the aims of certain ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, shifted towards the rational means of economic gain as a way of expressing that they had been blessed. The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with and larger than the religious, and so the latter were eventually discarded. Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on the classifications of authority and on bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy is defined in the Microsoft Encarta World English Dictionary (2004) as an administrative system, especially in a government, that divides work into specific categories carried out by special departments of non-elected officials. Bureaucracy is the structure, and set of regulations put in place to control activity, usually in large organizations and government. It is characterized by standardized procedure, formal division of responsibility, hierarchy and impersonal relationships.
According to Weber, the elements of bureaucracy distinguish an ideal formal organisation from other types.
Before discussing the factors which make bureaucracy not so ideal, its advantages are examined briefly.

Merits of Bureaucracy
1. Universality
Elements of bureaucracy are found almost universally in modern organisations, particularly if they are large and complex. These elements are hierarchy, rules, regulations, procedures, professionalism and training.

2. Specialisation
Bureaucracy provides an ordered hierarchy with special emphasis on specialisation. Each manager is assigned a specialised task to perform.

3. Form or Structure
Bureaucracy frames duties, responsibilities and reporting relationships in a command hierarchy. Hence the organisation is provided with a form or structure which sets the pace and necessitates framework for organisational processes.

4. Professionalism
In a bureaucratic organisation, the selection of office holders is based on qualification and experience rather than other considerations or personal whims of managers. The employment of experts and professionals provides efficient management and enables the organisation to successfully cope with the competitive environment and achieve goals.

5. Career and Security
Bureaucracy provides for career development opportunities and security of employment.

6. Rationality and Objectivity
In bureaucratic organisations, decisions are made in the light of prescribed rules and regulations. Thus rationality in decisions is ensured by consistency in dealing with organisational problems which in turn results in objectivity. This means that there is neither bias nor favouritism.

7. Predictability
The presence of rules, regulations, structure, procedure, filing system and so on enables predictability about future events and members’ behaviour in the organisation and thereby certainty and stability are ensured.

8. Democracy
Bureaucracy makes, in some ways, an organisation more democratic, reducing patronage and other privileged treatment, and also by emphasising more on qualification and technical competence of office holders.

9. Better Coordination and Control
Bureaucracy provides a highly efficient system of coordination and control. The atmosphere of depersonalisation created by the hierarchy of authority and the system of rules and procedures, promotes better coordination and control of actions of individuals in the organisation.

The above qualities or functional aspects of bureaucracy are related to a normative model of bureaucracy, mainly that as described by Max Weber. However, in actual practice, bureaucracies often fall short of these ideal advantages.


Demerits or Dysfunctions of Bureaucracy
Alvin W. Gouldner (1955), in Pugh et al (1971), and Varshney (2003) are not convinced that bureaucratic authority is inevitably the most efficient. Bureaucracy produces a number of unintended consequences and these are discussed below.

1. A Utopia
Utopia means an imaginary state considered to be perfect or ideal. Max Weber himself opines: “In its conceptual purity, d mental construct (i.e. bureaucracy) can’t be found anywhere in reality. It is a Utopia”. Hence, managers are supposed to make an effort to conform to a certain ‘ideal’ rather than actual patterns of conduct.

2. Rigidity and Inflexibility
Bureaucracy tends to be non-adaptive and impersonal. Rules, regulations and procedures become an end in themselves. Hence, it fosters rigidity and inflexibility, and fails to account adequate for human considerations. There are subordinates and super-ordinates in a pyramidal system. It is like a machine organisation, and this is what gives a depressing view of modern economic life given the spirit of our humanity. Whilst it is good to get away from arbitrary personal whims of leaders, the placing of everyone into regimented offices reduces the human touch. “People are cogs in a machine.”

3. Lack of Individual Initiative
Strict adherence to rules and regulations produce timidity, conservatism (that is, opposition to change and innovation), and “technism” (that is, attention to petty formal points). Thus, individual initiative to do new things or to adopt new ways is killed or injured. Passivity is encouraged. Enthusiasm is lost.

4. Mechanical Way
Bureaucracy emphasises a mechanical way of doing things by ignoring human relations at work. Lack of human considerations or preference for impersonality encourages “status quo” feeling among members of organisations.

5. Compartmentalisation of Jobs
Specialisation and division of labour result in categorisation which in turn promotes the notion of water-tight compartmentalisation of jobs. This restricts people from performing those tasks which they are capable of performing.

6. Goal Displacement
Goal displacement is the distortion of real organisational goals, which occurs when managers and other employees divert their efforts and resources away from the organisation’s predetermined goals. Under bureaucracy, managers make the adherence to the rules and procedures their major object, neglecting the overall goals of the organisation. Rules become ends in themselves.

7. Empire Building
Under bureaucracy, the officials think that the office they hold grants them a privilege and therefore they are involved in empire building that is increasing the number of people employed under one’s control, so that they could relate power and prestige with number of subordinates.

8. No Riddance or Removal
Max Weber observed that once bureaucracy gets fully established, it becomes hard to destroy or get rid of, even if it has outlived its utility. Officials become slave of it, no matter how bad the prevalent conditions demand a change.

9. Red Tape and Paperwork
Bureaucracy promotes red tape, that is, detailed unnecessary official rules which delay action. Very many documents and papers relating to the decisions taken have to be maintained as “record.” Work speed is considerably slowed down due to abundance of paperwork and excessively systemised movement of files. This way work also suffers.

10. Contradiction Stemming from Authority
Another problem with Weberian bureaucracy is the built-in contradiction between the authority of experts and the authority of hierarchy and discipline. One comes from superior knowledge and another from the office held. Professionals may have more technical knowledge than hierarchical super-ordinates. Furthermore these professionals, called cosmopolitans, may be committed to their skills, and how they produce the general job title, but not as such to the organisation itself. The hierarchical people, called locals, show loyalty to the organisation. Loyalty to the organisation therefore comes at a price of speciality and efficiency, or efficiency comes at a price of maximising loyalty to the organisation.

11. Opposition
Research findings have shown that enforcing bureaucracy leads to opposition. One example occurred in a gypsum mine in the United States. After a lenient enforcement of bureaucratic authority, a new mine manager enforced the rules of the system effectively in an aim for better efficiency. The outcome, however, was a big fall in morale, increased labour-management conflict and a wildcat strike.

12. Lack of Individual Liberty
Bureaucracy is known to be an enemy of individual liberty.



Conclusion
Max Weber's rational-legal authority is an ideal type of the hierarchical organisation that exists where the office holders are there not because of their personalities or their family or status line but because they are matched to that office in terms of their ability to carry out its tasks. The aim is maximum performance through the speciality and the chain of command. This system of organising, co-ordination and control is calculated. This system thrives on rules.
Rules do intend to provide an impersonal method of authority and suggest basic equality (as rules replace orders) by production at a distance. But if rules come from too great a distance they become mock and are ignored. There is a cycle of ever increasing enforcement of new rules as super-ordinates and subordinates juggle for position. In any case hierarchical authority can involve a power struggle where rules even go backwards from subordinates against the management, as with union agreements on working practices. The status involved in such bureaucracy is a zero sum game, where a gain by one level is a loss by another. On top of this, bureaucracies do contain informal groups that may generate their own rules regarding obligations and these in effect overrule the bureaucracy's.
The intention of bureaucracy is to produce an efficient organisation working in conformity to rationally designed impersonal rules and procedures. It might work but it is just as likely to produce low levels of subordinate commitment and conflict directed at actual managers. Impersonal rules are not all bad; it is just that there are unintended as well as intended consequences and the former make Weber's bureaucracy not the efficient machine he presents. Thus more human, expert based and ultimately more rewarding (for everyone) forms of business organisation have been sought.

References
1. Pugh, D. S., Hickson, D. J., Hinings, C. R. (eds.) (1971). Writers on Organizations. Second Edition. London: Penguin Books. Retrieved 7th February, 2008. http://www.change.freeuk.com/learning/business/ratlegal.html
2. Varshney, G. K. (2003).Organisation And Management. New Delhi: S. Chand & Company Ltd. Retrieved 7th February, 2008.
http://books.google.com/books?isbn=8121922488

3. Wikipedia Encyclopaedia (2008). Max Weber. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Retrieved 7th February, 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber

4. Encarta ® World English Dictionary (2004). Microsoft Corporation.