- According to Weber, Bureaucracy is the medium through which rational-legal authority is carried out. Max Weber Bureaucracy
- Bureaucracy is the structural apparatus of the modern state which is completely reliant upon the governmental body for its continual existence.
- The origin of Bureaucracy has been traced to ancient Egypt, when the ruler required a stable army, to safeguard supplies of arms and military tools.
- Weber considered this progress as the most significant aspect encouraging the emergence of modernity. Max Weber Bureaucracy
- Officials in modern bureaucracies have little or no control over what they do since the procedures of bureaucracies take on a life of their own, limiting the activities and judgments of those who work under them.
Ideal Type of Max Weber Bureaucracy.
According to Weber, the distinctive attributes of the ideal type of bureaucracy are:
1) A constant group of official purposes bound by rules.
2) A specific range of competency. Max Weber Bureaucracy
3) The organization of workplaces follows the norm of hierarchy i.e, each lower office is under the control and direction of a higher officer. There is a right of appeal and the statement of complaints from lower to the higher ranks.
4) The guidelines which control the conduct of an administrative center may be methodological norms. In both cases, if their request is to be entirely rational, particular training is compulsory.
5) In the rational type, it is a matter of opinion that the administrative staff members should be fully detached from ownership of the means of production and administration.
6) In the rational type case, there is also a whole deficiency of appropriation of his official rank by the incumbent wherein ‘rights’ to an office exist.
7) Administrative actions, conclusions, and guidelines are framed and verified in writing, even in cases where the conversation is the law or is even compulsory.
8) The mixture of written documents and constant association of official functions establishes the ‘office’ which is the chief center of all types of contemporary acts. Max Weber Bureaucracy
Criticism.
It is nearly impossible to criticize Weber in the firmest of logic as he is a non-committal and a non-determinist sociologist. That means if anybody criticizes him, in a way supplements his philosophy of ideal type by relating it with the actual type of his period. But still mentioned below are some critics regarding Weber’s theory of bureaucracy. Max Weber Bureaucracy
- Stacker favors the de-bureaucratization of many industries like the software industry, creative industry, etc.
- Robert K Merton designates administrative bureaucracy as beneficial, dysfunctional, and nonfunctional to society. Max Weber Bureaucracy
- Gouldnersees says that bureaucracy is not existing and is compulsory everywhere in modern society.
- Latif Chaudhary, in his investigation on corruption in southeast Asia, states that there are two types of bureaucracies- Lower level bureaucracy that is full of rent-searchers and higher level bureaucracy that is made of politicians and there is a deficiency of coordination between the two.
- Pourwell says that there is a likelihood of certain dominant people capturing bureaucracy and dominating those who work for bureaucracy.
- Cozier carried out an experimental investigation, based on results of which he argues that Weber’s bureaucracy has failed to justify the hopes of people and has denied learning from its errors. He expands that It is a system that can finish itself from within and hence, is not completely rational.
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