An Analysis to Weber Ideal Type Bureaucracy Essay Example

has been the focal point of criticism. (Nicos P. et al. 1975 p38-39) Generally speaking, it is important to analyze and criticize it in some detail and should pay more much attention; meanwhile it is a conceptual construction of certain empirical elements into a logically precise and consistent form. As Daft said, the reason why Weber predicted the winning of bureaucracy is its ability to ensure more efficient functioning of organizations in both business and government background, and put employees of average ability into rational decision makers serving their customers with efficiency(Daft 2004 p289), which is the same opinion to Hatch.

2.2 Characteristics Indeed, the characteristics contained in the ideal type, although altered and showed in a certain way, somewhat, to concrete features of existing organizations (Kieran 2004 p20). So, the characteristics of the Weber “ideal type” bureaucracy are as follows:

1 Division of labor: It defines the classification of responsibilities and assignment of work tasks within organizations (Weber 1968 p956-p1005). Take the pin manufacturing firm as an example, the work of the organization is divided among employees, each member performs only a piece of the whole; 2 Hierarchy of Authority: It means the distribution of authority in an organization. A high position in the hierarchy confers legal authority, make up the right to make decisions, give direction and reward as well as publish others (Hatch 2006 p104); 3 Higher formalization: Management is based on written documents based on precedent and abstract rule, serve as rules for organizational action, and it usually can’t be changed; 4 Impersonality and impartiality: Members are named to be judged not on the prejudgment of the community but according to the rules,

without your identity;

5 Separation of organizational and personal lives. For example, if you are paper purchase officer, you can’t do the favor to your family who are run the paper company (Clegg 2008 p51); 6 There is a career structure in which promotion is possible either by merit of service by individuals with similar credentials, any new decisions about taking new person into an organization are based on merit; 7 Organization put communication, coordination, and control all together; 8 How much the paid depend on the positions in the hierarchy;

9 Careers for office holder expecting for careers expectation is constituted by office, it means movements are measured by performance of staff (Draft 2004 p290); 10 Office management usually presupposes thorough, specialized training; 11 Management of the office follows general rules, which are very stable and learnable. Knowledge of these rules organizes special technical special skills; 12 Tasks are specified by rules, which are definite, dissimilar, and cone by different categories of person who specialize in these jobs and not in others, in order to ensure work can be done successfully, official tasks would be organized on a continuation regulated basis (Weber 1968 p980)

3 Power and Authority 3.1Introduction to power and authority As Weber suggested one of the way to understanding how organizations change was to study the power and authority. In Weber’s model, there are differences between power and authority. Power means the chance that someone within a social relationship, and will be in a position to perform his own wishes that despite the obstruction. Power influences who gets what, when, and how. But what is authority? Authority was defined as the probability of certain

controls or the orders which being obeyed by a group (Weber 1968 p955).

Organizations or leaders explore legitimacy and believability of their actions in different ways through the exercise of authority. Weber said that, for lots of exercises of authority in organizations, some of the members had an eagerness to take a leader’s rules and orders; this means, to view them as legitimate, so if someone has authority then she or he had a right to expect total gracefulness from the followers (Linstead 2004 p131). The reason why those didn’t use force in charge was that would involve the costly and ineffective, which is power.

3.2 The role of power In Weber’s theory of bureaucracy left no doubt that power was a general force in organization, potentialu for power is especially in the role of professional experts and seasoned bureaucrats acting in self-interested ways. Organizations use the power of the state to gain the same or more important ends than they could achieve by internal efficiencies alone.

But it is just as impractical as concentrating solely on domination, well done management must always make decisions as to whether to meet a goal, such as great profits through power strategies, letting Congress to pass favorable tax law (Beetham 1996 p53). Also Max Weber contributed the power theories and the practice of managerial control in organization, it is relate to power exercise making as well as the rational control. For example, legitimate power exist a hierarchy that brings owners and leaders the right to manage the means of production and the laborers who employ (Weber 1968 p978).

Similarly, leaders use the power not only to engineer the physical environment and manage

the location and movement of workers’ but also define and control the whole organization. The power position of a fully developed bureaucracy is always great, under the normal conditions—overpowering. Bureaucracies are naturally secretive about their knowledge and intentions, whether out of functional or pure power motives. But the danger of bureaucratic power is not only would harm the function of the organizational leader, especially if the latter lacked relevant specialist knowledge, but also helpful values would come to up in society at large, the logic of possible means over the view of the ends( Beetham 1996 p54).

3.3The role of authority To make bureaucratic control work, managers must have the authority to maintain control over the organization, and at the premise of the larger society, however, Weber summarized three types of authority which could explain the management and control in a large organization.

3.3.1 Charismatic authority

Whose foundation is the dedication to the worthy character or the courageous of an individual and the command which defined by her or he (Daft 2004 p294). Political leaders have been able to get this kind of response too. For example, former US President Bill Clinton has often referred to as having charisma and charisma can be often found in revolutionary military organizations. The most advantage of charisma is its great power, which is rest on the intensity and strength of the force which lie absent-minded in the goal of every human (Kieran 2004 p55). On the other hand, charisma, in order to transform the environment of social life, thus in this way changing people’s attitudes toward them, then the greatest change of central views and directions of individual action would appear

which with completely new intentional and controversial bias of the whole attitudes toward diverse problems of the “world” (Weber 1968 p977).

3.3.2 Traditional authority

This type is based on the cases that occurred before, also means the precedent or custom. It is always more or less mixed with magical elements, Weber persist in that authority involves legitimacy in the sense of duty to obey indicates that we are dealing with an aspect of superego functioning(Donald 1970 pp901-911). Church can be example of this kind authority, in this circumstance, managers cannot be saucy to their members or break the images expected to them. Take British royal family as an example, it doesn’t hold political authority, but it has always been expected to behave in ways keep the same with its esteem and implications (Hatch 2006 p30).

3.3.3 Rational-legal authority

Third, rational-legal is based on followers’ belief in the legality of rules and the right to those rose to position of authority to issue commands (Daft 2004 p294). The role of this authority can be described as it is the foundation for both management and creation of most government organizations as well as the most common fundamental of control in organizations worldwide, worth to detail, ration-legal authority is the form which is most widely used to govern internal work activities and decision making, especially in the large organizations.

4 Discussion of Bureaucratic Form of Organization

4.1 Introduction to bureaucratic form organization Bureaucratic organization is a kind of organizations that it stress such as impersonal, rational basis through managing and designing, it required unified applications of pip of rules as well as the recordkeeping (Weber 1968 988). There is a lower personal involvement here.

Take Safeco Insurance Company as an example, there is a fixed time for employees to take their coffee breaks, Beards is not permitted but only dress the codes specify white shirts and suits.

4.2 Strengths Through organization practice, strengths are obvious seen, this essay will examine the followings.

4.2.1 Fairness Organizations built as this form could have many advantages. The first most obvious points is the fairness, this form organization limits freewill and the special power, you are treated as a case, if you want to be treated more, only according to precedents established by rules, not the whim of officer. In addition, if the applications break the law, you have rational reasons to an appeal mechanism. As Weber argued nobody was above the law, no one could escape rules, and each office was accountable, bureaucracy was a protection of civil liberty (Weber 1968 p990).

4.2.2 Specialization and divisionalization

Also the job specialization and divisionalization can be added to the strengths. Job efficiency can be achieved through job holders developing expertise in a narrow range of work, clear goals can provide the basis for effective operation, the employees also be controlled well through the exact definition of tasks and responsibilities (Daft 2994 p291). Divisionalization provides accountability and focus on outcomes when in a small company as well as an excellent training ground for many leaders through divisional autonomy. It brought an effective way to bring order to large organizations of people and prevent abuses of power.

4.2.3 Technical advantages of bureaucratic organization over administration The most obvious reason for strength of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical advantage than other form organizations such as honorific and a vocational

form, as Dugay suggested (Dugay 2000 p64). Because of its precision can take full advantages, speed, and knowledge of files, strict subordination as well as the reduction of personal and material costs.

4.2.4 McDonald’s Case

McDonald’s have had sensational success and give the best example as bureaucratic organization. In order to have excellent performance, it has built a solid reputation by equipping organization with machinery, so that each can produce a uniform product (Morgan 1995 p28-29). It provide carefully targeted mass market in a perfectly regular way, in order to provide “hamburger science”, in additional, a detailed operating directory is used to guide patent in the daily management of its system. And the “machine” works well most of the time.

4.3 Weaknesses Each coin has two sides, bureaucratic organization also has limitations. First, under this form, it is difficult in adapting to changing situations. The reason is they are not designed for innovation, but are bring to achieve a predetermined goal. For example, new problem often disregarded because there are no ready-made responses for them, as Morgan argued ways of communication cannot be deal effectively with new cases, the cause is that there is no plan to deal with it, then are often too slow for dealing with issues (Morgan 2004 p28). Complex cases float up the organization hierarchy as people at each section find in turn that they have no effort to solve it, it leads to information distorted.High degree of specialization exit in different functional areas, interdepartmental communication and coordination are often poor.

Second, mindless and unquestioning bureaucracy can occur. “It is not my job to worry about it” or “It is not my responsibility to deal

with the problem”” I just do what I am told to do” is often appear. The fact is those jobs responsibilities encourage a lot of members to have mindless, which is disagree with Clegg’s opinion. It fail to lead people to take an interest in, but to encourage them to obey orders and hold place rather than question what they are doing.

Third, one case may happen because of the previously discussion, sets of interests can ruin organization’s ability to achieve primary aims, because department and individuals may compete for scarce resources or job position that higher up hierarchy, so creating a system of competition can be ended up. Sometimes, aims may be very contrary to original one, this can directly lead organization ineffectiveness. The whole work may not finished by relax resources which is created by padding of budgets, wild ambition.

Fourthly, Human beings are leading to fit the mechanical organization requirement rather than improving organization around their limitations and strengths. The same opinion to Beetham that employees have little chance for personal growth, they often spend much time on the work that they do not like, at the same time, organization lose the chance to creative and intelligent, the truth is most members have the ability to creative, it is a pity they do not have the chance (Beetham 1996 p25).

5 Conclusions The bureaucratic form organization is regarded as a representation of a normal process of explanation in society as a whole, punctuating the value of mean-ends relations. An ideal type is constituted by the bureaucratic form of organization. There are many characteristics of this form such as obvious division of labor, higher formalization, and

separation of organizational and personal lives, employment decisions are based on merit. Weber suggested that authority can be seen as critical to understanding power, but exercise of authority is different from the power. The power position of a fully developed bureaucracy is always great, under the normal conditions—overpowering because bureaucracy’s political masters face it as dilettantes an expert.

The most advantage of charismatic authority is its great power, which is rest on the intensity and strength of the force which lie unconscious in every human goal; Church can be example of traditional authority, in this circumstance, managers cannot be saucy to their members or break the images expected to them. The role of rational-legal authority can be described as it is the foundation for both management and creation of most government organizations as well as the most common basis of control in organizations worldwide, worth to detail, ration-legal authority is the most widely used form to govern internal work activities and decision making, especially in the large organizations.

Just there is no one best structure for organizations in all circumstances, so too is there no one worse. Strengths such as fairness and technical advantages can improve the organization work, certainly limitations can slow down it, it is difficult in adapting to changing circumstances; High degree of specialization exit in different functional areas, interdepartmental communication and coordination are often poor; because of the below discussion, sets of interests can ruin organization’s ability to achieve primary aims. To sum up, the Weber ideal type does give contribution to understanding organizations, particularly to organization analysis.