Bureaucratic Organization - SAGE Publications Inc
05-Volti-45440.qxd11/12/2007512:46 PMPage 79BureaucraticOrganizationAlthough modern societies are for the most part lacking in castes,guilds, and other socially embedded ways of recruiting, training, andorganizing workers, personal connections and social networks are stillhighly relevant to many aspects of working life, especially in regard to theway jobs get filled, as will be noted in Chapter 7. In a parallel fashion, therules and procedures governing the way that particular kinds of work aredone may simply reflect longstanding customs, even when they may not beeffective or efficient. In today’s world, however, a great many aspects ofwork organization are governed by a markedly different approach, one thatis encompassed by the term bureaucracy. At first glance, this hardly seemslike a progressive step, as bureaucracies are often thought to be collectionsof semicompetent plodders hopelessly ensnarled in red tape. As we shall see,there is some truth to this stereotype, but bureaucracies have a number ofpositive features, and for many kinds of work, their virtues far outweightheir vices.The Rise of Bureaucratic OrganizationBureaucracies have been around for a long time. They were an essential feature of preindustrial empires such as Rome and dynastic China. In bothcases, much of the extension and endurance of these empires can be attributed to the development and use of effective bureaucracies.1 These administrative bodies were staffed by functionaries charged with the governance ofterritories hundreds or even thousands of miles distant from the empire’scapital. In these far-flung realms, bureaucratic tasks and responsibilitieswere limited in number. Above all, preindustrial governments had to defendtheir territories from external enemies (often disparaged as “barbarians”)seeking land and plunder. The control of their own populations was anotherpriority, as domestic rebellions were regular features of imperial domains.Then, as now, defense was expensive business, and the maintenance of an79
05-Volti-45440.qxd8011/12/200712:46 PMPage 80AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF WORK AND OCCUPATIONSempire rested to considerable degree on the ability of the bureaucracy to collect taxes from the empire’s subjects. Taxes also provided much of the financial support for the art, architecture, literature, and philosophy that remainas enduring cultural legacies of long-gone civilizations. Taxes were no morepopular then than they are today, and they were a major source of tensionbetween the government’s bureaucrats and its subjects. Still, they were andare a necessary evil; as former Justice of the United States Supreme Court,Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935), has admonished us, “Taxes are theprice we pay for civilization.”In addition to maintaining order and collecting taxes, preindustrialbureaucracies occasionally involved themselves in economic activities. Theirefforts were generally not oriented to the economic development of therealm. The chief incentive was the opportunity to reap monopoly profitsthrough government control over important industries such as salt production and distribution. But direct government involvement in the economywas limited, and most of an empire’s work was done on farms and in workshops staffed by family members and slaves, using traditional modes of organization. As was noted in the previous chapter, these organizations weresmall in scale and were staffed on the basis of ascribed roles or apprenticeships that mimicked family relationships.In addition to imperial governments, complex bureaucratic structurescould be found in the realm of religion. Some of the success of the earlyChristian church can be attributed to its effective adaptation of Roman organizational principles. At the same time, however, many of the world’s greatand enduring religions, notably Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, have thrivedfor centuries with much looser organizational structures. Today, many religions struggle to achieve a balance between spontaneous spirituality and theroutinization and formalization typical of bureaucratic administration.Bureaucratic organization began to spread from a few political and religious domains into private enterprise as economies became larger and morecomplex. By the second half of the 19th century, the scope of managementhad been significantly enlarged as some industrial enterprises employed hundreds or even thousands of workers. At the same time, advancing technologies were creating a host of new occupational specialists. Coordinating theactivities of large numbers of specialized workers posed new organizationalchallenges. While the size and complexity of enterprises were increasing,improvements in transportation expanded the territory served by many ofthese enterprises, creating more administrative difficulties.2These changes in enterprise scale and scope necessitated heavy infusionsof bureaucratic organization. Businesses ranging from steel mills to department stores needed new ways to coordinate the actions of hundreds of workers, to precisely schedule their work activities, and in general to keep thingsmoving along in a smooth and predictable manner. Firms also were facedwith the need to train and supervise a multitude of new workers, many ofthem from rural areas or foreign lands, who had been thrust into the newindustrial environment.
05-Volti-45440.qxd11/12/200712:46 PMPage 81Bureaucratic Organization81While economic and social change was creating new challenges, it alsowas supplying a set of tools to address them. Railroads and then automobiles allowed administrators and managers to travel to widely diffused organizational units with relative ease, while new communications technologies,everything from telephones and typewriters to lowly carbon paper, madeit possible to supervise and coordinate the activities of large numbers ofemployees.3 These technologies complemented new ways of organizingenterprises and their constituent workplaces. By the beginning of the 20thcentury, an organizational revolution was well under way, and bureaucratization was transforming the organization of work.The Elements of Bureaucratic OrganizationIn delineating the key features of bureaucracy, it is useful to begin with whatthe German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) referred to as “an idealtype.” This is a mental construct that delineates the key features of a socialphenomenon that may not entirely correspond to real-world situations. Onesuch phenomenon is bureaucracy. In analyzing bureaucratic organization,Weber delineated the essential elements of bureaucratic organization whilebeing fully aware that actual, functioning bureaucracies only partially conformed to his ideal-typical schema.4In addition to presenting the major components of bureaucratic organization, Weber devoted considerable attention to the cultural values andmodes of thought that gave rise to modern bureaucracies. Bureaucraticstructures and processes reflected what Weber took to be the dominant cognitive orientation of modern societies: rationality. Rationality, of course, isa loaded word with a multiplicity of meanings, so it is important to be clearon what Weber meant by it and how it related to bureaucratic organization.At the most general level, Weber saw rational thought patterns as a primeelement of a historical process that he called “the disenchantment of theworld.” By this, he meant the ability and willingness to explain the causes ofevents without invoking supernatural agents. When imbued with a rationalapproach to the world, people no longer conjured up devils, ghosts, and goblins in order to explain worldly phenomena. Instead, logic and empiricismwere the primary sources of understanding why things happened as they did.For example, a rational approach to the avoidance of famines would notattribute crop failures to the actions of malevolent spirits but would look forthe presence of plant diseases and other material causes of these problems.Weber saw rationality as crucial to the design and operation of modernorganizations because this mode of thought provided the most effective andefficient way of attaining particular goals. At this point, however, it is important to note that the goals pursued by a person or an organization may notthemselves be the result of rational thought. Rationally designed structuresand processes can be used to achieve goals that defy rational comprehension;as Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick noted of his pursuit of the great white whale,
05-Volti-45440.qxd8211/12/200712:46 PMPage 82AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF WORK AND OCCUPATIONS“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”5 Equally important,rationality can serve goals that are not just irrational but are unethical,immoral, and criminal as well. History has provided us with plenty ofexamples of rationality being used for barbaric ends, Nazi Germany being aparticularly repellant case.Weber recognized the difference between the application of rationality tomeans and to ends with his distinction between “formal” and “substantive”rationality. The latter referred to the rational use of means to achieve goalsthat were in accordance with a society’s ethical values, whereas the formerwas more restricted, being concerned with quantitative calculation andaccounting in the service of the economy and its individual components.6What was missing in Weber’s distinction, however, was the recognition thatthe ethical standards of some societies may not be in accordance withhumane values. Again, the case of Nazi Germany, which emerged a littlemore than a decade after Weber’s death, provides a ghastly example.When applied to the description and analysis of bureaucratic organizations, rationality is embodied in the way an organization has been puttogether and the manner in which its members go about their work. Fromthis perspective, modern bureaucracies are best conceived not as “rationalorganizations” but as organizations with structures and procedures thatreflect an effort to use appropriate means for the achievement of specificends.7 Of all types of organization, Weber viewed bureaucracies as the mostefficient, effective, and predictable; as he put it, “The fully bureaucraticPhoto 5.1Organization charts indicate the hierarchical nature of bureaucraciesSOURCE: Stefan Klein/iStockphoto.
05-Volti-45440.qxd11/12/200712:46 PMPage 83Bureaucratic Organizationmechanism compares with other organizations exactly as does the machinewith nonmechanical modes of production.”8Modern bureaucracies exhibit specific structural and procedural featuresthat contribute to effective and efficient goal attainment. In the first place,bureaucracies are characterized by impersonality. This, of course, is a quality that often infuriates people when they deal with bureaucracies—“theytreat you like a number, not a person.” But this unpleasant reality is onlypart of a larger picture. Bureaucratic impersonality also means that everyoneis supposed to be treated equally. Race, gender, ethnicity, and other ascribedcharacteristics should have no bearing on one’s interaction with a bureaucracy and the outcomes it produces. Ascribed characteristics are also irrelevant when it comes to filling positions within the bureaucracy. In directopposition to working arrangements based on ascribed statuses, bureaucracies are staffed by workers who are chosen according to their ability to perform the tasks assigned to them, or at least their capacity to learn to do thesetasks. Another common feature of bureaucracies, therefore, is a formalrecruiting process. In traditional China, officials (often referred to in theWest as “mandarins”) were selected on the basis of their performance inofficial examinations that tested their knowledge of the Confucian classics.9Absorption of Confucian ideals gave these officials a common culturalmooring, but it had little relevance to the actual performance of their duties.In modern societies, government bureaucracies generally employ civil serviceexaminations to recruit new employees, and many private organizations usejob-specific tests for the same purpose. In similar fashion, promotion is supposed to be based on objective assessments of performance and not onattributes that have nothing to do with getting the work done. In short,bureaucratic impersonality, coupled with the use of rationally derived procedures, produces a “meritocracy” in which positions are staffed and jobsare done in accordance with the employees’ capabilities.An emphasis on merit and expertise of some sort also ties in with anotherkey characteristic of bureaucratic organization, an elaborate division oflabor. Unlike societies based on gathering and hunting and traditional farming, industrial societies have a great variety of occupational specialties. TheDictionary of Occupational Titles, compiled by the U.S. Bureau of theCensus, lists 842 occupational categories, encompassing 30,000 distinct jobtitles such as “emulsification operator,” “welt trimmer” and “picklinggrader.”10 A single organization may have dozens or even hundreds of specialized job titles. At the organizational level, these specialized tasks areoften incorporated into formal roles that define an employee’s area ofresponsibility. These roles are in turn governed by specific rules that set outwhat should and should not be done by the person holding down that role.Beginning with Adam Smith in the 18th century, many observers havenoted that the division of labor into a number of specialized tasks has beena major source of economic and technological dynamism. In a famous passage, Adam Smith wrote about the benefits of the division of labor in the83
05-Volti-45440.qxd8411/12/200712:46 PMPage 84AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF WORK AND OCCUPATIONSmanufacture of a simple product, pins. Instead of a single worker performingall of the necessary operations, one worker cut wire into segments, anothersharpened a point on them, another soldered a head to the shaft, and so on,for a total of eighteen separate operations. Dividing up the tasks allowedworkers to develop specialized skills and to work at a regular, uninterruptedpace, while at the same time inspiring the invention of specialized machinery“which facilitate and abridge labor, and allow one man to do the work ofmany.”11 The benefits of the division of labor also were highlighted by a20th-century economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, who took the analysiswell beyond the manufacture of pins. According to Galbraith, much of thedynamism of the modern world could be attributed to the advance of scienceand technology, which in turn resulted from “taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization,arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specializedbut equally ordinary men.”12As Galbraith implied, specialization creates the need for coordination.Bureaucracies bring order out of potential chaos in two ways. The first ofthese is what people tend to think of when they hear the word bureaucracy:rules, regulations, and strict procedures. All bureaucracies make abundantuse of explicit and implicit Standard Operating Procedures to guide and control the activities of their employees. This, of course, can be another sourceof frustration when dealing with a bureaucracy because there may be situations not covered by existing rules, or the rules may be of dubious appropriateness. But even more frustrations, as well as endless opportunities forcorruption and abuse, would ensue if the members of an organization simplymade decisions on the basis of personal connections or individual whims.Along with the use of formal roles and rules, bureaucratic organizationscoordinate the work of their members through another property that is distasteful to many: hierarchical authority. The structures of most bureaucraticorganizations can be (and usually are) depicted in an organization chart thatputs every position at a hierarchical level that clearly indicates who is subordinate or superordinate to whom. In addition to aiding in the coordination of work, organizational hierarchies serve a number of other functions,such as delineating responsibilities and motivating workers by holding outthe prospect of promotion. Organizational hierarchies are especially prominent in military and paramilitary organizations such as police forces, whereobserving rules and obeying orders issued by superiors are of paramountimportance. Other kinds of organizations can get by with more egalitarianstructures, but some degree of hierarchical ranking will be found in allbureaucratic organizations.A final characteristic of bureaucratic organizations is their extensive use of,and reliance on, written records. It is no coincidence that the first extensivegovernment bureaucracies emerged in Egypt, Babylonia, and China, placeswhere written languages were first created and developed. As a practical matter, written records are essential for the preservation and dissemination of
05-Volti-45440.qxd11/12/200712:46 PMPage 85Bureaucratic Organization85rules, regulations, and operating procedures, along with essential documentssuch as contracts, tax records, and voter registrations. What began thousands of years ago with the first scratchings on clay tablets continues to agreatly magnified degree today, as modern information and communicationstechnologies such as computerized databases and e-mail have extended thereach and potency of the written word.At this point, many readers are probably thinking that this discussion ofbureaucracy is seriously divorced from reality as they have experienced it. Andthey are right—not only do bureaucracies in the real world often depart fromthe above principles, but the imputation that they are the embodiment ofrationality seems quite a stretch. Here we will again simply note that an idealtype presentation of bureaucracy is only a starting point for further analysis,just as a mathematical description of the acceleration of a falling body has tofirst set aside the effects of air resistance in order to derive the formula fordetermining the rate at which the body gains speed. There will be numerousplaces in this book where real-world organizational structures and proceduresand their consequences for the way work is done will be presented, along withthe reasons for their departure from ideal-type bureaucracies. As a startingpoint, we need to consider which kinds of work environments are well suitedto bureaucratic modes of organization and which are not.Where BureaucracyWorks and Where It Doesn’tBy now it should be apparent that bureaucracy and bureaucrat are notsimply terms of abuse. Bureaucratic organization has some real strengths,but these are evident only under certain circumstances; when situations aredifferent, bureaucracy’s virtues can become its vices. Above all, bureaucracies are most effective when the tasks performed by their members can bereduced to routines. In turn, routines and the application of unambiguousrules allow the employment of workers who are not expected to demonstratemuch in the way of creativity, innovation, or the ability to solve uniqueproblems. All that is necessary is to efficiently and honestly follow formalprocedures and see to it that established rules are applied.We can see bureaucratic principles effectively operating in organizationssuch as a state department of motor vehicles. One of the primary tasks of theDMV is processing hundreds of thousands of vehicle registration applications every year. In quantitative terms, this is a daunting task, but it is greatlyfacilitated by reducing the process to a set of procedures governed by specific rules. For example, the cost of registering a car or truck is not negotiated for each vehicle, nor is the social and economic status of the vehicle’sowner taken into consideration. Instead, a set fee is assessed on the basis ofunambiguous criteria such as the weight
Modern bureaucracies exhibit specific structural and procedural features that contribute to effective and efficient goal attainment. In the first place, bureaucracies are characterized by impersonality. This, of course, is a qual-ity that often infuriates people when they deal with bureaucracies—“they treat you like a number, not a person.”
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