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Essay on Bureaucracy: it’s Meaning and Growth!
Meaning of Bureaucracy:
The growth of Bureaucracy is a major social trend of modern society. It is found in both public and private organizations. Literally, the term bureaucracy means administration by bureaus.
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Bureau is an administrative unit. Some of the definitions of bureaucracy are the following:
(i) According to Max Weber, Bureaucracy “is a system of administration characterized by expertness, impartiality and the absence of humanity.”
(ii) According to Green, bureaucracy is “a power-wielding organisation-with a hierarchy of ranks, the statuses and functions of which are planned in advance and in which the official activities of personnel in each rank are supervised by the next higher rank upto the apex of control.”
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(iii) According to Rosenberg, Bureaucracy is “that type of hierarchical organisation which is designed rationally to coordinate the work of many individuals in pursuit of large scale administrative tasks.”
(iv) According to Willoughby, bureaucracy “is any personnel astern where the employees are classified in a system of administration composed of a hierarchy of sections, divisions, bureaus, departments and the like.”
(v) According to Pfiffner, bureaucracy “is the systematic organisation of tasks and individuals into a pattern which can lost effectively achieve the ends of collective efforts.”
A bureaucracy is a pyramid of officials who conduct rationally his work of an organisation.
Max Weber has given three characteristics of bureaucracy:
(i) The regular activities are distributed in a fixed way as official duties;
(ii) The authority to give the commands required for the incharge of these duties is distributed in a stable way and is strictly delimited by rules;
(iii) Methodical provision is made for the regular and continuous fulfillment of these duties.
Weber further says that there is:
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(a) A hierarchical principle in all bureaucratic organisations;
(b) A reliance on written documents, file records and the other apparatus of modern office management;
(c) The formulation of general rules or practices for the management of the office.
Thompson gave the following characteristics of bureaucracy:
(a) Specialization:
Which means that each task is assigned to on expert;
(b) Merit appointment:
The appointments are made on merit basis without any personal favour;
(c) Job Tenure:
The officers hold office for a fixed tenure.
(d) Formalistic impersonality:
A set of formal rules and procedures are followed to ensure impartiality.
(e) A chain of command:
There is a hierarchy of command. Each lower office is under the control and supervision of a higher one.
To sum up, a bureaucracy has the following features:
(i) Differentiation of functions.
(ii) Technical Specialization.
(iii) Hierarchical organisation and discipline.
(iv) Objectivity of method.
(v) Adherence to rules.
(vi) Maintenance of files and records.
(vii) Appointment and not election of staff.
(viii) Fixed salary scales.
(ix) Separation of the official from the ownership of the means of production or administration.
(x) Political neutrality.
Growth of Bureaucracy:
It is said that bureaucracy is a major trend of modern society. No doubt bureaucracy is modern in many of its respects, yet it is a thing of yesterday. Some early societies also were bureaucratically organised, for example, ancient Egypt and ancient China were ruled by governmental bureaucracies.
In England the civil servants became numerous and powerful under the Norman kings who gave England a centralized administration. Bureaucracy in the middle ages was as active and vigorous as it is in the twentieth century. But there are important differences between ancient bureaucracy and modern bureaucracy. These differences are the following:
Firstly, the ancient bureaucracies were limited in size and scope. The ancient society was always of a small scale. The resources were few as compared with those of modern times. The problems also were few and simple. Hence specialization of functions was carried to a very slight extent. The offices were few in number.
The civil servant was much less specialized than his modern counterpart. In modern societies the resources have increased tremendously. The problems have become numerous and complex. Some of these problems have become international in character. The modern civil servant is a highly specialized person.
The number of civil servants has increased manifold. The modern bureaucracy is a huge structure surrounded by countless rules and millions of files. The ancient bureaucracy controlled only a small part of man’s life. The social life of the majority was grouped on kinship and village basis.
Hence it was free from bureaucratic control. But today a large part of our life is controlled by bureaucracy. Even our personal matters like marriage and family are under the control of bureaucracy. Thus the modern bureaucracy as compared to ancient one is vast both in size and scope.
Secondly, the ancient bureaucracies were Governmental. The bureaucracy was concerned with the administration of the Government. But the modern bureaucracies are not only governmental but also economic. The capitalistic system has played a major part in the growth of bureaucracy.
The industrial Revolution changed the techniques of production. It replaced factories in place of households. In factories the work was divided up into little pieces. In course of time large factories were set up. Corporations owning large plants came into being. There was mass production, division of labour and specialization. Different departments were set up to look after different aspects of production and exchange and other related matters.
The growth of corporate business organisations created an urgent need for stable, strict and calculable administration. Large scale production in modern society strongly tends to foster the development of bureaucracy. Along with governmental bureaucracies there has come into existence a wide network of economic bureaucracies. It may be noted that a socialistic form of organisation would not check the growth of economic bureaucracy rather it would create a still higher degree of bureaucratization.
Social Consequences of Bureaucracy:
Bureaucracy is a necessary aspect of modern culture. For the needs of mass administration today, it is completely indispensable. Max Weber called bureaucratic administration the most rational type of administration.
It has brought in some good consequences which are as follows:
(i) It lays stress on technical knowledge.
(ii) It is dominated by the principle of appointment.
(iii) It is subject to strict discipline.
(iv) Specialization of functions increases administrative efficiency.
(v) There are well laid out rules which are uniformly applied without any favour.
(vi) A bureaucratic administration is objective oriented.
(vii) There is impartiality and objectivity in administration.
(viii) Being the most rational type of organisation bureaucratic administration has grown both intensively and extensively.
Bureaucracy has largely succeeded in reaching the objectives for which it was established yet it is still subject to criticism.
It has led to some evil social consequences which are as follows:
(i) Depersonalization:
Bureaucracy is looked upon with ridicule. Civil servants are contemptuously called ‘bureaucrats’: A bureaucrat becomes a cog in the impersonal bureaucratic machine. The procedure becomes more important than results. Everything goes ‘through proper channel’. There is no human touch anywhere.
It is easy for a bureaucrat to defend himself by citing the regulations and his duties as a public official, but his depersonalized attitude may infuriate the citizen who considers himself the victim of bureaucracy. The depersonalized character of bureaucratic administration tends to create ill will and resentment.
(ii) Formalism:
Another great defect of bureaucracy is its excessive adherence to formalism. There are set rules and printed forms. The language and the forms of official letters, the method of making note, sending it upwards or downwards all are fixed beforehand.
Each officer acts mechanically All this kills the sense of judgement and initiative of the official. When conditions unforeseen by the rules come up, the official is unable to act because he has no authority and he is not disposed to do a thing not sanctioned by precedent.
(iii) Red tape:
Red tapism is a great vice of bureaucratic administration. The routine operations become end in themselves rather than effective means to desirable ends. There is blind attachment to rules which in some cases are outdated and old. The bureaucrats consider the forms of business more important than its substance.
The organisation gets preoccupied with procedure and has little time for productive activities. The bureaucrats have a mania for regulations and formal procedure. They are obsessed with the inflexible authority of departmental decisions and precedents. They are indifferent towards the convenience of the citizen.
(iv) Inflexibility:
Bureaucracy is generally inflexible in its attitude. It keeps on following its old procedures and does not react to the changing social and political climate of the country. Routine procedures breed inflexibility. The official becomes oriented towards techniques rather than people.
(v) Division of responsibility:
It is another irritating aspect of bureaucracy. No official can take a decision without consulting several officers at different levels of hierarchy. The citizen is incapable to find the person whom he can pin down for a decision. He goes from table to table and gets lost in the circumlocution office. Where impersonality rules, the sense oi personal responsibility is reduced.
(vi) Bifurcation of allegiance:
Bifurcation means splitting off in two different parts. In bureaucracy it takes the form of split introduction’ to sociology between service to the citizen and adherence to rules and procedures. Bureaucracy exists to serve the citizen and procedures are developed with service in mind.
Actually, however, service to the citizen goes into the background and procedures take the foreground. The procedures become an end in themselves. A bureaucrat may feel that he has done all by filing a report of the citizen’s complaint, but the citizen is not satisfied because his needs have not been met. Institutions overshadow individuals.
(vii) Creation of new social class:
Bureaucracy has created a new social class which consists of white collar workers. They assume an excessive sense of self importance. They remain aloof from the common man and are indifferent to his feeling or convenience. They have their separate clubs and mode of life. They are given to the notion of false prestige.
They have a vested interest in the growth of government. Once established, bureaucracies become stable political structures. Ramsay Muir was very critical of the growth of the power of bureaucracy. A bureaucrat becomes a soulless automation. He develops an authoritative attitude. His vision becomes myopic.
In short, bureaucracy has produced numerous social consequences. Prof. W.A. Robson has summarised the defects of bureaucracy in these words. “The maladies from which bureaucracy most frequently suffers are an excessive sense of self-importance on the part of officials or an undue idea of the importance of their office and indifference towards the feeling or the convenience of the individual citizen; an obsession with the binding and inflexible authority of departmental decisions, precedents, arrangement or forms, regardless of how kindly or with what justice they may work in individual cases, a mania for regulations and formal procedure, a preoccupation with the activities of particular units of administration and an inability to consider the Government as a whole, a failure to recognise the relation between the governors and the governed as an essential part of democratic process.”
There is no denying the truth that the modern government is clustered up with bureaus that have outlived their usefulness today and have become routinized self-maintaining agencies. In India the bureaucratic machinery has grown in size but not in quality. It has become politicised and corrupt.
There is a close nexus between the politician, bureaucrat and criminal. But this only emphasizes the need for the rational organisation of bureaucracy. The system should be so built as to avoid unnecessary delay, red-tapism and formalism and to create among the functionaries a sense of participation in and identification with it. Checks should be devised that bureaucrats remain like true servants of the people.