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In this article we will discuss about organisation and bureaucracy from the Weberian perspective.
All contemporary societies are essentially organisational societies in the sense that almost all our needs are met in organisational settings. If we look at any urban area in India, either large or small, we can see how true is the above statement.
Our babies in cities and towns are born in hospitals, educated in schools, subsequently employed in governmental or private organisations, enrolled as members of professional or recreational organisations and myriad other associations.
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In course of time, rural areas in India win also fall in line, as is the case in all advanced societies. It is to be noted that organisations differ from ‘social units’, such as the family, friendship or kin groups or the community, in that these are designed to realise clearly defined goals.
As there is more specialised division of labour in society, organisations also increase in number and variety, each organisation performing one or a few specialised functions. In the interest of efficiency, these organisations must develop a hierarchy of authority and devise a system of rules designed toward the pursuit of a specific goal.
Thus, a particular form of organisation, known as bureaucracy, emerges. Bureaucratic organisation is increasingly becoming the defining characteristic of modern industrial society. Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy is a pioneering study in this particular field in sociology.
Weber’s views on bureaucracy should be seen in the context of his general theory of social action. It is Weber’s thesis that every man gives some meaning to his conduct. Human action can, therefore, be understood and appreciated in terms of the meanings and motives which lie behind it.
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Weber identified four types of social action. These include:
(i) Rational action in relation to a goal,
(ii) Rational action in relation to a value,
(iii) Affective or emotional action and
(iv) Traditional action.
The classification of types of action governs, to a certain extent, the Weberian interpretation of the contemporary era. According to him, the chief characteristic of the world we live in is rationalisation.
For example, economic enterprise is rational, because it entails precise calculation of costs and careful weighing of the advantages and disadvantages of the various factors involved in the enterprise. So also is the control of the state by bureaucracy.
In fact, society as a whole tends towards goal-oriented organisation. “Bureaucratisation is the prime example of this process. A bureaucratic organisation has a clearly defined goal. It involves precise calculation of the means to attain this goal and systematically eliminates those factors which stand in the way of the achievement of its objectives. Bureaucracy is, therefore, rational action in an institutional form”.
Bureaucracy is also a form of control. It implies a hierarchical organisation in which there are superiors and subordinates with clearly defined responsibilities and powers. Some are required to issue orders, and some others to carry out those orders. In a large-sized organisation there is also the need for co-ordination of activities of the organisation.
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All these imply control of those in the lower ranks of the hierarchy by those in the higher. Such controls become effective as well as smooth if there is a minimum of voluntary submission to higher authority. People voluntarily submit to authority when it is regarded as legitimate.
Max Weber identified three forms of legitimacy which derive from three kinds of social action. Thus, it can derive from traditional meanings. Legitimacy of this kind, which we may call traditional legitimacy, depends on belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the right of those established on the strength of tradition in positions of authority to exercise it.
Similarly, legitimacy can derive from rational meanings. Such legitimacy may be called rational legitimacy which reflects belief in the legality of patterns of normative rules and the right of those people designated by the rules to exercise authority to command.
There is another type of legitimacy, called charismatic legitimacy (so termed after the Greek word for grace), which depend on the devotion of followers to an individual who, according to their perception, is endowed by exceptional sanctity, heroism or other personal qualities. Charismatic legitimacy, therefore, derives from affective or emotional action.
The organisational structure derives its form from the type of legitimacy on which it is based.
While emphasizing this aspect, Max Weber observes as follows:
“According to the kind of legitimacy which is claimed, the type of obedience, the type of administrative staff developed to guarantee it and the mode of exercising authority, will all differ fundamentally”. In order to understand bureaucracy, it is, therefore, necessary to take into account the type of legitimacy on which bureaucratic control is based.
The corresponding type of authority which emerges from his typology is as follows: traditional authority, rational-legal authority and charismatic authority. Weber, however, points out that none of these ideal types are to be found in a pure form in any historical instance.
But any case can be seen to approximate to any of these types. While analysing types of administrative organisation. Max Weber selects the ideal type of bureaucracy for special attention. It is based on rational-legal authority which is the source of its legitimacy.
Weber brings out the following characteristics of a bureaucratic organisation:
(i) As an organisation, bureaucracy implies a continuous performance of official functions according to rules.
(ii) Complex tasks of an organisation are broken down into manageable parts with each official specialising in a particular area. For example, governmental functions are divided into various departments, such as health, education, agriculture, defence, etc.
Within each department, every official has a clearly defined sphere of competence and responsibility. They are given the necessary authority to enable them to fulfill their duties.
(iii) This authority is differentially distributed so that a hierarchy of official positions is formed, some officials having controlling and supervisory duties with respect to others.
(iv) “Bureaucratic administration”, says Weber, “means fundamentally the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge. This is the feature of it which makes it specifically rational”. Certain specified qualifications are required of those who are to exercise authority. They are appointed according to their possession of formal qualifications, usually based on examinations.
(v) The bureaucrats do not own the means of production or of administration. They are also not allowed to make use of their official position for private purposes. Official quarters or other perquisites which are occupied or enjoyed by the persons while in service cannot be appropriated by them after superannuation or termination of service.
(vi) Acts of an administrative kind are recorded in writing, thereby ensuring continuity and consistency of the administrative process.
(vii) The officials are personally free agents. But they are required to act impersonally according to rules which define their specific spheres of competence. The activities of the bureaucrat are governed by the rules, not by personal considerations, such as his feelings towards colleagues or clients. His actions are, therefore, rational rather than affective.
(viii) The bureaucrats are paid a salary, although this may be on a scale of pay, increments being given according to age and experience, and they are paid a pension after a fixed number of years of employment and at a given age.
(ix) Normally, bureaucrats have no other employment and at all times during their service career the officials are subject to rules governing their conduct in so far as it is related to their official duties. Max Weber’s portrayal of a rational-legal bureaucratic organisation may be contrasted with administrative organisation associated with the traditional form of authority.
In the latter case “obedience is not owed to enacted rules, but to the person who occupies a position of authority by tradition”.
The tradition may either determine the way a chief acts and the contents of the commands he issues. Or, the tradition may leave him free to act arbitrarily. In making use of his followers, he may recruit from among those who are bound to him by particular traditional ties of loyalty, or he may choose favorites who owe a purely personal loyalty.
Although Weber was aware of the positive contribution, and even indispensability, of bureaucracy to the operation of large-scale industrial societies, he was equally aware of its limitations.
He pointed out that specialisation, which is the essence of bureaucratic set-up, may contribute to efficiency in the performance of specialised tasks, but too much of specialisation may rob the bureaucrats of their spontaneity, creativity and individual initiative.
The impersonality of official conduct and meticulous observance of rules may tend to produce ‘specialists without spirit’. Being trained to observe carefully, and almost blindly, the enacted rules of the organisation, particularly governmental organisation, and enjoying, as they do, security of service, the bureaucrats tend to forget that rules are meant for men and not men for rules.
To Weber, therefore, “the process of rationalisation, of which bureaucracy is the prime expression, is basically irrational. It is ultimately aimless since it tends to destroy the traditional values which give meaning and purpose to life”.
Weber also pointed to two inherent dangers of bureaucratic set-up in governmental organisation. According to him, the bureaucrats in government offices represent the most complete and effective institutionalization of power so far created. Such power, if left unchecked and uncontrolled, is undesirable from two points of view. To begin with, bureaucracy is unsuitable during periods of crisis.
The civil servants are trained to observe procedure and apply rules to particular cases and not to take decisions. Crisis situation demands innovation and improvisation, and if situation so requires, even scrapping of routine procedures. In terms of training and orientation, they are ill-equipped for the task.
Secondly, ” in capitalist society, top bureaucrats may be swayed by the pressure of capitalist interests and tailor their administrative practices to fit the demands of capital”.
According to Max Weber, these two dangers “could only be avoided by strong parliamentary control of the state bureaucracy. In particular, professional politicians must hold the top positions in the various departments of state. This will encourage strong and effective Readership since politicians are trained to take decisions”.
If the political executive is placed in charge of a department, “it will help to open the bureaucracy to public view and reveal any behind the scenes wheeling and dealing between bureaucrats and powerful interests. Politicians are public figures, open to public scrutiny and the criticism of opposition parties. They are therefore accountable for their actions”.
It may be pointed out that Weber was not oblivious of the fact that politicians are amateurs, and lack technical knowledge in many fields. In the circumstances, the: bureaucrats, who possess both technical expertise and experience, may guide, and even control, their political bosses.
In the words of Max Weber:
“The political master always finds himself vis-a-vis the trained official, in the position of a dilettante facing the expert”.
Merton’s views on Dysfunctions of Bureaucracy:
In an article entitled, Bureaucratic Structure and Personality, Merton observes that “the very elements which conduce towards efficiency in general produce inefficiency in specific instance,” and that bureaucratic procedure may inhibit the realisation of organisational goals. Against the backdrop of these general observations, we may refer to specific weaknesses of bureaucracy as seen by Merton.
First, the bureaucrats are taught to conform and to obey, not to improvise and explore alternative ways. This way of thinking is further strengthened by the tendency of bureaucrats to play safe, because “disciplined action and conformity to official regulations” are rewarded by promotions.
This kind of self-interest prompts them not to deviate and make slight adjustments even when such actions are called for in terms of realisation of organisational goals.
Second, the bureaucrats tend to follow scrupulously the formal procedure, however time-consuming it might be. In a hierarchical organisation, files and papers move from one official to another at a snail’s pace because observance of formal procedure involves delay. This is called bureaucratic ‘red- tape’ which stands in the way of providing efficient service to the clients of the organisation.
Third, the emphasis on impersonal approach may lead to misunderstanding, and even friction, between the bureaucrats on the one hand and the clients on the other. It is so particularly in an organisation, whether public or private, which is primarily concerned with rendering some form of service to its clients.
The business like and impersonal manner of carrying out their duties might give a wrong impression about the bureaucrats. They will be seen by their clients as cold, unsympathetic and even arrogant. The organisational goal of establishing rapport with their clientele is thwarted thereby.
Bureaucracy—a Marxian perspective:
According to Max Weber, bureaucracy is a defining feature of an industrial society, irrespective of whether it is capitalistic or socialistic. The question as to who owns the means of production is not relevant.
Marx, however, looks upon bureaucracy as an essential feature of a capitalist society. In such a society, a small minority owns the forces of production. Bureaucracy is a tool in the hands of this small minority to serve the interest of the ruling group.
A socialist society, in which the forces of production are communally owned, can, therefore, dispense with bureaucracy in the form in which it prevails in a capitalist society. “Lenin believed that after the dictatorship of the proletariat was established in the USSR in 1917, there would be a steady decline in state bureaucracy”.
He was conscious of the fact that some form of bureaucracy was essential. But he wanted it to be remodeled on the lines suggested by Marx and Engels. One such proposal was that administrators would be directly appointed and subject to recall at any time. The second proposal was that the salary of the administrators would be at par with that of an ordinary worker.
The third proposal was to simplify the work to a point “where basic literacy and numeracy were sufficient for their performance”. Lenin visualized a state of affairs in which there might be a mass participation in administration, since all would possess the necessary skills to participate in the administrative process.
Since everyone could be a bureaucrat for a time, none would develop the bureaucratic style of functioning or the bureaucratic attitude.
Marx, Engels, or Lenin did not, however, give a detailed blue-print of how this system would work, how the democratisation of bureaucracy would actually take place. It is to be noted that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was not followed by dismanding of the bureaucratic structure. On the contrary, there was expansion of bureaucracy.
The observers of the Russian scene have not reported the existence of any evidence of the weakening or shrinking of the bureaucratic set-up. There are some who justify the expansion and strengthening of the bureaucratic structure on the ground that central economic planning, which is directed toward the economic wellbeing of the entire population, requires for its successful implementation a well-knit bureaucracy.
They are also of the view that since the forces of production are communally owned, the functioning of bureaucracy would be different from that in a capitalist society. During the period of ‘cultural revolution’ in China, attempt was made under the leadership of Mao Tse-Tung to modify bureaucracy of the ideal type provided by Max Weber.
The re-organisation, that was attempted, may be pictured as follows:
“The rigid hierarchy of officials will be abolished………. Leaders will remain but they will lead rather than command. The specialized division of labour and the fragmentation of tasks are rejected in favour of a system whereby everyone should ‘take care of everything’ within the organisation. The expert will become a figure of the past since his technical knowledge and expertise will be spread among the masses. The full-time professional administrator will disappear. All administrative leaders must spend some of their time involved in actual production in the fields and factories. Finally, the fixed rules and regulations which characterize the typical bureaucracy are seen as instruments to repress the masses. They should therefore be changed as the masses see fit”.
The aforesaid changes were sought to be enforced:
(a) By ‘role-shifting system’ in terms of which the leaders would periodically be moved to the base of the organisation in order to acquaint themselves with problems at the grass-roots level, and
(b) By means of ‘group- based decision-making systems’ in order to enable workers to participate directly in the decision-making process of the factory.
It appears that China’s recent moves towards modernisation have halted the process of democratisation on the above lines. It has been suggested that “Mao’s intervention was a kind of charismatic breakthrough from the bureaucratic routinisation”.
If, as indicated by Max Weber, charismatic authority is routinized into traditional or rational-legal authority, then the experiments of the cultural revolution were bound to be short-lived. Some have even commented that “Marxian predictions of the disappearance of bureaucracy in a classless society owe much to a commitment to a Utopian vision”.
Mechanistic and Organic types of Organisations:
Max Weber presented an ideal type bureaucracy and argued that actual organisations in modern industrial societies approximated to that model. The suggestion is, therefore, implicit that there might be variations from the ideal type. Weber did not throw any light on why and how such variations take place. A number of researches have been undertaken in recent years in England and U.S.A. on this particular theme.
The broad conclusions of such research studies is that bureaucracy of the Weberian ideal type was particularly suited to the administration of routine tasks and to the tackling of predictable and familiar situations, i.e., to stable situations.
On the other hand, this type of bureaucratic organisations are not at all suited to those sectors of modern industry in which the technical and commercial situation is practically unpredictable because of rapid changes in technology, i.e. to changing situations.
We may consider, for instance, the electronics industry in which newer sophistications are introduced so quickly that no one in the production or marketing fields can foresee what tomorrow would bring. In such a situation rule-oriented and hierarchical bureaucratic organisation of the Weberian ideal type would be unsuited.
The two ideal types of organisations suited to these two types of situations are termed respectively ‘mechanistic’ and ‘organic’. The mechanistic organisation is, in many respects, similar to the ideal type of Max Weber.
“It includes a specialised division of labour with the rights and duties of each employee being precisely defined. Specialised tasks are coordinated by a management hierarchy which directs operations and takes major decisions. Communication is mainly vertical: instructions flow downward through a chain of command, information flows upward and is processed by various levels in the hierarchy before it reaches the top. Each individual in the organisation is responsible for discharging his particular responsibility and no more”.
On the other hand, “areas of responsibility are not clearly defined in organic organisation. The rigid hierarchies and specialised divisions of labour of mechanistic systems tend to disappear. The individual’s job is to employ his skills to further the goals of the organisation rather than simply carry out a pre-determined operation. When a problem arises, all those who have knowledge and expertise to contribute to its solution meet and discuss. Tasks are shaped by the nature of the problem rather than being predefined. Communication consists of consultation rather than command, of information and advice rather than instructions and decisions. Although a hierarchy exists, it tends to become blurred as communication travels in all directions and top management no longer has the sole prerogative over important decisions nor is it seen to monopolies the knowledge necessary to make them”.
As already indicated, mechanistic types of organisations are best suited to stable conditions, organic types of organisations to changing conditions. This type of research tends to introduce refinements and clarifications into the Weberian model.
The relevance of this type of analysis lies in the fact that we are now passing through times which are changing pretty fast. Hence, these and similar refinements are called for.