Bureaucracies
Bureaucracies are out and post-Bureaucracies are in. Explain why you agree or disagree with this statement using examples to support your argument.
Organizations can be defined as either bureaucracies or post-bureaucracies, depending on four different characteristics. A bureaucratic organization is based around specialization and life-time careers, formal rules, an authoritative hierarchy, and the idea of impersonality. On the other hand a post-bureaucratic organization is centred on the idea of flexible careers, ‘shared values’, flatter hierarchies, and a more personal treatment of individuals. To this end it is important to consider the different types of organizations and also how the world has changed over the past few decades. These effects coupled with other factors have and still are slowly leading to the movement from bureaucracies to post-bureaucracies.
A major factor in showing the transfer to a system of post-bureaucracy is the change in attitudes regarding jobs and life time careers. Most people these days don’t want to be tied to a single career for their entire lives, especially not to the same company or firm. They want the freedom to change career paths later in life if they feel that it is necessary. As well as being in the same career path for one’s entire life, they do not want to be forced to work for the same company all their life. For example if someone is working in a typical investment bank type firm they are likely to be put under a large amount of pressure from the ‘higher-ups’ in the firm. So if the person does not enjoy this job then as well as the potential desire to leave the specific firm, this person may also want to change career paths completely. The idea of tenure has really been overridden by the desire to have flexibility in one’s career. Even in the government, a supposed bureaucratic type of organization within which people often have life time careers, there has recently been ‘rapid personnel changes in the home
Organizations can be defined as either bureaucracies or post-bureaucracies, depending on four different characteristics. A bureaucratic organization is based around specialization and life-time careers, formal rules, an authoritative hierarchy, and the idea of impersonality. On the other hand a post-bureaucratic organization is centred on the idea of flexible careers, ‘shared values’, flatter hierarchies, and a more personal treatment of individuals. To this end it is important to consider the different types of organizations and also how the world has changed over the past few decades. These effects coupled with other factors have and still are slowly leading to the movement from bureaucracies to post-bureaucracies.
A major factor in showing the transfer to a system of post-bureaucracy is the change in attitudes regarding jobs and life time careers. Most people these days don’t want to be tied to a single career for their entire lives, especially not to the same company or firm. They want the freedom to change career paths later in life if they feel that it is necessary. As well as being in the same career path for one’s entire life, they do not want to be forced to work for the same company all their life. For example if someone is working in a typical investment bank type firm they are likely to be put under a large amount of pressure from the ‘higher-ups’ in the firm. So if the person does not enjoy this job then as well as the potential desire to leave the specific firm, this person may also want to change career paths completely. The idea of tenure has really been overridden by the desire to have flexibility in one’s career. Even in the government, a supposed bureaucratic type of organization within which people often have life time careers, there has recently been ‘rapid personnel changes in the home