Max Weber and Bureaucracy
Max Weber is one of the foremost social historians and political economists of the 20th century and is considered to be one of the main architects of modern social science.[Stanford,2012] He was born in Erfurt ,Prussia (now Germany) and lived from 1864 to 1920.[Britannica,2010]
In late 1800s companies and organisations were getting larger and more complex everyday and they were devising large specialised units within them thus managing these organisations was hard. Weber suggested that they would need to adopt a new way of administration and also a more efficient way of hiring people in order to allocate them to specific roles according to their expertise and knowledge. Thus he devised a new theory based on bureaucracy. Bureaucracy simply states that people should be expected to follow certain rules and procedures rather than their personal preferences in order to bring order to managerial systems and to simplify the task of managing large corporations. It also explains that the best way to choose people for certain roles is based on their knowledge, as mentioned by Weber in his book Economy and Society : "bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through knowledge." [Swedberg,2005]
Weber's theory of bureaucracy is one of the most famous parts of his ideology. He believed that bureaucracy is the most efficient way of organising human activity and is essential to the modern world : "Experience tends to show that the purely bureaucratic type of administration is, from a purely technical point of view, capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency and is the most rational known means of carrying out imperative control over human beings. " [Denhard,2010]
A bureaucratic system has some defined features:
1- Certain Rules: It has certain rules and regulations and people in the system are expected to follow in order to have stability.
2- Hierarchical Structure: It is organised as a hierarchy with people having different levels of authority.
In late 1800s companies and organisations were getting larger and more complex everyday and they were devising large specialised units within them thus managing these organisations was hard. Weber suggested that they would need to adopt a new way of administration and also a more efficient way of hiring people in order to allocate them to specific roles according to their expertise and knowledge. Thus he devised a new theory based on bureaucracy. Bureaucracy simply states that people should be expected to follow certain rules and procedures rather than their personal preferences in order to bring order to managerial systems and to simplify the task of managing large corporations. It also explains that the best way to choose people for certain roles is based on their knowledge, as mentioned by Weber in his book Economy and Society : "bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through knowledge." [Swedberg,2005]
Weber's theory of bureaucracy is one of the most famous parts of his ideology. He believed that bureaucracy is the most efficient way of organising human activity and is essential to the modern world : "Experience tends to show that the purely bureaucratic type of administration is, from a purely technical point of view, capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency and is the most rational known means of carrying out imperative control over human beings. " [Denhard,2010]
A bureaucratic system has some defined features:
1- Certain Rules: It has certain rules and regulations and people in the system are expected to follow in order to have stability.
2- Hierarchical Structure: It is organised as a hierarchy with people having different levels of authority.