Weber’s Idea of Bureaucracy (ID:205302)

Introduction The German sociologist Max Weber described many ideal-typical forms of public administration, government, and business in his 1922 work Economy and Society. His critical study of the bureaucratisation of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work. Bureaucracy is the name of an organizational form used by sociologists and organizational design professionals. Bureaucracy has an informal usage, as in "there's too much bureaucracy where I work." This informal usage describes a set of characteristics or attributes such as "red tape" or "inflexibility" that frustrate people who deal with or who work for organizations they perceive as "bureaucratic." The more of these concepts that exist in your organization, the more likely you will have some or all of the negative by-products described in the book "Busting Bureaucracy."In the 1930s Max Weber, a German sociologist, wrote a rationale that described the bureaucratic form as being the ideal way of organizing government agencies. Max Weber's principles spread throughout both public and private sectors. Even though Weber's writings have been widely discredited, the bureaucratic form lives on. Weber noted six major principles. The bureaucratic form is so common that most people accept it as the normal way of organizing almost any endeavor. People in bureaucratic organizations generally blame the ugly side effects of bureaucracy on management, or the founders, or the owners, without awareness that the real cause is the organizing form.