What is ‘bureaucracy’ and do we live in a post-bureaucratic world? The term ‘bureaucracy’ was coined in the 18th century by the French economist Vincent de Gournay (Morgan, 1989).
However, it was the German sociologist Max Weber, in the early 20th century, who defined and expanded its meaning and indeed maintained that it was the only effective way to organize work. The view of rational-legal authority is the premise of Weber’s bureaucracy theory. A bureaucracy is a large organization using a particular system of administration.
This system is characterized by a hierarchy of authority, a division of duties, strict rules of operation and documentation of actions performed. In other words, the system has a rigid structure in which the coordination of tasks is done via standardization of work. Bureaucracies are most often associated with governments, but any large entity, such as a corporation or school district, can be bureaucratic in nature. The bureaucratic structure might be expected by lower or middle managers.
In bureaucratic organizations, the offices and workers at the lower levels are strictly subject to rules and regulations so that the managers deal with problems more easily (Blau, 1968).
Thus, there are low requirements for their innovation ability, decision making and work experience. However, very little authority resides at lower or middle management levels. This is because power commonly rests in the hands of the top executives and the designers of workflow processes (Miller, 1986).
The Essay on School To Work System
There is a new system called S.T.W (school-to-work) introduced by Marc Tucker, the president of the National Center of Education and the economy. This scheme however, is not totally valid or at least this is the case for Phyllis Schlafly, the president of the eagle forum and the publisher of the monthly Education Reporter since 1986. The two ideas will be introduced clearly later. Tucker wants to ...
On balance, if lower or middle managers are not concerned with the power they will have, they will expect this sort of structure to a large extent. However, some bureaucratic dysfunction can’t be ignored. Firstly, it don’t care about ethics, they are just about getting the job done as quickly as possible. Secondly, in the pure bureaucracy, there is an ethic of fairness, transparency, accountability. However, the actual bureaucracies do not embody this ethic. Crozier’s (1964) mentioned that bureaucrats continue to indulge their own prejudices and preferences in their conduct.
Some scholars have pointed out that we are entering the post-bureaucratic society now. In my opinion, it cannot be seen like this. There are few identifications of post-bureaucratic organization in the literature. Even, Heckscher/Applegate (1994) admits that he can find no developed exemplars of it. In addition, it is a unwarranted generalization. When examples of what are deemed to be post-bureaucratic organizational practices are cited, they are unwarrantedly treated as evidence of an epoch.
Some epochalists regard local instances as examples of the supposedly widespread whilst others acknowledge that these practices are uncommon but see them as prognostic, as signs of an emerging future as “advanced examples” Moreover, All periodizations should be rooted in a disciplined theory of continuity and change which should identify how, when, and where powerful historical forces interact to generate the supposed change and its velocity (Green, 1995; Harris, 1998; Hill et al. 2000).
But in the epochalist literature explanation – if provided – of the supposed cause of radical change is shallowly limited to one or other force – assumed to be determining. More generically, the underlying philosophy of instrumental rationality and control remains firmly in the ascendant in post-bureaucracy. This means that the post- bureaucratic revolution is extremely unlikely to succeed.
