blog




  • Essay / Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy and its characteristics

    In traditional society, people generally do not adopt rational thinking. This can be stated because people do not think logically and apply any form of reason before performing a job/task. It has been observed that people usually do a particular thing in traditional society because it has always been done only in that way. So, thinking this way, people are usually reluctant to try anything new and see no improvement. Rational thinking as described by Weber is nothing other than modern society's growing concern with efficiency, calculability, dehumanization, and predictability (Whimster and Lash, 2014). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Weber describes that in modern society, people are more concerned with achieving results with as little effort as possible. Rationalization is also associated with the desire to predict their future and take action accordingly. A person who thinks rationally usually thinks logically and looks for a reason to complete an important task. Rational thinkers according to Weber are more concerned with determining statistics and make their decision based on numerical data (Niskanen, 2017). In other words, it can be clearly stated that rational thinkers are calm and calculating in nature and perform any action by efficiently calculating the pros and cons of their actions. Weber also stated that dehumanization is another major concern of rationality. This is because rational thinkers focus more on performance and therefore believe in adopting technologies as a substitute for labor. So, using this example, one can clearly understand that rational thinkers do not focus on feelings and emotions, but rather on achieving the desired result and improving the overall performance of the business. Based on the above discussion, it can be clearly stated that streamlining is recognized as a scientific study as well as a form of technological advancement developed with the aim of making everyone's work easier. The development of rationalization ended traditional society and led to the development of modern society. Furthermore, it has transformed society and led to the development of behaviors driven by practicality as well as reasons. This leads to an increase in people’s performance (Gal, 2015). The development of capitalism, which then contributed to the development of bureaucracies, slowly spread to all aspects of society. The development of bureaucracy leads to an improvement in the performance of business organization. It helps business organizations to accomplish a task efficiently. Bureaucracy was described by Weber using six characteristics, the first of which was specialization. Based on this characteristic, an organization divides its work into different sections and assigns them a particular task in which they have knowledge to achieve the best results. The second characteristic was the hierarchical design of the bureaucracy, organized according to high or low order. It usually includes a chain of command responsible for performing different tasks at the same time and maintaining the quality of the task. The third characteristic concerns the rules and regulations that are necessary to guide the actions of each employee. It develops a basic protocol to be followed by each employee which allows.