BUREAUCRACY AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Bureaucracy and Public Administration

Bureaucracy and Public Administration

Introduction

Abureaucracy is a type of organisational structure that is found in numerous large-scale organisations. It seems in both public and personal organisations and is a structure that still lives in the majority of industrial organisations in the world, despite being round since the 18th century. perfectly bureaucracy is characterised by hierarchical authority relatives, characterised spheres of competence subject to impersonal rules, recruitment by competence, and repaired salaries. The major aims of a bureaucracy are to be rational, effective, and professional. German sociologist, Max Weber was the most significant scholar of bureaucracy, and he recounted bureaucracy as mechanically superior to all other types of organization.

Analysis

The key features of intergovernmental relations in contemporary American politics are the steadily increasing intergovernmental aid and joint efforts that became more important components of public policy making. Thus, for example, national government grants for rural highway construction and maintenance became more numerous; grants for urban renewal became more widespread; and direct aid to urban governments for airport construction and other transportation purposes also appeared on the scene (pg. 85.) After the Great Depression, federally funded state and local social welfare, along with farm supports and public assistance, bureaucracies, gradually replaced voluntary sources for aiding those in need. This expansion of the national government increased in the 1940's through the 1950's and into the 1960's with programs such as President Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society.

Specialisation endows each employee to discover more about his or her focused trade, and thus enables them to make more, better and cheaper. The way to boost productivity is to focus purposes into very resolute functions, and inside those functions to focus tasks. Obviously, in a workshop with about 20 workers, that should not be too hard. But the instant the dimensions of the output unit increases, so does the need to find some organisational system which can contend with the diversity and number of people involved. In essence, that is precisely what Weberian bureaucracy does. Weber suggested specialization of labour to huge constructing flats at the time of developed revolution in America, who at that time were opposite difficulties of high costs and reduced productivity. Dividing the work of the machine employees into easier repetitive-tasks, they became effective and the productivity rose massively.

Rules are the general-purpose device of bureaucracies to set roles and co-ordinate them. Rules decrease variability and set patterns of behaviour. They come in all forms and dimensions: principles, methods, best practices and protocols. Although most persons resent directions as a limitation of their one-by-one freedom, they furthermore need them as behavioural reference points in an coordinated environment. Employees understand precisely what is expected from them, so that they present efficiently when accomplishing the task. Rules furthermore double-check dependable and predictable behaviour of the task-achiever.

In a bureaucracy, roles and directions are regulated by a centralised chain of order, the reason of which is admittedly to make directions and decisions. Each person in the hierarchy reports to one and ...