BUREAUCRATIC ORGANISATION

Bureaucratic Organisation

Bureaucratic Organisation

Introduction

When Weber analyzed bureaucracies, he developed an ideal type model, which consisted of six essential features. These features described how bureaucracies function and develop. The features Weber identified are as such: specialization; hierarchy; written rules and regulations; impartiality; impersonality; recordkeeping. These features are essential to upholding the purpose of efficiency bureaucracies were created for.

Bureaucratic Organisation

Bureaucratic practices are those traditional aspects of HRM that firms use to manage human capital systematically by formalizing the ways they select employees, define jobs, establish expectations, evaluate performance, and compensate workers in support of the organization's goals. Specialization in a bureaucracy means that each status or office has a set of tasks and responsibilities. This way each office has to and will only handle their responsibility; there is a clear understanding of what they have to do and they stick to it so that they do not get caught up in doing another office's duty, making their job simple so that it gets done. The girth of the status pyramid decreases as the amount of power increases. There are more people allowed to handle the basic functions of the bureaucracies. The greater the responsibility or task, the less number of people are needed to handle it; in one or two person's hands lies the responsibility and ability to control the matter. This hierarchal approach makes getting things done quick and easy. In fewer words: “The buck stops here.” When people know exactly what they have to do, it makes it easier for them to do it. Ambiguity leads to uncertainty, miscommunication and misunderstanding which defeats the whole purpose of bureaucracy: efficiency. The written rules and regulations of a bureaucracy assure that such a scenario does not occur. In bureaucracies, people have been given training or are pre-qualified for the jobs they are given. People get their jobs because they are best qualified not because they know someone who can give it to them; there is no room for partiality. In a bureaucracy, there is no room for sympathy, emotional attachment and things of that nature. Impersonality is a key function to the efficiency of the bureaucracy because when feelings are involved, individuals lose sight of their role, violating the function of stringent adherence to written rules and regulations, de-specializing their job and making they partial. Record-keeping processes of a bureaucracy allow for greater amounts of information to be gathered and retained for future reference, use, referral, etc. In this way, better and more efficient, informed and appropriate decisions and actions can be taken. "Bureaucracy has almost become the equivalent of a four-letter word in business. Yet, perhaps without realizing it, modem-day managers owe a debt to Max Weber (1947) and his treatise on the benefits of formalization of rules, policies, and procedures." Even though bureaucracies are for purposes of efficiency, they are not always such; there are advantages and disadvantages. Besides its advantages as some of them have been mentioned above, the disadvantages of bureaucracies include ritualism, bloat and secrecy, preservation of ...