Characteristic Of Max Weber

Target Corporation has a very detailed job design that clarifies the responsibilities of employees in their various departments. They have a strong and effective job design in place, since it is a constantly growing company. All the departments at Target coexist very well with one another and this has allowed continued success over years. Not one department works independently. Instead, they are all connected, which allows them to assist one another in their duties and with the customers.

Max Weber was a German sociologist who first described the concept of bureaucracy, an ideal form of organizational structure. He defines bureaucratic administration as the exercise of control on the

He is in charge of four departments, each headed up by a senior manager. These departments are distribution, trade marketing, market research, and sales. The sales department, which has 1400 employees, is further divided into urban sales and rural sales, and there are 13 rural sales managers reporting to the head of rural sales. Each sales representative serves a territory that usually consists of both licensed and non-licensed establishments. They supply retailers with product information and storefront displays. They also offer discounts and promotions, where appropriate, in an attempt to win limited retailer shelf space. A partial organization chart is shown in Exhibit A.

A professional is a person who relates to a job that requires special education, training, or skill. Max Weber, in his theories believed that there was set qualifications that allowed a specific person to be regarded as a so called professional. When comparing 19th century baseball players to Weber’s ideals, this specific criterion which includes qualifications such as, full time occupation, clientele, promotions, power and doctrine, and vocational qualifications among many others help to decide whether these players can be considered professionals. According to Weber’s theory, baseball players mainly were not professionalized because they mainly lacked power, clientele, and salaries.

Working at Target, teamwork and collaboration is the expectation of their team members and leaders. For each work centers is joint directly or indirectly among other work centers. Additionally, Target believes in diversity and has a non-bias hiring process; hence, with team members come from different background and 100-250 employees, getting the right person to the right place and on the same page becomes difficult. As a strategy, Target divided the store into three sectors. The administration team, your sales floor team, your operational team; within these team there are sub teams and each of those sub team has a leaders and assistant leaders. By doing so, Target is able to drive the “divide and conquer” strategy.

Max Weber theorized that a "Bureaucracy" is a social system achieves which of the following?

In Weber’s article he claims that there are specific types of domination, which stress the importance of establishing “legitimacy” as a leader, within a group of people. He supports this opening claim in his introduction paragraph, in which he defines the authority of domination “classified” by the “kind of claim” demanded (2). He ultimately supports his by breaking down the types of legitimacy in domination in three distinct categories: Legal authority, traditional authority, and charismatic authority (3). He supports his argument through theoretical examples in which he assumes the reader has a background in. The assumptions include: knowledge of basic authoritative environments such as work setting or school that are applied to his

One of Targets biggest competitors is Wal-Mart and surprisingly they have a different type of organizational structure. “…our new structure will align three very successful operating divisions – Logistics, Real Estate and Store Operations under a unified leadership team. We will organize into three distinctive geographic business units (GBUs) – Walmart West, Walmart South and Walmart North”("Wal-Mart", 2014). Unlike Target, Wal-Marts stores and distribution centers are broken into three sectors not four. This is very surprising because Wal-Mart has over 4,000 stores in the United States and Target has only 1,797. Even though the mission of these two stores is extremely similar, providing a wide arrangement of quality products at reasonable prices, they are managed very differently.

The organization operates under a theory that maintains that "true excellence can be best achieved by focusing on areas of established strength and enhancing them, rather than concentrating only on repairing areas of weakness."3 The company offers job opportunities in every division; the retail stores, distribution centers, and corporate offices. Possible career opportunities in the retail stores include assets protection management, which works to implement programs designed to maximize safety, effectiveness, and efficiency; store leadership, which includes those who work to create a "fast-paced, energetic environment that delivers a consistent experience for both team members and guests"; and human resources, which works to support the mission of staffing, development, retention, and brand management. Corporate career opportunities include strategy; which works to consider guests' comments and suggestions and propose business strategies that will improve the business, and supply chain and logistics; which works to provide what the customer wants, when they want it, and at the lowest possible cost.1 The Target website has an entire section devoted to careers, and even a special section where college students and recent graduates can learn about what the organization has to offer in terms of employment.

Its three main characteristics are that it has a division of labour, hierarchy of authority, and an impartial and impersonal application of rules and policies (www.faculty.rsu.edu/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm). Thus, from that definition of a bureaucracy, one would conclude that McDonald's is a bureaucracy. The fact that it is bureaucracy is supported by the fact that each assigns workers to a specific job where each worker individually contributes to the overall success of the restaurant by doing his or her job. For example, McDonalds workers are assigned to work at the grill, register, or drive-through window. The restaurant also has ranks while on the job such as worker, shift manager, crew chief, and franchise owner. These ranks demonstrate the hierarchy of authority. Furthermore, the restaurant enforces the impartial and impersonal application of rules and policies.

Some have seriously misinterpreted Weber and have claimed that he liked bureaucracy, that he believed that bureaucracy was an "ideal" organization. Others have pronounced Weber "wrong" because bureaucracies do not live up to his list of "ideals". Others have even claimed that Weber "invented" bureaucratic organization. But Weber described bureaucracy as an “ideal type” in order to more accurately describes their growth in power and scope in the modern world. His studies of bureaucracy still form the core of organizational sociology.

Bureaucracy is ahierarchical organization which follows strict rules and regulations in achieving desired goals and which has tendency to gain supremacy over other organizations. Famous German sociologist theorized ideal- type of bureaucracy. Max Weber thought bureaucracy is the highest efficient organization which falls under legal rational authority. Soon after the theory came out, like other theory, ideal-type bureaucracy theory encountered severe criticisms.Alvin Gouldner, Robert Merton, Phillip Selznick, Peter Blau are some of them who criticized the ideal-type of bureaucracy.

While he highlights a lot of positives, he also saw a lot of issues within bureaucracy. Webers’ bureaucracy is a bottom line model that values calculable decision making over all else. Within this model are the people, or parts, that can be replaced if they cause a decrease in productivity. The issue becomes that the rationalized view of bureaucratic systems is unable to see individuals and respond to individual needs. There is a format and if someone does not fit in, or if they begin to fall behind, there is no understanding or support. His argument is that the bureaucratization of our world has made it depersonalized.

Based on this right, the bureaucracy designed by Weber has clear division of labor; thoroughly indicated hierarchical relationship and pointed out impersonal relationship (Crozier, 1964). In the course of history, there have been various more perfect organizational systems, therefore, bureaucratic theory was questioned and criticized by many scholar. However, there are still certain organizations that use bureaucracy theory to design the corporate structure despite many critical views.

This essay is a critical analysis of the theories given by Max Weber of leadership, religion and rationalization.