Difference Between Human Relations Theory And Bureaucracy

There is a plethora of criticisms about the effectiveness of the Bureaucracy. Even during the 19th century, as Wilson writes, the Post Office “was an organization marred by inefficiency and corruption”. With an appointment standard such as the “spoils system”, where individuals or groups are granted high level positions based on political favors alone, corruption is almost a certainty. The political aspect of the Bureaucracy was prevalent in the military for over 100 years, as Wilson states “the size and deployment of the military establishment in this country was governed entirely by decisions made by political leaders on political grounds”. Political favors and factors plague our government, including the Bureaucracy. A by-product of these political favors and corruptions are stagnancy and mediocrity. An example of this, as

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

Behavioral Management Theory is the understanding and response of employee needs to enforce motivation. This theory guides management in a better understanding of the human aspect. It involves management to treat employees as important resources in the workforce. The goal is to raise productivity and to do this by motivating employees. Motivating employees can involve incentives like employee bonuses, promotions, and the collection and redeeming of points for rewards. As the management takes interest in employees, it makes them feel like an important part of the puzzle, and in turn motivates employees to work harder. Like in most cases, if the employees are satisfied and working conditions are good, productivity raises automatically. A theorist by the name of Mayo Hawthorne devised an experiment that allowed a group of telephone line workers to be separated and observed in a private room. The controlled group of employees increased greatly in productivity. This brought the human relations movement that involved management spending time, showing interest, and rewarding employees to increase productivity. Employees felt management was

Elton Mayo- is considered the pioneer of the human relations approach to improve levels of productivity and satisfaction. This approach was first highlighted by the improvements known as Hawthrone Experiments. The Hawthorne studies centered on how workers reacted to actions of management, how variations in physical working conditions affected output, and how social interactions among workers affected job performance (Milakovich and Gordon, 2013). A number of experiments were conducted on the workers to find out the impact of different situations on their efficiency. Mayo advocated for the understanding of personnel problems in the context of growth of science and technology. He wanted the management to understand the problems of workers and make efforts to compensation them. As such, the Mayo’s research established the human relations school of organization theory, which stressed the social and

In Bureaucracy, James Wilson examines government agencies in comparison to the private sector. The portion we read is centered around both the individual (operator) and the organization as a whole. The idea that bureaucracies are inefficient based solely on red tape is discredited with this piece. There is no simple solution to improving the bureaucracy. Finally, Wilson demonstrates that a great deal of variables and ideas contribute to bureaucratic inefficiency.

Bureaucrat is a dirty word to some people in modern society, so how can a bureaucracy be a good thing? Many Public Administration theorist, argue that bureaucracy is essential to the growth and expansion of the United States. Most of the criticism of the bureaucracy within the government is based on myth versus reality. Federal agencies play a critical and a valuable role within society and are indispensable to the operations of the federal government. Bureaucracy can be simply defined as the system in which decision are made by Public Administrators rather than elected officials (legislator) within the government. However, when the average citizen of just says the single word bureaucracy thoughts and images of evoked over how negative

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 was one of the most popular theories developed and is used in some modern organisations such as the NHS and the Police. Through the years bureaucracy has developed a bad reputation for de-humanizing jobs (Grey, 30) “In the ideal-type, people are no more than parts in a well-oiled machine –devoid of passion, prejudice and personality”, although some people prefer this structure (Handy, 22) “No one, it seems, approves of bureaucracy except, interestingly, lots of people in organisations who like to know where they stand.”

With the creation of new states and the intervention of government in everyday life of citizens necessitated the need for ideal-type of bureaucracy. Everywhere whether in developed or developing nations, bureaucratic structure is a common phenomenon.

Weber states that organizations regulations are formed by few people and this people are the boss, administration employee who tends to have representation powers (Roth and Wittich, 1968). Weber states that the state tends to use bureaucracy on its people in order to establish authority. Bureaucracy is present in various areas in the environment and once bureaucracy is produced then it becomes difficult to

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.

Mayo was one of the first to think about individual behavior and how it integrates with group processes. Mayo's human relations approach says; a happy worker is an efficient worker; that means if an organization can keep its workforce happy, it would bring more productivity and more profit because if a worker is happy what the organization provides. Elton Mayo for the first time brought out the importance of relationships between social factors and productivity. Before his studies, the productivity of the employees was considered to be a function only of physical conditions of work and money wages paid to them. Simon, on the other hand, was a further departure from the classical approach to Public Administration. Although Simon was noted to having some similar views to some of the theorists before him but according to Fry and Raadschelders (2014),"truly distinctive feature of Simons work lies in his preoccupation with decision making in the organization" (P281). His work known as "satisficing" was that Simon maintained that individuals do not seek to maximize their benefit from a particular course of action (Guru, 2009). Simon contended that individuals were limited in their ability to assess all information that would be needed in order to maximize their benefit. Bounded by cognitive limits. Hence people seek something which is good

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.

There are a number of management theories that have changed the management business environment in the twentieth century. The theories have assisted managers to come up with better ways of management and organization of people. Managers have been able to increase profits, reduce costs and maximize efficiency. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the contributions of scientific management and the human relations movement to the modern management. This essay will use Frederick Winslow Taylor’s theory on scientific management and Elton Mayo’s human relations theory. These two movements have been proven to increase productivity in the workplace (Mullins, 2005).

The studies failed to prove any positive correlations between workplace conditions and productivity. The results of the studies demonstrated that innate forces of human behavior may have a greater influence on organizations than do mechanistic incentive systems. The legacy of the Hawthorne studies and other organizational research efforts of that period began to emphasize the importance of individual and group interaction, humanistic management skills, and social relationships in the workplace.