Is Bureaucracy Good for Employees? Discuss

A bureaucracy is a way of administratively organizing large numbers of people who need to work

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

In his book, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies do and why they do it, James Q. Wilson’s main objective is to better define the behavior of governmental bureaucracy, believing traditional organizational and economic theory does not adequately explain their actions. Wilson believes that government agencies are doomed to be perceived as inefficient entities by the public. He gives examples of commonly held perceptions of bureaucracies and reveals how these are mostly misconceptions. He points to the environment of bureaucracy, where rules and procedures, dictate goals, along with context, constraints, values, and norms.

According to Morgan he describes how organizations “are designed like machines, and their employees are in essence expected to behave as if they were parts of the machine” (Morgan, 13). Organizations that are “designed and operated as if they were machines are … usually called bureaucracies” (Morgan, 13). One of the benefits of having a bureaucracy is that it allows employees to work on one key function of the organization. It can enhance the organization’s internal controls and safeguard its assets by making people responsible to depend on others in order to carry out a specific

What is a bureaucracy? Tolbert and Hall (2009) describe in the text, a large formal organization with the characteristics of having, a division of labor, a hierarchy of authority, a set of written rules, resources that are clearly separated from home and the organization, and group of members who are appointed according to qualifications (P. 22). These were the key elements Max Weber, a German scholar described for an ideal type of bureaucracy.

"To the extent that US bureaucracy succeeds, it is due not just to the competent work inside individual organization but the competent interactions among them.” (Goodsell 2008) This quote from Goodsell’s book sums up the book perfectly for me when it comes to the tasks that society puts on bureaucrats. Before reading Charles Goodsell’s, The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic, I did not appreciate the United States Government and what is accomplishes on a daily basis. Goodsell’s book examines how essential the United States’ public service institutions are, even when though they are often heavily criticized. Goodsell showcases the research he’s conducted and survey evidence that shows how that bureaucracy is effective in accomplishing tasks that are free of corruption and staffed with employees who are passionate about their work. He discusses criticism and misconceptions of the United States system of government and argues against that. Overall, Goodsell’s book has reinforced and fully convinced me that bureaucracy at all levels in the government is both effective and efficient. The thesis of the book is to describe the larger difference between bureaucracy’s reputation and its actual record. Goodsell discusses issues of bureaucracy, over expectations of bureaucracy, and why bureaucracy is so important. Common misconceptions

The Bureaucracy was created by the framers to guarantee limited and responsible government. The constitutional framework was designed to do this, but a lot of the framework isn’t even apart of our federal Bureaucracy today. This is because of the separation of powers that the Congress, The President, and the Judiciary branch has or is fighting for the total power of the administrative branch.

Bureaucracy refers to the system of government where most of the critical decisions regarding the operations of the government are undertaken by the state officials as opposed to the elected representatives. It is vital in enhancing the ways through which inclusivity is realized in the operations of the American government in the modern society.

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

The word “bureaucracy” has a negative connotation to many people. The fact is that our current system of government would not be able to survive without bureaucracies. The bureaucracy has become the “fourth branch” of the government, it has quasi-legislative and judicial powers and in it’s own field its authority is rarely challenged. The presence of these large, inefficient structures is necessary if the American people want to continue receiving the benefits that they expect.

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.”

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.

From the case study in the seminar introduces, one part of classical management theories is bureaucracy. It shows the system of rules and it is formal because every procedure and practice need to be followed. The bureaucratic organisations have the hierarchy of authority (structure) and they treat the employee in impersonal. Moreover, the fixed boundary which means the full-time tasks and every employee has the official duty. These three aspects illustrate that bureaucratic organisations are associated to the instrumental rationality. They are doing the things right (Knights&Willmott,2007). Besides Knights and Willmott had talked about this, Grey (2013) also said that bureaucracies are rational in one particular sense of the word that is the formal or instrumental rationality and this idea is means adopted to achieve the most efficient purpose that they minimise wastage and maximise production. As one important unit in Apple products is parts assembly, not in Silicon Valley but in Shenzhen, China. According to Chakrabortty (2013), this Foxconn plant has a huge number of student labour to make products. One worker performed one or two small tasks over and over again while standing for hours on end in a huge line turning out Apple products. They cannot have breaks whenever they are behind on the production targets. Obviously, workers and the organisation do not share the same goal, under Chinese law work-placements have to be directly related to a pupil

Abstract: The theory of bureaucracy was proposed and published by Marx Weber (1947). Although there are some studies on this perspective were discussed before him, those theories did not form as systematic theory. After Weber, the issue of bureaucracy becomes a hot topic in the field of social organization. Almost all well-known scholars such as Martin and Henri have published their views on it. Bureaucracy adapted as the traditional organizational model during industrial society, essentially, bureaucracy could exist rational. This essay firstly will review the principle of bureaucracy in organization based on organizational design perspective. Secondly, it will analyze the strengths and weakness of

The word Bureau means office and Kracy means usage. So, bureaucracy refers to a form of social organization which is managed by strict rules and regulation and which has a goal of achieving technical superiority over any social organization. But