The Six Elements Of Bureaucracy According To Max Weber

Political authority over the bureaucracy is not in one set of hands, but shared among several institutions

This allows for the bureaucracy to make laws through rule-making, which is delegation of authority. The bureaucracy delegates authority to the department or agency that will be responsible for its implementation. The bureaucracy in the United States is partly made up civil service agencies, that regardless of who has been elected to an office, the bureaucracy continues, despite the decisions made in the political process. Because of the framework of bureaucracy, it has been considered politically neutral.

The text describes a bureaucracy as a large, complex organization composed of appointed officials. The departments and agencies of the US government make up the federal bureaucracy. The federal bureaucracy has 15 federal cabinet departments with about 2 million full-time employees. (Wilson et al, 290)

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.

An example of a bureaucracy would be the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI has special agents of different origin like cyber crime, bank fraud, homicide, human and drug trafficking, in addition to forensic psychologists, psychiatrists and biologists. The agents with the most time in the bureau have higher positions, with director of FBI being the highest of this government agency. The director of the FBI has a massive amount of responsibility because he receives orders from the President of the U.S. and is chosen to address the press.

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.

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

Bureaucracy structures are mass producing factories that work on a set routine schedule and require strict rules which are implemented by several managers. These types of companies are a stable work environment and employees do the same thing every day. Any company that requires a uniform standard to operate and produces mass quantities of a product will use this type of structure. An example of this type of company would be Snap On.

Organizations are social entities that are goal directed, are designed as deliberately structured and coordinated activity systems, and are linked to the external environment (Kirst-Ashman, 2011). The four main parts of that definition are social entity, goal directed, deliberately structured, and link to external

Organizational structure is a system that consists of explicit and implicit institutional rules and policies designed to outline how various work roles and responsibilities are delegated, controlled and coordinated. Organizational structure also determines how information flows from level to level within the company (investopedia.com, 2017). If one level or department does not undertake its function accurately the entire business suffers, because all the departments interrelated to each other. There are generally four types of organizational structure:

An organisation is a defined and stratified entity composed of people, who are united by association (e.g. through employment) toward meeting a specific goal (Business Dictionary, 2017). The foregoing definition lends insight into the existence of diverse roles and responsibilities expected from members of an organisation, which roles interface with supervisory, subservient and inter-personal interactions.

The mechanistic structure is the traditional or classical design, common in many medium- and large-size organizations. Mechanistic organizations are somewhat rigid in that they consist of very clearly delineated jobs, have a well-defined hierarchical structure, and rely heavily on the formal chain of command for control. Bureaucratic organizations, with their emphasis on formalization, are the primary form of mechanistic structures. According to Max Weber, bureaucracy is a form of organization characterized by a rational, goal-directed hierarchy, impersonal decision making, formal controls, and subdivision into managerial positions and specialization of labor. Bureaucratic organizations are tall consisting of hierarchies with many levels of management. In a tall structure, people become relatively confined to their

An organization, put in simple terms is a group or assembly of people working alongside one another to achieve common goal or objective through a division of labor and or responsibilities. Business organizations in free market economies are formed to provide services or deliver goods to ultimate consumers for profit. Generally speaking, people form an organization because it provides a means of using individual strengths within a group to achieve more than can be accomplished by the aggregate efforts of group members working individually.

Therefore, when we look at a broader sense, bureaucracy goes beyond division of labor, although it is very important and necessary for the existence of the bureaucratic system. It involves accurate and detailed definitions of the duties and responsibilities of each person or office. Administrative regulations help in determining the areas of responsibility and control the overall allocation of resources that are distributed according to the need and requirement of different departments of an

Different authors has defined the Organization in different ways, according to Keith Davis, “Organization may be defined as a group of individuals, large of small, that is cooperating under the direction of executive leadership in the accomplishment of the certain common object.” (Publish your articles, 2015)