Rationalization

Weber on Rationalization

Underlying the rationalization thesis is a set of distinctions Weber drew between different orientations to the world, forms of social action, and ways of conducting our lives.

At the level of the individual, action that is not simply habitual (traditional action) or emotional (affective action), can be governed either by considerations of value (or absolute ends) or by a strict calculation of ends and means. This is the famous distinction between Wertrationalität (value rationality) and Zweckrationalität (instrumental rationality). In the realm of ethics, the corresponding distinction is between an ethics of conviction (Gesinnungsethik), in which the actor is concerned with doing right in terms of some absolute standard with little regard for the consequences of his or her moral choices, and an ethic of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik), in which the actor is concerned with the actual outcomes of his or her decisions and actions. The agents who embody these orientations have a divergent orientation to the [Page 1196]world (Gesinnung) and are quite different types of subjects with distinct ways of conducting their lives (Lebensführung). In brief, they occupy quite different socially constructed worlds.

At the level of social institutions, instrumental rationality can be found, in premodern contexts, within certain religious orders and in military drill and, in a modern context, in the bureaucratic state governed by the rule of law and in the capitalist firm. Weber traces the origins of modern forms of rationality and rational discipline to premodern—almost “total”—institutions (the cloister and the army): “Army discipline is the mother's knee of discipline as such. The second great educator in discipline is the large economic enterprise” (Weber 1922/1972, 686). The institutions that embody instrumental rationality have a mechanical quality and are technically superior—for example, in terms of efficiency—to institutions organized along other lines: “The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization was from the start its purely technical superiority over all other forms” (561). Weber goes on to identify the technical basis for the superiority of professional bureaucratic administration, namely, the optimization of “speed, clarity, exact record keeping, continuity, discretion, uniformity, strict subordination, savings on friction and on material and personnel costs” (561–562).

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