Bureaucracy

Conceptual Overview

Predating Weber, the German philosopher Hegel conceived the bureaucracy of public administration as a bridge between the state and civil society. For Hegel, [Page 110]civil society was achieved through the state acting as a mediator between the interests of various social entities, such as professions and corporations. The bureaucracy was regarded as the medium through which these particular interests were translated into general interests that benefited the society at large. In this sense, bureaucracy, as a form of organization, enables governments and enterprises to transcend the limits associated with direct control by powerful individuals whether these individuals be paternalistic owners or charismatic persons.

Weber's theory of bureaucracy subsumed differing forms of organization, such as the state, political parties, the church or sect, and the firm. For him the defining characteristic of any organization was the presence of leader and an administrative staff, with these persons being ordered into specific types of social identities and, subsequently, relationships. In simple terms, for Weber, the organization process should aim to let people know who they are, what they are, and how they are supposed to relate when working in an organization. The who might be a job title, the what might be a job role, and the how people are supposed to relate refers to the rules of order that governed action; these rules of order are central to the facilitation of rational authoritarian governance in a bureaucratic organization.

In regard to authority, Weber stipulated that the administrative staff of an organization had a dual relationship in regard to the organization's rule of order. On the one hand, the behavior of the administrative staff is regulated by these rules; on the other hand, as the ruling body (the body sanctioned with authority), it is the task of this staff to see that other members adhere to the rules of the organization. He adds that members of the organization will ordinarily obey the organization's rules because they come to accept the rules as being representative of a legitimate order governing the organization. Weber referred to this perceived order as a structure of dominancy. It is important to emphasize the word perceived because, as Weber noted, the legitimacy of the order associated with this structure of dominancy is perceived and not subject to an external thing to which an organization member reacts. In short, the perception is rule-based, or in regard to an idea of how things “ought” to be and not necessarily how they are in the empirical world—Weber refers to this form of authority as rational legal authority.

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