Bureaucratization

Conceptual Overview

Bureaucratization has had an interesting career. The term emerged first from the joining together of French word for an office—a bureau—with the Greek word for rule, making bureaucracy. Under Napoleon, France was seen as the master progenitor as it spread the Napoleonic Code everywhere that it conquered, thus bringing bureaucratization in its wake. However, by the 19th century, Germany provided the clearest examples of bureaucracy's success. The German state constructed by its first chancellor, Bismarck, was a model bureaucracy in both its armed forces and civil administration. The origins of the modern German state were innovations pioneered in Prussia, the heart of modern Germany. Weber realized that the creation of the modern state of Germany had only been possible because of the development of a disciplined state bureaucracy and standing army—inventions that became the envy of Europe. Not surprisingly, as modern industrial organizations emerged in Germany in the late years of the century, they incorporated some of the forms of rule whose success was everywhere around them.

Modern organizational authority is based on rationallegal precepts, which Weber identified as the heart of bureaucratic organizations. People obey orders rationally because they believe that the person giving the order is acting in accordance with a code of legal rules and regulations, as Albrow argued in 1970. Members of the organization obey its rules as general principles that can be applied to particular cases and that apply to those exercising authority as much as those who must obey the rules. People do not obey the rules because of traditional deference or submission to charismatic authority; they do not obey the person but the officeholder. Members of the organization “bracket” the personal characteristics of the officeholder and respond purely to the demands of office. Whether you like the officeholder or not is supposed to be unimportant. Police officers may be disagreeable personally, but they hold an office that enables them to do what they do, within the letter of the law. The rule of law is the technical basis of their ability to take appropriate action, in terms of the definitions laid down in law. Weber's view of bureaucracy was as an instrument or tool of unrivaled technical superiority. Bureaucracy was a rational machine.

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