Machine Bureaucracy

Conceptual Overview

The concept of a machine bureaucracy was described by Henry Mintzberg in relation to a specific type of organizational structural configuration. Other structural configurations include the simple configuration, the professional bureaucracy, the divisionalized form, and the adhocracy.

The machine bureaucracy is characterized by the routinization of work, with often simple routine repetitive tasks. This structure has the features of a bureaucratic organization first described by Max Weber, including standardized responsibilities, communication channels, and work rules and a well-defined hierarchy of authority. This structure has also been discussed by Gareth Morgan using the image of an organization as a machine having a mechanistic structure. Historically such an organization form was seen to develop with the rise of the factory system and the industrial revolution. Frederick Taylor's principles of management as well as many of the principles of the early classical management scholars reflected this mechanistic approach to structuring the organization.

Critical Commentary

As Henry Mintzberg, Gareth Morgan, and others note, no structure has evoked more heated debate than the machine bureaucracy. While some authors have seen the machine bureaucracy to be the embodiment of rationality, others have focused on the consequences of this form of organization for the experience of work and the ability of the organization to be flexible and innovative.

Gareth Morgan, for example, argues that mechanistic approaches to organization work well only under conditions where machines work well: when there is a straightforward task to perform, when the environment is stable enough to ensure that the products produced will be the appropriate ones, when one wishes to produce exactly the same product time and again, when precision is at a premium, and when the human “machine” parts are compliant and behave as they are designed to do. McDonald's is often used as an example of an organization that has been very successful using the mechanistic model. This approach to organization also led to George Ritzer's critique of the influence of this thinking in wider aspects of social life in his thesis about the McDonaldization of society.

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