Bureaucracy-Whose idea was it? Bureaucracies have been around, in various forms, for many centuries (think Catholic Church . . . ). It was sociologist Max Weber who first understood the importance of the bureaucratic organization. According to Weber, who like many sociologists, was interested in the sweeping social changes taking place during the Industrial Revolution (opposed to anthropologists, who were more interested in archaic, traditional societies and culture), the bureaucracy was an organizational variant of a process he referred to as rationalization. We have them because they are efficient organizational means of dealing with increasing size and complexity, which characterized the growth of most societies from the 1800s on.

Weber talked about three sources of legitimate authority--charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. The first is charismatic authority--think of the cult leader, the Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Adolph Hitler, David Koresh, etc. These individuals (all men, for what it's worth ... ) commanded authority by their very personas. What often becomes difficult with authority based on a charismatic leader, however, is the problem of succession. Unless one can make the transition to some other form of legitimacy, successors aren't likely to possess the sort of charisma that commanded allegiance. Charismatic leaders can do great things--the 'benevolent dictator' comes to mind, although I can't think of any off hand. Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya began as a benevolent dictator, but his reign ended in corruption. At least the more notorious and well-known were psychopaths (Hitler, Joseph Stalin from Russia, Pol Pot from Cambodia, Idi Amin in Uganda, Jean Bedel Bokassa in the Central African Republic).

Traditional authority is, well, rooted in tradition. Another way of thinking about it is, 'this is the way it’s always been done.' This is often the rationale behind cultural explanations and justifications people give (some women's support of female circumcision fits this explanation). An example of traditional authority comes from the monarchy, the alleged 'divine right of kings' (i.e., a king's right to rule is straight from God). And how could you ask for a much better claim to authority and legitimacy than that?? Gerontocracies are also examples of traditional authority (e.g., the elders hold the highest positions, based on the belief that elders hold great wisdom and knowledge). The cliff-dwelling Dogon tribe of Central Mali was ruled by the eldest male, the Ogon, who lived in a stone throne, resolved disputes and made important decisions for the village. Traditional bureaucracies exist, and in fact Weber argued that the emergence of the rational-legal bureaucracy was an effort to root out some of the more severe problems associated with traditional authority--favoritism, nepotism, arbitrary rule, etc.

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Some traits of the rational-legal bureaucracy (we'll skip the rational-legal part from here on out):

• equal treatment of employees
  • sources of unequal treatment-nepotism, politics, individuals' personalities
• people are hired/retained because of their qualifications, skill, expertise
• the office belongs to the organization, not the individual (separation of office and officeholder)
  • traffic stops in 3rd world--often times public servants are underpaid, and their salaries late, so if you're driving on the highways in many countries and pulled over for a routine 'stop,' you'll likely be expected to pay some sort of bribe;
  • medieval tax collection; (if the king subcontracts this, he risks the subcontractor becoming too powerful, eventually even perhaps challenging his own authority)
• standards of work and output (attempts to measure these things as well)
• record keeping
• rules (serving organization's interests, binding workers and managers)

Three areas of particular importance are:

Hierarchical structure

• Accountability--it's important for knowing who is supposed to answer to whom, for instance
• Division of labor (based on expertise, training)--who's supposed to do what. This often leads to specialization
• Formal rules governing behavior, performance--keeping those pesky humans from bringing too much of their personal lives to work . . .
• Provides control over what workers do (grounds for termination, for instance)
• Allows for coordination of effort (who is supposed to work with who?)
• Hierarchical structures can tend to concentrate power at the top, also. But remember--looking at an organizational chart may not tell you a whole lot about how a bureaucracy functions in practice--only on paper.

Rewards

• Fixed salaries--not bribes, rewards should be relative to effort.
  • look at CEOs and stock options-CEOs of some of the fallen companies in the last year (e.g., Enron, WorldCom) were filing fraudulent reports about their companies' earnings, in order to keep stock values high (and investors buying based on false information), at least until they could sell off their own stock options at considerable gain;
  • There has been a great deal of fraudulent Medicare billing, for instance for services that were never rendered;
  • What if welfare employees were rewarded for reducing the rolls?
• In bureaucracies there is a distinction between office and officeholder, separation of property ownership (property belongs to the organization, the officeholder draws a salary)

Individual protections

Some level of security for workers:

• protection from termination, for instance
• tenure-willingness to invest in human capital for the organization (yes, sometimes people get tenure and become dead weight, but the benefits, says Perrow, outweigh the costs--tenure is an incentive for people to invest in learning new skills, and it offers protection when the required skills sets change, which for instance happend during the agricultural mechanization period in the 40s and 50s)
• against arbitrary use of power (e.g., unfounded termination, expulsion, etc.)
• career-oriented, with promotions (again, for companies investing in the long -term, this represents efficiencies. In companies like McDonald's, where employees job skills are so narrow, and they learn little over time, their value doesn't increase, they could be replaced with a day's worth of training and thus they are entirely expendable)
• obedience is to the office, not the person
• there are grievance procedures

EQUAL TREATMENT: These protections represent attempts to foster universalism over particularism- protection of employees, equity (in the name of efficiency, remember)

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How does universalism apply in social welfare? (look at the history of the 1960s, discretion used by agencies in denying welfare to blacks in the inner cities)

• Relationships with clients, eligibility;
• There is considerable variation from state-to-state (why would there be variation?)
• As Perrow sez, 'organizations are tools, the bureaucratic ideal assumes the uses of the organization are legitimate'. Yes, Weber spoke of efficiencies with bureaucracies, but he was well aware of the capacity for power to corrupt the potential efficiencies. Who are welfare agencies designed to protect? Here's one example ...
• As in anything, before we conclude that an outcome was unintended, or inefficient, or anything for that matter, we should examine possible ulterior motives of those making decisions.

Problems with bureaucracies

Humans are pesky critters-

• They (we) bring their personal lives into organizations
  • examples in the workplace-the water cooler, sending around emails, problems from home, phone calls, etc., work/other things to do on computer … pilfering supplies)
• in a bigger sense, offices can be appropriated-can become personal fiefdoms, so to speak--any examples from your own work histories?
• the informal structures-organizational charts only tell you so much about how organizations work (do you understand an organization if you see its chart? Why/not? Role of administrative/clerical personnel)
• PEOPLE ARE NOT ROBOTS-this has been a constant irritation for employers
  • F.W. Taylor and Taylorism-variation in worker productivity, worshipping at the altar of efficiency
  • He broke down workers' tasks, people's skills, essentially 'cracked their code', and put the value into management (cutting wages in the process), which then told unskilled workers what to do and supervised them while they did it.
• bureaucracies and change:
  • they're often unadaptive (weren't generally created to respond to changes)-
  • routine vs non-routine tasks (how does this work in welfare? Which do bureaucracies handle best and why?)
• Power: centralization? Hmmmm . . . the evidence is not clear on this. Sometimes bureaucracies and hierarchies actually depend on some independence in decision making--hierarchies don't necessarily imply concentrated power at the top (though that often happens, it isn't predestined by the structure of the organization)
• Uncertainty and rules. Actually, the organization with rules may be preferable. All organizations have rules, the ones that write them down have workers who better understand the expectations. Rules of the informal variety have to be learned the hard way, and often serve to discriminate against certain workers or classes of workers who aren't privy to the unwritten rules
• They're impersonal-yes, but that's part of the point, isn't it? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the impersonal nature of a bureaucracy?
• Organizational charts don't explain organizational behavior very well. We know the normative state of an organization--how things are supposed to work. However, rarely do they function that way on the ground. Weber recognized this, and considered the bureaucracy he was describing as the ideal type. In reality they may suffer from some dysfunction, inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, concentration of power, lack of accountability, etc. Weber would say these dysfunctions aren't always the result of the bureaucratic structure, but often are the result of various pressures or individuals not behaving as they 'should.' For instance, legal pressures in the welfare system are often great to prevent serious oversights that could lead to the death of an abused child. At the same time, budgets are strapped and caseworkers and managers may be grossly overburdened, occasionally leading to tragic outcomes. State offices may be under pressure to reduce budgets, and as a result may implement procedures, for instance requiring reauthorization, that may lead to individuals leaving the welfare rolls for whatever reasons (lack of awareness, lack of proper documentation, inability to put together the new application, changing eligibility standards, etc.). Caseworkers may be caught in the middle.

Keep in mind--Bureaucracies are TOOLS, often quite effective means of wielding organizational power, within and outside the organization. Even the best-intended bureaucracies can be used to serve narrow interests. Also, what does this mean with respect to social welfare? Is the prevailing model heavily bureaucratized? And who is it designed to serve, and how?

Charles Perrow. 1986. Complex Organizations (3rd edition). New York: McGraw-Hill.