Max Weber Bureaucratic & Management

Supervised by lecturer: Araz Majeed

Prepared by: Jegir M. Ali Ali A. Obaid

Max WeberMax Weber (1864-1920) (1864-1920)

Bureaucratic &

Management

Biographical Details 1864: born to upper middle class Protestant German family; autocratic politician

father and devout, shy, Calvinist mother 1882: goes to college and joins father’s fraternity: drinks, brawls, gets hugely fat,

acquires dueling scar 1893: marries cousin, Marianne 1894: becomes college professor 1897-1902: struck by paralyzing nervous breakdown after father’s death; unable to

work 1904-05: writes The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism after visit to U.S. 1910: founds German Sociological Association 1914: supports German involvement in World War I as legitimate defense against

Russia and struggle for “honor” 1918: returns to teaching after 20 years, begins Economy and Society, seems to

finally recover from mental trauma and enjoy life 1919: politically active with coalition of center-left parties 1920: dies of pneumonia

Bureaucratic Management Theory

Weber's theory of bureaucratic management also has two essential elements. First, it entails structuring an organization into a hierarchy. Secondly, the organization and its members are governed by clearly defined rational-legal decision-making rules. Each element helps an organization to achieve its goals.

An organizational hierarchy is the arrangement of the organization by level of authority in reference to the levels above and below it. For example, a vice-president of marketing is below the company's president, at the same level as the company's vice president of sales, and above the supervisor of the company's social media department. Each level answers to the level above it, with the ultimate leader of the organization at the top.

The easiest way to understand the term rational-legal decision-making rules is to think of it as a set of explicit and objective policies and procedures that governs how an organization functions. Examples of rational-legal decision-making rules include human resources rules and policies or the regulations governing who is entitled to unemployment insurance.

What Is a Bureaucratic Organization?

A bureaucratic organization is a form of management that has a pyramidal command structure. The bureaucratic organization is very organized with a high degree of formality in the way it operates. Organizational charts generally exist for every department, and decisions are made through an organized process. A strict command and control structure is present at all times. Bureaucracies are meant to be orderly, fair and highly efficient.

Bureaucratic organizational structures have many layers of management, cascading down from senior executives to regional managers to departmental managers - all the way down to shift supervisors who work alongside frontline employees. So, authority is centered at the top, and information generally flows from the top down. For example, a senior executive may implement a new policy stating that employees must have all overtime approved by management before actually working the overtime. The new policy will go from the desk of the senior executive all the way down to the frontline employees.

The Inevitability of History

Denies predictable “laws” of historical development

Capitalism arose from series of accidents, including free labor force, industrialization, rationalized accounting, codified law and ownership, and “spirit of capitalism”

Marx and Weber “silent dialogue” with Marx “rounding out” Marx’s views on capitalism (transformative impact of

Puritanism and cultural values) Agreements:

– 1. Structural factors giving rise to modern society– 2. Mapping connections between factors influencing individual action –

“The social order is of course conditioned by the economic order to a high degree, and in turn reacts upon it.”

– 3. Structural limitations on individual actions (importance of class, alienation and “iron cage”)

Key disagreements: – 1. The nature of science– 2. The inevitability of history– 3. Economic determinism

Economic Determinism

Refutes Marxist determinism:– Protestant Ethic: importance of religious ideas

in shaping behavior– Economy and Society: systems of domination

maintained because they are viewed as legitimate, overwhelming class divisions

Ideal Types

A definition of an institution or type of society that enumerates key or essential features of the phenomenon

May not match perfectly with any real, concrete example

Weber’s Ideal Type Analysis of Domination

1. Charismatic Domination – based on force of personality of inspirational leaders

– Emerges in times of crisis when old values fail– unstable over long periods--problem of routinization (succession and

day to day operations)– Examples: Hitler, Gandhi

2. Traditional Domination – legitimacy claimed and believed in by virtue of the sanctity of ancient custom that cannot be challenged by reason

3. Rational-Legal Domination – by statute and legal norms – procedure– Seen in modern bureaucracies and in system of political parties– Separation of personal and legal affairs– High degree of specialization– Uniformly applied rules

Ideal Types of Social Stratification

1. Class 2. Status Group 3. Party

Class

Persons who have a common life chances represented by economic interests

Statistical aggregates – not communities – based on market situation

Marx (2 classes) vs. Weber (more differentiated)

Communal Action and Class Possibilities of group formation and unified political action

– Rare, since they usually fail to recognize common interest– Happens under certain cultural conditions:

• 1. Large numbers perceive themselves in same class situation• 2. Ecologically concentrated (i.e. in urban areas)• 3. Clearly understood goals articulated by an intelligentsia• 4. Clearly identified opponents• 5. Naked, transparent exercise of class power

“Communalization” = “feeling of the actors that they belong together.” “Societal Action” = “rationally motivated adjustment of interests” Examples

– Russia, Nicaragua, Oaxaca Misdirected Class Struggle (examples?)

Status Group

Persons who share “a specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honor”

Subjective rather than Objective Expressed and reinforced through lifestyle rather than market

situation or economic behavior Lifestyle and taste reinforcing status (Bourdieu) Emergence of Global Status Groups (Appadurai) Rests on distance and exclusiveness

– Limiting of social interaction, marriage partners, social conventions and activities, organizations and clubs, and “privileged modes of acquisition” (such as property or occupations)

Status vs. Class Consumption More important in times of

stability Importance of fashion/lifestyle (“all

‘stylization’ of life either originates in status groups or is at least conserved by them”)

Subjective Position Reaction against “pretensions of purely

economic acquisition” (new money)– James Bond

Ethnicity (horizontal) and Caste (vertical)

Dignity in this world (high) vs. next world (low)

Production Becomes particularly

important in times of instability/rapid change

Objective economic position

Not necessarily communalized

Ethnicity, Caste, Race

Perception, not reality (they “believe in blood relationship and exclude exogamous marriage and social intercourse”)

Ethnicity: horizontal (each allowed to believe in superior honor)

Caste (vertical) includes race (subjective, not biological)

Pariah peoples

Party

Oriented around a specific goal (can be a “cause” or personal power)

Related to, but separate from class and status as three distinct stratification systems

Rationalization From use of money and credit in free markets to mediate transactions

and social relationships, and from unintentional changes in religion Formal rationality: means-to-ends calculation (distinct from substantive

rationality) Rise of bureaucratic rationalized state Replaces tradition, patronage, and other ways of regulating markets Reinforced and stimulated by random historical events and cultural

factors (religion) Rationalized economic system and state continually reinforce each

other; creating a monolith that cannot be opposed “disenchantment” of social world leads to “iron cage” of bureaucracy,

where social life is calculable, rational, efficient, and dull – no liberating utopia should be expected from socialism or capitalism

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

1. Goodness of Work: Work valued as an end in itself 2. Trade and profit taken as indicators of personal virtue 3. Methodically organized life governed by reason valued not only as

means to economic success, but as proper and righteous state of being 4. Delayed Gratification: Immediate happiness should be forgone in

favor of future satisfaction (avoidance of spontaneous enjoyment and hedonism)

Taken together, this “spirit” of capitalism one of 7 factors that led to rise of rationalized capitalist economies in West