BOLA: Business Systems - The Bureaucratic Model

Business Systems - The Bureaucratic Model

Max Weber (1864-1920) termed this organisational form a "rational-legal system" - its structure and processes expressly designed to achieve certain goals. The bureaucracy is rationally designed for optimum functional performance and every part (depts, levels, posts) contributes to the whole (unity of purpose). The bureaucracy is legal. Authority is exercised via rule and procedural systems & the offices people occupy. Max Weber

Organisational members and clients accept (conform to) its authority because the rules are defined and administered fairly. Rights & privileges protect individuals from organisational (officer) injustice - equity prevails regardless of "who you are". Rules include policies and standard procedures for implementing these. They are solutions to past problems demanding known responses (we avoid reinventing the wheel). Rules guide behaviour ensuring consistency at every level. Nine out of ten problems encountered are covered by regular procedures. This is a risk minimising, consistent apparatus.

Bureaucracy and Inefficiency.

Many feel that bureaucracy is synonymous with inefficiency, an emphasis on red-tape and excessive writing and recording - especially public administration. However lets be very careful about this. The claims are sweeping and perjorative. They fail to recognise the great capacity of the bureaucratic form to be elegant, to work slickly, to empower people and let them operate in coordinated ways. The rational legal systems embodies values which people respect. The form offers occuptational opportunities and challenges to people. The rules and regulations protect the members of the organsiation and its external clients. It is founded on principles of honesty and integrity, of regular, predictable behaviour and the application of competent, well rehearse action by members. Clients come to expect this conformity.

Yet of course conformity is not always valued particularly where it may block abd limit the capacity for parts of the organisation to respond quickly to events that have not been programmed into the organisations systems of policies, procedures and rules. The classical picture of the very able bureaucrat is that where they say:

"I am awfully sorry. I would love to help but the rules you know ...... "

Writers of popular literature from Dickens (e.g. Little Dorritt and the "Circumlocution Office") to Kafka (The Trail) and Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast) build intricate mazes of bureaucratic splendour - where bureaucrats block and conspire. Bureaucracies do not get a good press. They are the meat and veg. of popular writers, writers who have particular leanings politically and whose creatively is based on imagining, colouring, emphasising, shaping and commenting on all they see around them.

Yet the contribution of the bureaucratic form to human productive endeavour is enormous and still is. Simply consider the bureaucratic system of the Inland Revenue Service - which basically works - give or take a few, mind-bogglingly complex forms that have to be filled in.

For Weber - the organisation is "neutral" (a big, big assumption and one to be challenged). It is presented as a technically useful model of the most logically efficient form of structure possible.

"Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of files, continuity, unit, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs - these are raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration".

Though metaphorically a smooth machine its rules and set procedures can be inflexible instruments of administration - experience of the past may not be in-tune with present conditions. Some rules cannot be readily adapted to suit individual needs and thgey can become barriers behind which the vulnerable administrator to hide. Bureaucratic alienation is reinforced by conformations with "face-less administrators"

A tension occurs in organisational design between preserving control and encouraging flexibility & freedom of expression. Bureaucracy favours the former. Cries of "bureaucratic inefficiency" marks frustration of taxpayers, drivers, holiday makers, radical activists, people from other departments - who feel their personal domain has been infringed. Bureaucracy today is attacked for its inability to innovate, aspects of its alienating and demotivating effect on employees, and the dependen "unhealthy" relationships some feel it creates (rather than self- help).

Bureaucratic culture rewards safe, conformist attitudes - constrained, riskfree work is good. Non-conformist, creative and outward-looking, opportunistic approaches to management are suspect. The bureaucratic model by definition embodies depersonalisation. Bureacrats become more absorbed with maintaining the official form (the means). They lose sight of what they are supposed to achieve. Smooth, efficient running removes hassle for officers but may be effective (as valued by clients)?

Delegation and the Bureaucratic Form

Bureaucratic structures emphasise specialisation between jobs and departments, reliance on formal procedures and paperwork, extended managerial reporting structures and clearly marked status definitions. Job demarcation is an informal, interpersonal response by individuals and groups which may be at odds with the firm's objectives. Demarcation may be supported by trades union preferences. It is manifested also in officer rivalries and empire-building. If the firm becomes large & complex it bears formal & informal overheads of possible inefficiency.

Bureaucracies employ a system of delegation down these hierarchies. Employees use discretion only within delegated limits. Job roles are defined formally (often in writing) by profiles of task responsibility and /her authority - scope of discretion to act. An organistional principle is that job responsibilities require equivalent authority to carry these out. But authority comprises:-

formal (job) authority - others know your responsibilities and their reporting relationships
personal (interpersonal) authority - secure others co- operation
resource authority (hours, staff, budget, rewards) for the task
expertise authority: having the skills, knowledge and experienceto carry out the responsibilities.
The authority of language and hetoric which may be difficult to argue against as all seems so plausible.

Though posts are hierarchical with successive steps embracing all those beneath it - problems of role ambiguity, conflict & overload frequently occur. Delegation is a complex process reliant on managers' ability to communicate well with subordinates and obtain common perception of jobÊrequirements (so too with colleagues with whom the post interfaces).

Coping with Contingencies.

Within Weber's model, rules and procedures aim to anticipate every possible contingency. Top management "know" that lower level staff are acting in controlled ways. This control is underpinned by training, briefing and observation/guidance by the superior. Loyalty and cooperation is expected. Officers should carry out their duties to the letter - without overstepping their role and conflicting with others duties. This assumes a perfect communication and cooperation - formally and interpersonally.

Of course where the person in terms of aptitude, skill and motivation is cheesed off or feels rivalry towards others or feels like being bloody-minded - problems arise. Fitting the job to the person and the person to the job is a key task for the personnel management of bureaucracy.

For officers, there clear separation between personal and business affairs.

"When I am at work, I do my job without personal feelings/biases entering into it!"

This is bolstered by contract & technical qualifications (techno-meritocracy). Instructions are obeyed because appointment assumes competence to issue such commands. A sign of developing bureaucracy is the growth of professional managers and more specialist/departmental experts. Manager-experts maintain the fabric of the existing firm and develop new responses (policies and practices) to external and internal events/conditions.

Information, Records and Decision-support.

The "bureau" keeps records and files. System rationality demands that information is written down. The organisation can reference and compare past decisions to ensure consistency. Records and structure make the organisation concrete. It will continue even though the people who run it change. Policies, procedures, minutes, reports, records show it operating dynamically. The bureaucratic model implies a programmed organisation. Procedures and rules are algorithmic ie routinised solutions to known, common problems ie like computer programs. Records, policies and procedures provide a knowledge-base minimising risk and maximising consistency in decision-making..