Characteristic of Bureaucratic Organizations

The aim of writing this essay is to compare and critique the dominance of different kinds of organizations and focus on why people choose bureaucratic options and how the decision making of the organization effectively changes the culture within the organization. Currently, in public discourse, especially in the political terms, the bureaucracy is used to relate the disapproval or expressing contempt of negative connotations. When any organization is described as bureaucratic, it is presumed that the organization may have many hierarchal levels with a complicated structure which act according to rules, which are inflexible using different folders, forms, and may require the meeting with a professional in order to seek advice to express the agreement towards the issue. The clients of contemporary bureaucracies in the perspective of individuals contribute to delay in problem solving which requires consuming time and energy, especially nervous and physical energy. However, it is described as a way of handling large employees and has been appearing during the ancient past, especially in the middle ages, managing rich and diverse employees that have built the centralized organization to handle the existing employees.

It has been studied by the Peter Block that the individuals are impacted by both the practices and norms of the organization and values and set of belief the individual bring to the job. It is prominent for the individual to understand the levels and nature of the organization and the organizational politics. There are currently 4 elements that comprise of the contrast between the organization and individual, the self interest of the individual, the approach used by the individual in support of the activities, and the interdependence or basic autonomy that each cycle fosters. All these elements help in creating a self reinforcing cycle that outcomes in either a bureaucratic way of operation or entrepreneurial way of operation.

The Bureaucratic and Entrepreneurial Cycle as described by Peter Block is as follows:

 (Block, 2018

In the perception of Max Weber, the ideal type of bureaucracy provides the analytical approach in explaining the phenomenon of bureaucracy. The German sociologist comprehends that the Bureaucracy is a smooth running and efficient apparatus in the organization. Max Weber also argues that there are different kinds of power in the bureaucracy, which appears together with the monetary terms or cash economy (Armstrong, 2010).

There are generally three types of authorities in bureaucracy known as rational legal, traditional, and charismatic. The legal authority in the bureaucracy provides clearly defined and identified rules of the western society, which cannot practice the administrative functions and use only one type of bureaucratic levels. The charismatic authority provides original sacred leader while the traditional authority is non-logical and traditional in nature, which provides justification through faith in the belief, traditions, and the sacredness of customs. It has also been argued by the Max Weber that the extension of the Bureaucracy in the modern world is unavoidable and the only way to adapt the requirements of the administration of any organization is the bureaucratic authority. The identification of the Bureaucracy is unavoidable in the authority of the bureaucracy through the already existing distinctive history. Weber has described the ideal type of Bureaucracy which associates the characteristics of various powers of administration in an abstract form that generally include the impersonal, universal, and abstract set of rules which are derived from the regulations made under the laws. The power is to formulate the laws and rules and the organization and management are developed on the basis of documents which are in a written format and govern all the rules of all officials (Bach, 2014). 

Pros and Cons of Bureaucracy in Organization

The conventional discussions of Bureaucracy in the theory of organization suggest that the Bureaucracy in an organization is characterized by different common processes which include the specialization and differentiation of increased roles within the organization. The Bureaucratization of the practices or activities can be adopted by the procedures and operating standards through the emergence of specialized rules which are developed as per administration and coordination and the emergence of tracking within the hierarchy of the organization.

The comprehension of the Bureaucracy defines that Bureaucracy helps in shaping the entrepreneurship, which needs explaining how the Bureaucracy helps in working conditions which influence the different opportunities, the perception of the entrepreneur, as well as the desire of the employees to hypothesis the organizational and financial responsibility of launching a Startup. The Bureaucracy may also influence the mental dispositions and attitude of their workers in different ways that make them avoid entering into the entrepreneurship. The Bureaucracy also limits the growth and development of the skills of the workers which are required for successful entrepreneurship and may lower the opportunities as per the expected value. Also, the level of bureaucratization of the employees may help in shaping the exploits of workers to entrepreneurial activities, exercise, and opportunities. The Bureaucracy also deals with the internal routes and job stability of advancement which helps to increase the opportunity to build a startup while considering the cost of leaving paid employment (Wong, Chan , & Chiang , 2004).

Bureaucratic management may be delineated as a system of the firm which is primarily based on the specific defined roles and hierarchical levels so as to maintain effectiveness and efficiency. Max Weber exaggerates the bureaucratic management theory with the scientific management theory which mainly focuses on establishing strong lines of authority and control and dividing organizations into hierarchies. Weber also suggested that the firms create comprehensive and detailed procedures with standard operating for all routine tasks. In today’s organizations, the bureaucratic theory is still applicable which can be noticed and observed in organizations such as the Army, Police services, National foods, Olivine, etc.

It has also been studied that the QS system in particular and the quality management systems, in general, are nearly the ideal bureaucratic organizations. That is, the efficiency of the employees of bureaucratic systems brings somewhat mixed result. There are positive factors of bureaucracies for generating better quality. But on the other hand, the undesired standardization and the loss of flexibility stresses the critiques in the management of organizations. That is, some of the organization face obstacles to implement the bureaucratization in order to maintain the goals of quality. There are also the differences between enabling and coercive and bureaucracies.

Bureaucracy is also defined as a particular type of structure of administration, which exist as a specialized administrative staff and which can be created through rational legal authority. The bureaucracy also means the rule of office higher authorities or by officials. The job specialization is considered as the first feature of bureaucratic management theory in which the different jobs are classified into well defined routine and simple tasks (Jain, 2006). The principle of job specialization is best utilized by the organization name Olivine in which the task or specialization of one employee is no actually known by the other employee with different specializations. This job specialization feature also provides many benefits to the organizations as it helps in producing repetitive and efficient work. However, there are also some negative outcomes of the idea of job specialization to both the organization as well as an individual employee as a whole. The job specialization feature in the organization prevents the employee of one skill to oversee the problem which may occur in another specialization and prevent them to care about the problems which are actually not in the domain of skills and knowledge. That is, the job specialization increased the flexibility by the employees, inhibits rotation and reduces overall productivity. The hierarchy of authority is the other feature of bureaucracy. This feature of bureaucracy generally applies to the police and army where there is a requirement of commands in the hierarchy, where each level of the hierarchy is subject to control by the higher levels or level above it. In the hierarchy of authority feature, the job holders may not have the rights to command the higher level and each position has their own rights depending on which the hierarchy exists. Each level in the hierarchy of authority is specifically described with the responsibilities of each employee at each level, but within their own competence hemisphere. This feature of the bureaucracy best defines the role of the employees and defines the employees who are in command as per the hierarchy of authority. However, there are also negative points associated with the hierarchy of command. This includes the absence of employees in the decision making process, which will make the errors hidden in the organization and more time will be taken by the organization to implement any change program in the organization. Thus, it can be scrutinized that although bureaucracy has several negative consequences, the bureaucracy is still applicable in today’s organizations (Theuvsen, 2004).

The other features of the Bureaucracy include the carrier and the employment. The carrier and the employment are best practices in the organizations such as Zesa where all the employees are promoted and selected on the basis of their skills, knowledge and competencies and the technical qualifications. On the basis of the aforementioned characteristics, the employees are offered a full time career. This feature has also some disadvantages, despite numerous advantages. The disadvantages include the restriction to the employee to take a break from the organization and from his or her job. The drawback of the career and the employment feature to the organization is that the employees are promoted to their level of incompetence throughout the company.

The feature of bureaucracy is the formal written record. This feature is also practiced by most organizations such as National Foods, College, Olivine, etc. The decisions and acts of all the employees are saved in records keeping files and writing, which provide the organization with the continuity over time and memory. It has also been argued by various scholars and proponents that a formal written records are used to gather all the information and document all actions, decisions, procedures, regulations, rules, etc. which are specifically stored with consistency and accountability taken by the members of the organization. The examples of formal written records are procedure and policy manual. The benefits of formal written records are, formal written records help in managing the history of the tasks accomplished in the written format that is specifically not written for the individual employee and does not depend on individual memory. The drawbacks of formal written records are that recording incidentimpedes irresponsibleness, adaptability, and flexibility (Chipea & Banciu, 2013).

The other feature of the bureaucracy is the procedures and rules among the features of bureaucracy. The principle of bureaucracy is generally applicable to almost all modern day firms as, without the procedures and rules, the firm cannot address all the functions and all the resources of the organization are subject to procedures ad rules to ensure predictable behavior and ensure reliability. 

It has also been argued by many proponents that regulations and rules provided by the management hold the set of procedures and operations that help in maintaining the consistency in the practices of both management and organization. For example, one of the employees of the organization is sick and is unable to work for the day. It is important for him to inform the manager, failing to do so will lead to the termination of his services That is, the employees are made well aware of the final results of neglecting the procedures in the organization. However, there are also the drawbacks associated with these principles as it introduces stifles in the creativity and innovation and leads to delays. That is, the rules describe the acceptable level of performance (Meier & Krause, 2011).

Last but not the least, impersonality is the other feature of bureaucratic management theory. This can also be explained, taking into consideration the aforementioned example. The rules and procedures of the employee who is sick are impersonal and apply to all non- managerial and managerial employees of the organization. That is, in the organization, managers need to maintain the impersonal relationship with employees to equally treat all the employees and promote fairness to all employees so that unbiased decisions can be made. It has also been studied by the scholars that impersonality reduces bias and fosters efficiency. However, the drawback of impersonality is that it creates an environment of isolation. One critique of the

Bureaucratic organizations are that the principles are based on rational legal authority. However, the bureaucratic theory cannot go unchallenged as there are some critics involved in the theory, although the theory is still applicable and have well leveled in the organization against the critiques.

The entrepreneurship has been accepted as an organizational level of phenomena which concerns with a Startup deserving scholarly attention due to the uncertainty, heterogeneity, turbulence, in today’s environment. The organizations are facing a lot of operational and strategic challenges and to face those challenges, the organizations need to implement effective core competencies with the use of corporate entrepreneurship. The flexibility, vitality is considered as important factors which are especially helpful in inflexible and hierarchical structure. The corporate entrepreneurship moreover, may help to improve the competitive position of the organization in the international and domestic market by using new competence and renewing the capabilities of the organization. The entrepreneurial orientation consists of three elements known as risk taking, pro activeness and innovativeness and these three elements are used to discriminate between the less entrepreneurial and entrepreneurial behavior of the organization. The practices of entrepreneurial management help the organizations to contribute and remain vital to the organization and society level value creation (Robbins, 2011).

There are two approaches in the entrepreneurship, which are characterized in two segments, which are common to define. Several different definitions of the entrepreneurship are thought to comprise of trying and perceiving to explore the opportunities in new business to analyze whether the opportunities may turn out to be disruptive or arising from the market due to lack of stability of equilibrium, especially in terms of prices, demand, and supply. Secondly, there are different definitions of entrepreneurship, which emphasize on the informal or casual usage of the term which assumes and operates the risk of a start up business. In this perception, the entrepreneurs contrast with their employer and thus entrepreneurship leads to labor market transition in such circumstances (Jones & George, 2011).

The Bureaucracy is described as a method of organization which is specially meant for the ubiquitous administration of employees through professionals which are usually having the powers and are placed in hierarchal structures with procedures and responsibilities which are strictly discerned (Volti, 2007). Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, is an organizational product and various proponents have argued that the existing organizations play a prominent role in the exposure of individuals by properly structuring the levels to provide them with the entrepreneurial opportunity and in helping them in willingness to assist in entrepreneurship along with their desires. The hypothesis have also been created by several scholars that the working conditions in bureaucracy overpower and forcibly put an end to the rate of entrepreneurship. These overpower has deep-rooted the theory of organization which led to the creation of employees who are characterized by lack of entrepreneur. More recent studies and search provides the evidence on the negative impact of bureaucracy on the entrepreneurship and argues that there is a negative relationship between entrepreneurship and Bureaucracy which apparently strengthen and support the claim that the contextual impact is prominent drivers of the behavior of entrepreneurial (Mtengezo, 2008).

The regulation of bureaucratic and entrepreneurship is interesting and prominent for a number of reasons. The relation between bureaucratic development and regulation is especially problematic in the developing countries. This is because the developing countries need to invest in hiring the resources to effectively implement the regulation of entrepreneurship. But, this can also help in reducing the obstacles of the bureaucracy. That is, the entrepreneur may play a prominent role in the bureaucracy. That is, ‘bureaucracy’ matters to the entrepreneur, and that excessive or efficient regulation of the bureaucracy potentially creates economic development and organization at the aggregated level.  Also, the bureaucracy can be assumed as a prominent factor of the organizational structure in relation to the entrepreneur.

Conclusion

It has been noted by the scholars that authority is centralized in today’s organizations, but the ability of the employee is decentralized. It has also been argued by various proponents that the Bureaucratic theory proposed by the Weber doesn’t provide the difference between the proposition and the definition. Also, the relation between the features has been linked. It has also been found in one of the surveys that there is a correlation between rational attributions and the bureaucratic attribution of the organization (Kuhn, Sassmannshausen, & Zollin, 2015).

That is, the more rigid structure which is properly formalized is followed by the organization nowadays, (which is known as bureaucracy). The features of the bureaucracy comprise a series of regulations and rules and follow the well defined formal hierarchy. It’s also suggested by the Max Weber that work managers and the division of the labors should be maintained properly through the impersonal relationship by keeping an eye on the competence. Although, there are numerous drawbacks associated with the Bureaucracy as aforementioned (Sorensen, 2006).

Also, there are some real strengths associated with the Bureaucratic organization, but implies on the situations and circumstances of the organization. Above all, it has also been noted that the bureaucracies are considered to be most effective when the employees of the organization perform the routine tasks. That is, the unambiguous rules and routine task allow the employees of the organization to work effectively as they are not expected to prove their performance in terms of innovation, creativity, or the ability to solve complex and unique problems. The employees of the organization need to follow the formal rules and procedures and work honestly, while applying the established rules, which is all required by the bureaucracy.

References

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