GRIFFITH COLLEGE DUBLINICMDM - 1617

Bureaucracy: Its role in everyday business

Business Management Assignment presented to Lecturer Jacqui Tracey by

Leonardo Lacerda (student number 2938137)

Dublin, Ireland

November 2016

INTRODUCTION

According to Smith (2016) the concept of Administrative

Bureaucracy first appeared with the Sumerian rulers in attempt to apply and

enforce standards across the kingdom after the cuneiform script was created.

This concept was brought back and developed by the German sociologist

Max Weber in the beginning of the 20 th century with his essay Bureaucracy,

published in the piece Economy and Society. Evans and Rauch (1999) said

that Weber’s theory brings Bureaucracy as one of the institutional foundations

of capitalist growth, but that it also has to be related with the historical context

and ideology of the era once, as soon it goes beyond of protecting property

rights, it loses its own value.

In contrasting Bureaucracy with prior organizational forms, Weber

stressed several points. Evans and Rauch (1999) gave a huge importance in

their studies to two of them. First, that meritocratic recruitment has ideally to

be based on some combination of education and examination, and second

that a predictable career ladder should provide long-term tangible and

intangible rewards. In other words, public administrative organizations

characterized by meritocratic recruitment and predictable long-term rewards

would be more effective at facilitating capitalism growth than anyone else.

The objective of this assignment is to explore more the term

Bureaucracy and to check until what extent there is anything positive or

beneficial to be gain by using it in a large organization.

- QUESTION 1 -

USING RESEARCH AND DISCUSSION EXPLAIN THE TERM

BUREAUCRACY

Downs (1964) defined the word “bureaus” as a particular form of

organization, which possesses four characteristics. It has to be large, with its

majority of members working full-time who depend upon their employment for

most of their incomes, their hiring and promotion are based upon some type

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of assignment and the major proportion of its output is not evaluated in any

markets external to the organization. Also, according to him, people who work

for those companies in this specific type of regime can be named bureaucrats.

In the same piece, Downs (1964) pointed four fundamental traits

that, according to Max Weber, have to be present in a Bureaucracy

environment. These included hierarchical organization, extensive use of rules,

impersonality of procedure, and the employment of specialists on a career

basis. This means that as long as there are roles and responsibilities, the

company will work efficiently and its own employees should be recruited

based just on their qualifications. If the structure is correct, efficiency will be

achieved.

Talking about hierarchical authority structures, Downs (1964)

presents two reasons for that. First, such structures are necessary to settle

the conflicts that inevitably arise in any large organization undertaking

coordinating activities. Reasons for these conflicts could arise from

differences in the goals of bureau members (conflict of interest), or differences

among members based on their modes of perceiving reality or information

available to them. Such conflicts can concern either behavior patters and/or

resource-allocation. Any equal-authority mechanisms as majority voting are

terribly inefficient and the power of resolve them must be delegated to a few

members.

Second is the need for efficient communication. It requires that

each bureau member have some idea of what other members are doing that

might affect the efficacy of his own behavior. Not everyone’s behavior might

be relevant to everyone else though. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve

coordination in a large organization by having everyone directly inform

everyone else about what he himself is doing. Because of that, a system of

communications intermediaries must be established.

Racko (2015) said that according to Weber, bureaucratic work is

“superior to any other form in precision, in stability, in the stringency of its

discipline, and its reliability”. He also talks about the “Neo-Weberian Era” in

which “bureaucratically rational work is conceived to maximize efficiency

by subjecting administrative staff to standardized discipline, sanction and

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control, and to formalize sanctions against the arbitrary use of power.

However, research is necessary about the implications of bureaucratic

work for the pursuit of self-enhancement as opposed to self-transcendence

values, and openness to change as opposed to conservation values”.

- QUESTION 2 -

TO WHAT EXTENT IS THERE ANYTHING POSITIVE OR BENEFICIAL TO

BE GAINED BY USING BUREAUCRATIC STRUCTURES?

Downs (1964) pointed a few advantages of using bureaucratic

structures in a company. First, the bureau learns how to perform with more

efficiency and the officials will employ this added capacity to increase their

output of services. Second, the company develops more and more

extensive rules and regulations that might assure order. Also, as time

passes, it experiences a wider variety of situations that attempts to

remember how best to deal with those situations by adding new rules to

cope with them.

Furthermore, the goal of the bureau’s top managers tend to shift

towards maintaining and expanding their organization, once a larger size

of rules inevitably shift more years of effort they have invested in it.

Because of that, as older the company is, more willing the manager is to

alter its formal goals in order to keep it “in the business”. The longevity

creates goal-flexibility.

Good administrators tend to gain added power and prestige

because they are good managers and are more flexible to change the

organization’s goals.

Because of the division of functions that the Bureaucracy theory

brings, employees most probably will always know what their duties are

and should feel safe in a bureau that looks like organized and efficient.

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- QUESTION 3 -

SELECT A LARGE ORGANISATION OF YOUR CHOICE AND

SUGGEST WAYS IN WHICH IT DISPLAYS CHARACTERISTICS OF A

BUREAUCRACY

Lutzker (1982) explained that the concept of modern Bureaucracy,

which is easily seeing in many big companies nowadays, is based in three

groups of elements. The first one relating to the structure and function of the

organization, the second pointing that the authority is held by the main office,

and the third being the fact that the administrative office constitutes a career

with promotions granted by seniority or achievement. According to Casey

(2014), Bureaucracy is a form of management that has a pyramidal

command structure.

After a few analyses, PepsiCo was chosen for this study once,

based on their website, it looks like a complex organization, with a clearly

defined hierarchy of top-down authority, and specialized departments, which

are correspondent parts of a whole.

PepsiCo has its own officers and directors, a sales manager, zonal

managers, regional managers and areas sales managers, all leading their

subordinates. Also, it is divided in several departments (i.e.: sales, marketing,

operation, product and packaging) each one with their specific goals.

Everything departs from the CEO and the business analyst manager,

development manager and quality assurance manager not only report to the

CEO, but also lead all their own employees making PepsiCo look like a very

organized company.

Furthermore, they intend to give a huge importance to the skills

people have when advertising new vacancies in their website, which shows

another characteristic of the Bureaucratic system already discussed in this

assignment.

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CONCLUSION

Although Bureaucracy has a few good points that might bring more

order and organization to a company, like the division of functions for

example, we can’t forget that employees are first of all people who find

motivation in being recognized and who have their own ideas and thoughts.

Sometimes those thoughts may not match with the goals of the

bureau itself and that is when the system might break. Furthermore, the goals

of each group have the risk of becoming more important than the goals of the

company, which may cause several conflicts. In addition, some parts of the

bureau might not communicate between them as decisions are mainly made

from the top management and, because there is no opportunity to relocate,

employees might lose the joy of working. It is easy to see that people who

aren’t motivated in work will most probably become a bad worker

compromising the goals of the whole company.

It seems that Bureaucracy has the power of make employees

seeing themselves as numbers who can be replaced at any time and the way

they are recruited in this system, basically based on their qualifications,

doesn’t show how good they are on a daily bases, if they have commitment

and are good in team work for example.

In conclusion, other theories of modern management look like more

efficient when the goals are motivating staff, increasing profit and providing a

great place to work.

REFERENCE

Casey, C. (2014) Bureaucracy Re-Enchanted? Spirit, Experts and Authority in

Organizations. Sage Journals, 11 (1), pp. 59-79

Downs, A. (1964) Inside Bureaucracy. Real State Research Corporation.

Chicago

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Evans, P. Rauch J. (1999) Bureaucracy and Growth: A Cross-National

Analysis of the Effects of “Weberian” State Structures on Economic Growth.

American Sociological Review, 64 (5), pp. 748 – 765.

Lutzker, M.A. (1982) Max Weber and the Analysis of Modern Bureaucratic

Organization: Notes Toward a Theory of Appraisal. American Archivist, 45 (2),

pp. 119 – 130

PepsiCo (2016) http://www.pepsico.com (accessed on the 8th November 2016

at 2:30pm)

Racko G. (2015) Values of Bureaucratic Work. Sociology, Sage Publications

Smith, R. (2016) Bureaucracy as Innovation. Innovation for Innovators, pp.

61- 63.

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