Bureucracy and Legal-Rational
BUREAUCRACY AND LEGAL-RATIONAL AUTHORITY IN WEBER'S WORKAccording to Weber, bureaucracy is a product of the legal-rational form of authority which is itself a product of the process of rationalisation which defines modern societies. Max Weber was a sociologist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who was concerned with understanding social actions and the effects they had on modern, Western civilisation. He identified a relatively new social process of rational action which is characteristic of modern society in all it's institutions. One of the social consequences of rationalisation lies within the sphere of authority, and Weber identified a new form of authority called legal-rational authority. This type of authority called for new ways of organising systems, that is, new organisational bodies which would be compatible with rationalist principles. Weber called these modern organisational bodies bureaucracies.Weber saw rationalism as the hallmark of modern society (Cuff, Sharrock & Francis 1998). He made a distinction between people's behaviours and people's actions, with actions being those which carry attached meanings, and behaviours those which don't. Four types of meaningful action were theorised by W
The organisation is always separated from the ownership of the means of production, and so is not influenced by erratic market forces. Offices within the bureaucracy are organised hierarchically, and officials are technically trained in their sphere of work. The bureaucratic organisation works within a specialized sphere, where it can concentrate in depth upon its functions. Weber focussed on authority or domination as a central aspect in society and in the process of rationalisation. Weber saw bureaucracy as an embodiment of legal-rational authority. Weber saw bureaucracy as broadly applicable, not just relevent to public administraton but also to such as institutions as "large-scale capitalistic enterprise" (Weber 1957, p. Traditional authority is domination based on traditional or customary grounds, such as the monarchy. Likewise bureaucracy is possible and apparent under both capitalist and socialist systems, although Weber emphasised that capitalism has fueled the rise of bureacracy (Weber 1957). Charismatic authority is the rule by actors on the basis of personal charisma, such as religious authority. In other words, legal-rational domination is the rule by an individual/party on the basis of a set of shared rules, under which the authority acts upon. Weber identified several key elements as fundamental to a "pure" bureaucratic organisation, which can be found in his work The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1957), and which represent the principles of legal-rational authority. He theorised three forms of social domination which operated throughout history, similar to the idea of forms of action (Weber 1957).
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