4 Chapter 4: Social Structures – What Frames Your Culture?
4 Chapter 4: Social Structures – What Frames Your Culture?
Outline the characteristics of bureaucratic organization.
Formal Organizations
Modern life complains that large and impersonal secondary organizations dominate society. From schools to businesses to healthcare to government, these organizations referred to as formal organizations, are highly bureaucratized. Indeed, all formal organizations are, or likely will become bureaucracies. We will discuss the purpose of formal organizations and the structure of their bureaucracies.
Bureaucracies are formal organizations. Bureaucracies have a collection of characteristics that most of them exhibit. Pioneer sociologist Max Weber characterized a bureaucracy as having a hierarchy of authority, a clear division of labor, explicit rules, and impersonality (1922). People often complain about bureaucracies––declaring them slow, rule-bound, challenging to navigate, and unfriendly. Let’s look at terms that define bureaucracy to understand what they mean.
Hierarchy of authority refers to the chain of command that places one individual or office in charge of another, who must answer to her superiors. For example, as an employee at Walmart, your shift manager assigns you tasks. Your shift manager responds to his store manager, who must answer to her regional manager, and so on, up to the CEO, who must answer to the board members, who answer to the stockholders. Everyone in this bureaucracy follows the chain of command.
Bureaucracies have a clear division of labor: each individual has a specialized task to perform. For example, at a university, psychology professors teach psychology, but they do not attempt to provide students with financial aid forms. The Office of Admissions often takes on this task. In this case, it is a clear and commonsense division. But what about in a restaurant where food is backed up in the kitchen, and a hostess is standing nearby texting on her phone? Her job is to seat customers, not to deliver food. Is this an intelligent division of labor?
Bureaucracies have explicit rules that are outlined, written down, and standardized. For example, the student guidelines are contained in the Student Handbook at your college or university. As technology changes and campuses encounter new concerns like cyberbullying, identity theft, and other problems, organizations scramble to ensure their explicit rules cover these emerging issues.
Finally, bureaucracies are also characterized by impersonality, which takes personal feelings out of professional situations. This characteristic grew, to some extent, out of a desire to avoid nepotism, backroom deals, and other types of favoritism while protecting customers and others served by the organization. Bureaucracies can effectively and efficiently serve volumes of customers quickly. However, explicit rules, a clear division of labor, and a strict hierarchy of authority do not allow them to adjust promptly to unique or new situations. As a result, customer