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Bureaucracy |
Bureaucracy is an organizational form of administration which is constantly debated for its efficacy and viability in the modern era. There are questions regarding its applicability and appropriateness for the modern governmental systems in which it is considered as an undesirable form of managerial structure which was developed in an authoritative society, not fit for the current era of rapid communication. Bureaucracy is defined as a system of administration in which an organization and its officials adhere to written forms of specific rules, laws and regulations which accord a centralized process to the conduction of all procedures occurring in the institution (Sanders, 1997). The term bureaucracy was first investigated by the German sociologist Max Weber (1958), who explained the concept of bureaucracy with the metaphor of the “iron cage” which refers to a specific structure necessary for organized work in any structure or configuration (Weber, 1958). While the term bureaucracy is not new, Weber was among the first to elucidate the term positively with regard to the governmental systems and their administrative configurations. The term gained popularity in the 1940s and is used to denote various phenomena of forms of organizational structures (Klagge, 1997). Weber noted several models of organizations in bureaucracy including labor divisions, hierarchical authoritative positions in legal structures, written procedures such as files and records, employees who have received optimal training and also several policies, rules and practices pertaining to the practice of management and labor in organizations (Weber, 1968). |