MAX WEBER CONCEPT OF BUREAUCRACY AND ITS APPLICATION ON SCHOOL

MAX WEBER CONCEPT OF BUREAUCRACY AND ITS APPLICATION ON SCHOOL

BUREAUCRACY in general is  the most efficient form that could be used most effectively for complex organization-business , government.

Max Weber a German sociologist who played an important role in study of bureaucracy and administrative literature. His ideas stemmed from society during industrial revolution. He saw as modern societies emerged bureaucratic organizations are increasing parallely. Every organization was moving in the direction of increasingly formalized, hierarchical organization.

Weber defined a bureaucracy as “having certain characteristics that make up the bureaucratic entity. A bureaucracy has a formal hierarchy”.  According to Weber, bureaucracy as having certain characteristics that make up the bureaucratic entity.

Ideal  Bureaucracy By Weber

HIERARCHY

Officers are ranked in hierarchical order. In this information flow is from lower officers to higher officers and directions or orders are going down in chain of command. Lower officers are supervised by higher officers

IMPERSONALITY

Impersonality relates to the equal treatment of all employees of the bureaucracy.. Equal treatment and uniform policies and procedures allow for uniformity and impersonality. Operations of the organizations are characterized by impersonal rules

 WRITTEN RULES OF CONDUCT

To have good control it is necessary to have rules and regulations. Top managers make the rules and the middle managers make sure that lower managers and workers are following the rules. The rules must be followed throughout all levels of the structure

ACHIEVEMENT

Promotions or bonuses given on good performance. As everyone need some motivation so this increase the healthy competition among workers

SPECIALIZED DIVISION OF LABOR

Managers and workers should be highly specialized in their field and have vast knowledge and experience. Division of labour make work more perfect and it divides the work into different parts due to which it is done efficiently and effectively

EFFICIENCY or STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (SOP)

Their should be unity in orders and SOP informs workers how to do the work in a specific order because there is always one specific way of doing work which will increase efficiency and predictability so that organization will produce similar results.

EXPLANATION WITH A SCHOOL

The organization which I took is a high school. This institution has a hierarchy which is defined in flow chart. In the hierarchy orders are given by principal which is followed by every one in school. Whereas information about curriculum, students performance flows from lower towards upper level. This organization have written rules of conduct for every one and all orders are passed by only one i.e principal although the factor of achievement is missing in this institution. Teachers work hard to produce results from students but still they don't get promoted . most of the teachers are teaching at same level from past 6 to 7 years. This school is high in impersonality i.e uniforms are compulsory for teachers, administration as well as students. Time of leaving and entering the institution is also similar. yet the implication of fines are not similar for all. Talking about the specialized division of labor, school hires the staff  having specialization in particular field, this is shown by the division of teaching staff into primary secondary and elementary teachers hired on the basis of their education as well as the on classes they are going to teach. The last point of max theory is SOP  which does not apply completely on the school because certain works are done in similar way by all staff e.g record keeping and keeping diaries of daily work but some are done in their own specific ways e.g the teaching style of every individual is different with different priority order of topics they are going to teach

In short we can say that although this organization is working efficiently yet it does not completely fulfill the criteria of weber ideal organization.