Question

What is Bureaucracy? Discuss the features of Bureaucracy.

Answer 1

A bureaucracy is a large administrative organization that handles the day-to-day business of a government or society. ...Bureaucracies have four keycharacteristics: a clear hierarchy, specialization, a division of labor, and a set of formal rules, or standard operating procedures.

Answer 2

Bureaucracy Weber pointed out that bureaucracy was the best administrative form for the rational or efficient pursuit of organisational goals. Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy comprised various elements such as (a) high degree of specialisation and a clearly-defined division of labour, with tasks distributed as official duties, (b) hierarchical structure of authority with clearly circumscribed areas of command and responsibility, (c) establishment of a formal body of rules to govern the operation of the organisation and administration based on written documents, (d) impersonal relationships between organisational members and the clients, (e) recruitment of personnel based on ability and technical knowledge, (f) long term employment, promotion on the basis of seniority and merit, (g) fixed salary and the separation of private and official income. Though examples of developed bureaucracies existed in different parts of the world prior to the emergence of modern capitalism, it is only within this that organisations are found which approximate to this ideal typical form. Weber used these abstract elements of bureaucracy to explain a concrete phenomenon.