Essay on “Bureaucracy” Complete Essay for Class 9, Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is personnel and administrative structure of an organization. Business, labour, religious, educational, and governmental systems depend on a large workforce arranged in a hierarchy to carry out specialized tasks based on internal rules and procedures. The term is used mostly in referring to government administration, especially regarding officials in the government and civil service. It is often used pejoratively to suggest waste, inefficiency and red tape.

Of the most famous political persons responsible for the making of bureaucracy, and its effects on society would be Max Weber, the German sociologist who set the course of the field in foundations of Administration and Politics. Weber established there were three different types of authority, which helped to set the stage of public administration and helped to direct the forms of government that exist today. The three types of authority that dominate the governmental and societal settings of the present are traditional, charismatic, and legal rational. The third type of authority is the type, which we are most familiar with. Legal rational authority dominates the modern world, and can easily be thought of as a closed system of regulations and rules forming a bureaucracy. This authority is purely devoted to impersonal and functional purposes, thus giving the perfect stage for bureaucracy, where all focuses are impersonal and functional alone.

While bureaucracy is based on the legal rational form of authority, there are five key elements which are continually present in a bureaucracy. First, there is a division of labour and there is functional specialization. Labour is divided by skills and authority, and the responsibility of each position is defined by law and administrative regulation. Second, each position, job and office is independent of its occupant. The job is permanent and may be filled by any number of different individuals. The two outcomes of this are that the ongoing nature of bureaucracy is important, and that human labour must become interchangeable. Third, authority becomes more centralized and hierarchical. There is a clear cut chain of commands, where at each stage there are superiors and subordinate’s. The ideal bureaucracy would be shaped like a triangle. Next, the bureaucracy would be structured by rules arid procedures. All employees would interact within accordance of the legal definitions of their jobs. Finally, for the sake of organization, there is maintenance of files and other records.

Bureaucracy has the capacity to coordinate large scale administrative tasks with superior efficiency. This form of government can be seen as extremely effective and efficient. A bureaucracy concentrates on technical experience and acts predictably to accomplish its goals in a timely and organized manor. Bureaucracy can also be explained as “a powerful institution of the 1st order, for the one who controls the bureaucratic apparatus.” There is also an ongoing tension which has been established between the bureaucracy and the politics of an organization. Bureaucrats are permanent factors, which operate within a defined, closed set of rules, while politicians are temporary members of the establishment which are forced to operate under the various rules and regulations of the public sector.

As bureaucracy has an air of superior effectiveness, there are also underlying negative points to each of the positive points it is capable of providing, a bureaucracy will eventually monopolise any establishment which it has been set out to govern. Also, the inert specialization makes it almost impossible to work without. A bureaucracy is also known to be particularly ambivalent toward any form of democracy. The size and form which bureaucracies take makes them extremely resistant to change. Acting autocratically is an also well known trait of the traditional bureaucracy.

Furthermore, bureaucracies are essential parts of every governmental function, a prevalent example of a non-competent bureaucracy can be seen in the Savings and Loan scandal of 1989. The inability of the public administrators to regulate and control the establishments proved to be a fatal loss to the American economy. Under the Regan Administration, many cuts and changes were made in the structure of government to free up big business, deregulate various industries and open the economy. The Office of Management and Budget, agent in charge of federal funding began denying requests for examiners and officers who would have been responsible for the regulation and strengthening of the S&L’s in an attempt to deregulate. By denying these requests, it was placing the bureaucracy in charge of the S&L’s in an incompetent position. It would be too small and overworked; making it virtually impossible to keep up with ever-increasing banking industry practices. While the examiners who were left to investigate the Loan establishments were too inexperienced and insufficiently trained, bank practices began to slide downward, making frequent inappropriate transactions, leading to the largest and most prominent baking industry blunder in America’s history.