Max Weber was a sociologist that had an idea of rational-legal authority. The principles behind this authority are that it increases efficiency, it has predictability of rules, it operates better mechanically (machines and systems) and it is irrational. The power of a bureaucracy, which runs under a formal rationality concept, is that it becomes a machine in itself; it is hard to bring down due to all the different interactions within it. Bureaucracies follow a rational-legal authority, a formal rationality. Formal rationality has seven attributes, it’s governed by rules, consists of a hierarchical order with certain tasks and qualifications, staff do not own their offices, staff is provided with supplies and their work does not own the end means of the production and there are written regulations within the work. The efficiency of a bureaucracy is uncanny but there are minor disadvantages that, within it’s operations, can cause major damage to the whole and may allow for the bureaucracy to lose order and authority.
A bureaucracy that fits all of these criteria is our own university, UIC. This operates in a rational form of authority that fits all the criteria for being a formal rationality. There are rules within out university that everyone must abide by. The different departments and hierarchy of the school are ranked, in that there are different sets of tasks that they all follow within a certain hierarchy from TA’s to graduate teachers to professors to the top of who runs the departments and school. There are different technical qualifications for each department and higher authority to be in the position that they may well be a part of. The staff does not own the equipment they bring in, but their laptops and supplies they may need to run a class. The position that each department or hierarchy do not belong to those people, that each person is only filling the role and that it can easily be replaced with someone else who has the same qualifications which will make the bureaucracy run just as well and the person itself is not exactly needed to partake in the role that they have been given. There are written regulations of do’s and do not’s that each person must abide by such as being to work at a certain time and teaching a class at a certain time and making sure the material that is being taught is of the qualifications that the university has intended for it. These characteristics are all of the ideal-typical bureaucracy that we are apart of in the university. Everyone that works here has a certain task and does not deviate unless otherwise explicated to.
This university has all the characteristics of the ideal type of a bureaucracy but there are disadvantages to this as well. Within the system there is the Internet that passes information between students and professors, professors to professors, and higher order to professors. This communication is important to information being passed and kept within the bureaucracy and if there is a downfall within this communication there may be interruptions within its efficiency. Information is not gathered or transferred which in turn shows the downfall of what may happen where important material is not documented i.e. grades. Another problem may be weather where students or staff may not be able to make it to their job as it is unsafe to travel, which puts a setback on the efficiency making everything run slower due to the lack of showing up to work under the regulations one is posed to. There may be a financial downfall where the state or students is not meeting the requirements of funding where the school then can not run on a means which in turn makes cutbacks to the different departments making it less efficient in how they deliver their product throughout the campuses.
Financial and technological problems within this bureaucracy may be the downfall of it just like any other bureaucracies that wish to run at a “high-octane.” These problems when faced may reflect that when this bureaucracy is finally established that these problems, who affect the staff and the students, may cause this authority to actually lose it’s authority which in turn may cause a downfall within the bureaucracy. This place runs at a premier pace, but one problem that it faces can in fact turn the university upside down which then makes it run at a slower efficiency, taking it’s authority and sort of flushed it down the bureaucratic drain.
http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/weber7.html
A bureaucracy that fits all of these criteria is our own university, UIC. This operates in a rational form of authority that fits all the criteria for being a formal rationality. There are rules within out university that everyone must abide by. The different departments and hierarchy of the school are ranked, in that there are different sets of tasks that they all follow within a certain hierarchy from TA’s to graduate teachers to professors to the top of who runs the departments and school. There are different technical qualifications for each department and higher authority to be in the position that they may well be a part of. The staff does not own the equipment they bring in, but their laptops and supplies they may need to run a class. The position that each department or hierarchy do not belong to those people, that each person is only filling the role and that it can easily be replaced with someone else who has the same qualifications which will make the bureaucracy run just as well and the person itself is not exactly needed to partake in the role that they have been given. There are written regulations of do’s and do not’s that each person must abide by such as being to work at a certain time and teaching a class at a certain time and making sure the material that is being taught is of the qualifications that the university has intended for it. These characteristics are all of the ideal-typical bureaucracy that we are apart of in the university. Everyone that works here has a certain task and does not deviate unless otherwise explicated to.
This university has all the characteristics of the ideal type of a bureaucracy but there are disadvantages to this as well. Within the system there is the Internet that passes information between students and professors, professors to professors, and higher order to professors. This communication is important to information being passed and kept within the bureaucracy and if there is a downfall within this communication there may be interruptions within its efficiency. Information is not gathered or transferred which in turn shows the downfall of what may happen where important material is not documented i.e. grades. Another problem may be weather where students or staff may not be able to make it to their job as it is unsafe to travel, which puts a setback on the efficiency making everything run slower due to the lack of showing up to work under the regulations one is posed to. There may be a financial downfall where the state or students is not meeting the requirements of funding where the school then can not run on a means which in turn makes cutbacks to the different departments making it less efficient in how they deliver their product throughout the campuses.
Financial and technological problems within this bureaucracy may be the downfall of it just like any other bureaucracies that wish to run at a “high-octane.” These problems when faced may reflect that when this bureaucracy is finally established that these problems, who affect the staff and the students, may cause this authority to actually lose it’s authority which in turn may cause a downfall within the bureaucracy. This place runs at a premier pace, but one problem that it faces can in fact turn the university upside down which then makes it run at a slower efficiency, taking it’s authority and sort of flushed it down the bureaucratic drain.
http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/weber7.html