Abstract
It is possible a reader will turn with relief to this chapter, hoping that the plethora of competing concepts previously detailed will finally be clarified and organized. He may have interpreted the purpose of the earlier chapters as the provision of a backcloth to definitive achievements by the present generation of scholars. But if so, he will be disappointed. For, as the mention of seven concepts of bureaucracy implies, modern endeavour in the social sciences has led to a further proliferation of concepts. Sophistication in argument and research has not resolved old problems, but merely elaborated them, and the relation of the earlier chapters to this one is more in the nature of an explanation of the basic positions from which modern argument stems than a foretaste of better things to come.
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Notes and References
Examples of this tabula rasa approach include G. Tullock’s The Politics of Bureaucracy, 1965, and A. Downs’ “Theory of Bureaucracy”, American Economic Review, Vol. 55, 1965.
They will also be discussed in the concluding chapter.
N. Mouzelis, op. cit., pp. 4, 54; J. P. Nettl, op. cit., p. 337.
Mouzelis uses ‘bureaucracy as Weber did, that is only as an extreme type’ (p. 54). Nettl defines bureaucracy ‘in a Weberian sense—as a phenomenon of modernity but not necessarily as the product of, or synonymous with, organizational and even social rationality’ (p. 337).
It should, of course, be borne in mind in the following discussion that the seven concepts which are distinguished are not always held in pure form. Almost any combination of them is possible, but for the sake of clarity we shall concentrate on the pure types.
P. Blau, The Dynamics of Bureaucracy, rev. edn, 1963, p. 251.
p. 60.
p. 8.
R. G. Francis and R. C. Stone, Service and Procedure in Bureaucracy, 1596, P. 3.
P. Leonard, Sociology in Social Work, 1966, p. 81.
Both Leonard and Francis and Stone use this terminology.
Thus Rosemary Stewart in The Reality of Management, 1963, p. 8, says that the characteristics of bureaucracy have developed ‘because they are the most efficient method yet discovered of running a large organization’.
For examples of attempts to define non-Western forms of organizational rationality see C. K. Yang, “Some Characteristics of Chinese Bureaucratic Behaviour”, in Confucianism in Action, edited by D. S. Nivison and A. F. Wright, 1959, and B. S. Silberman, “Bureaucracy and Economic Development in Japan”, Vol. 5, 1965.
P. M. Blau, op. cit., 1st edn, p. 201.
For an attempt to show the differences of approach between the sociology of organizations and the normative perspective of organization theory, see Martin Albrow, “The Study of Organizations—Objectivity or Bias?”, Penguin Social Sciences Survey 1968
D. E. Apter and R. A. Lystad speak of bureaucracies where there is ‘heavy emphasis on administrative efficiency’, “Bureaucracy, Party and Constitutional Democracy: An Examination of Political Role Systems in Ghana”, in G. M. Carter and W. O. Brown, Transitive in Africa: Studies in Political Adaptation, 1958, p. 20. This is some indication of the desire to preserve the distinction between the observer’s view and the participant’s logic.
M. E. Dimock, “Bureaucracy Self-examined”, Public Administration Review, Vol. 4, 1944, p. 198. However in Administration Vitality, 1960, p. 4, he offers a different concept of bureaucracy: “the ordering of institutional management to secure the advantages of system”.
E. Strauss, op. cit., p. 41.
M. Crozier, op. cit., p. 187.
Both Blau and Crozier are committed to the language of function and dysfunction. It has often been remarked how easily this turns into a language of social criticism.
See Carl A. Emge, “Bürokratisierung unter Philosophischer und Soziologischer Sicht”, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Vol. 3, 1950–1, and Otto Stammer, “Bürokratie”, in Handbuch der Soziologie, edited by W. Ziegenfuss, 1956.
p. 70.
See, in particular, his articles “Le’ service Civil’ en Angleterre”, Revue des Sciences Politiques, Vol. 50, 1927; “Critics of ‘bureaucracy’”, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 60, 1945.
“La Développement de la Bureaucratie aux États-Unis”, Revue des Sciences Politiques, Vol. 50, 1927, p. 394.
“Bureaucratie et Fonctionnairisme”, Revue de l’Institut de Sociologie Université libre de Bruxelles, Vol. 17, 1937.
In Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 292, 1954.
p. 209.
p. 62.
F. Morstein Marx discusses Italian Fascism in “Bureaucracy and Dictatorship”, Review of Politics, Vol. 3, 1941.
p. 3.
This distinction is also made by Onofre D. Corpuz in The Bureaucracy in the Philippines, 1957, p. 22. He adds that those who see bureaucracy as an apparatus tend also to see it as a juggernaut, while those who view it as a collection of individuals see it as more fragile. ‘Particular analytical concepts of bureaucracy unavoidably affect conclusions’ (p. 24).
These propositions are in “Levels of Economic Performance and Bureaucratic Structure” by B. F. Hoselitz in J. La Palombara, op. cit., pp. 171, 198.
In Ch. 4, “Types of Bureaucracy”.
P. 157.
“The Bureaucracy and Political Development in Vietnam”, La Palombara, op. cit., p. 322.
p. 7. In the same volume M. Fainsod, “Bureaucracy and Modernization: The Russian and Soviet Case”, suggests a five-fold typology of bureaucracies: representative, party-state, military dominated, ruler dominated, ruling.
In Toward the Comparative Study of Public Administration, edited by W. J. Siffin, 1957.
Ibid., p. 26.
Ibid., p. 87.
Riggs, op.cit., p. 54.
“Bureaucracy and Political Development: A Paradoxical View”, La Palombara, op. cit., p. 122.
A Systems Analysis of Political Life, 1964, pp. 212–20.
P. 45.
An early use of this concept is by O. H. Gablentz, “Industriebürokratie”, Schmollers Jahrbuch, Vol. 50, 1926.
In H. Sultan and W. Abendroth, Bürokratische Verwaltungsstaat und Soziale Demokratie.
See above, p. 87. It is also the concept used by H. Cohen in The Demonics of Bureaucracy, 1965, a replication of part of Blau’s The Dynamics of Bureaucracy
P. 459.
“Bureaucracies: Some Contrasts in Systems”, Indian Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 10, 1964.
See above, p. 58. Stinchcombe’s suggestion is taken up in S. W. Becker’s and G. Gordon’s “An Entrepreneurial Theory of Formal Organizations”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 11, 1966–67.
See above, p. 60.
H. Stroup, Bureaucracy in Higher Education, 1966, Preface.
p. 2.
C. S. Hyneman, Bureaucracy in a Democracy, 1950, p. 3; H. Simon, “Staff and Management Controls”, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 292, 1954, p. 95; R. V. Presthus, The Organizational Society, 1965, p. 4; A. Etzioni, Modern Organizations, 1964, p. 3.
Ferrel Heady, Public Administration: a Comparative Perspective, 1966, p. 19.
Presthus, op. cit., p. 58; W. Bennis, “The Coming Death of Bureaucracy”, in Behaviour in Organizations: A Multidimensional View, 1968, p. 257; Heady, op. cit., p. 20. For another such list see R. A. Dahl and C. E. Lindblom, Politics, Economics and Welfare, 1953, pp. 235–6.
See R. H. Hall, “The Concept of Bureaucracy: An Empirical Assessment”, American Journal of Sociology, 1963.
Thus one group of researchers has reduced the idea of bureaucracy to theoretical insignificance and advocates the measurement of organizational dimensions without any prejudgement as to their shape. See C. R. Hinings et al. “An Approach to the Study of Bureaucracy”, Sociology, Vol. 1, 1967.
p. 147.
See C. T. Schmidt, The Corporate State in Action: Italy under Fascism, 1939, especially pp. 69, 134.
Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning, 1951, p. 43.
Ibid., p. 44.
The idea of a bureaucratic culture is developed by Max Handman, “The Bureaucratic Culture Pattern and Political Revolutions”, American Journal of Sociology, 1933. But he uses it for societies which are the lesser developed in the Western world.
PP. 4, 94.
See Gablentz, note 44 above, and E. Landauer, “Kapitalistischer Geist und Verwaltungsbürokratie in Öffentlichen Unternehmungen”, Schmollers Jahrbuch, 54, 1930. R. Bendix regards it this way too in Work and Authority in Industry, 1956, especially in chapter 4.
“Bürokratisierung”, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Vol. 3, p. 196.
“Bureaucracy and Bureaucratization”, Current Sociology, Vol. 7, 1958, p. III.
Gehlen, op. cit., offers, p. 196, as a definition of bureaucratization, ‘the process of for ever incorporating new elements into the administrative machine’.
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Albrow, M. (1970). Seven Modern Concepts of Bureaucracy. In: Bureaucracy. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00916-9_6
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