Bureaucracy and the Corporation Flashcards
What is rationalization?
Rationalization is the idea that rules, efficiency, and practical results should guide human affairs.
What is a bureaucracy?
A large formal organization that is designed to achieve its explicit objectives efficiently.
What are the five main characteristics of a bureaucracy?
- hierarchy of authority
- division of labour
- written rules
- written communication of records
- impersonality, replicability
What are the (five) dysfunctions of bureaucracies?
The dysfunctions of a bureaucracy:
- Red tape (rigid conformity to rules); rules being more important than what the bureaucracy is trying to accomplish
- Narrow perspective among workers (confined to small, specialized tasks)
- Alienation (“work rage”)
- “iron cage” trapping individuals in systems
- Humanization of the workplace, resisting traditional bureaucratic structure
What is McDonaldization?
The increasing rationalization of the routine tasks of life. The principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more of society.
What are the principles of McDonaldization?
- Efficiency
- Speed
- Predictability
- Control
- Irrationalities
What are the goals of Taylorism?
The goals of Taylorism are to return factory control to the managers (opposed to the workers), and increase profits and industrial output.
What are the means Taylorism uses to achieve its goals?
The means for Taylorism to achieve its goals are:
- break down down complex processes down to many subtasks
- separating conceptual work from the execution of tasks (so that workers don’t have an understanding of the whole process, reinstating the managers’ control)
- using lower skilled and lower paid workers
What are the limitations of Taylorism?
Human beings are not machines and resent being treated like machines, there is a lot of job dissatisfaction and lack of motivation, as well as absenteeism and worker turnover.
What are the five characteristics of the Japanese Corporate Model?
- hiring and promotion
- lean production
- lifetime security
- near total involvement
- decision-making by consensus
What are the limitations of the Japanese Corporate Model?
It is an ideal, but not reality. It is actually similar to Taylorism after all, and now many Japanese companies adopt North American strategies (a hybrid of Taylorism and this model).
What shift did Max Weber observe in Europe?
A shift in society from being based on traditions (the past is a guide for the present), to a rationale based society (rationalization), which led to the rise of capitalism.
What is the “iron law of oligarchy”?
The dominance of a formal organization by an elite inner circle that keeps itself in power.
