An Analysis of Bureaucracy as a System of Scientific Management
Abstract
Bureaucracy as an institution is as old as human civilization with which it has a very close relation. As an organ of government and administration, bureaucracy has roots in the ancient world where it has played a vital role in the administration of great civilizations like Chinese, Persian, and Roman, and provided continuity, stability and order to them and their administrative systems for a long time. Practically we do not have a true alternative to bureaucracy with the results that no institution will ever entirely replace it. The twentieth century witnessed an enormous expansion and development of bureaucracy because of the emergence of new states, the end of colonialism, and the struggle/competition of capitalism and socialism as diverse ideological systems across the globe. The welfare state in capitalist and socialist systems expanded their ranges of functions beyond limits, and both developed a huge structure of bureaucracy. Side by side, a steady political pressure against bureaucracy started as citizens, corporate business leaders, politicians, and academics increased their crusade against bureaucracy and started labeling it as autocratic and indifferent to the masses. The modern world is passing through a speedy globalization of corporate capitalism, and with the collapse of Socialist world there is global chaos in ideological, ethnic, political, institutional and economic spheres which has kept bureaucracy in serious crises with its institutional capacity started to erode. But these crises have not rendered bureaucracy dead or disappeared because we have no practical alternative to this institution. This paper is an attempt to explain bureaucracy at a glance. It gives a detail of the various theoretical perspectives on bureaucracy, explains bureaucratic formalization, pinpoint the causative factors of bureaucritization, and shows how bureaucracy can be made responsibility before giving a critical review of it
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