For most people, the word 'bureaucracy' brings up an image of a
mass of office employees buried in piles of paper and tied to a set of petty
rules. In country like ours, Bureaucracies are often the focus of popular
dislike, chiefly because they are viewed to be inefficient and lack flexibility
to meet the public individual needs.
As the popular perceptions about bureaucracy reflect some
insights, they are not a good basis to start evaluating a social structure. To
do this, it is imperative that bureaucracy is viewed as a set of relationships
between people.
Bureaucracy is an organization of work in which people are treated
as interchangeable and exchangeable agents to fill specialized roles. Bureaucracy
can be defined with two of its key features, hierarchy and specialized division
of labor. Other features of an ‘ideal’ bureaucracy include rules which explain
the duties of each member, a set of standard operating procedures, and
impersonal relations between members. In a model bureaucracy, the top levels of
hierarchy only decide the initiatives and policy directions. Though, the
implementation of the policies is done by lower levels of hierarchy within the given
guidelines set out for them.
Today, many large modern organizations run in a bureaucratic form,
such as the government departments, political parties, churches and trade
unions. However, it can be said that none of these act as real or pure bureaucracies. For instance, sometimes
in political parties and trade unions the policy directions or initiatives are
taken by the rank and file.
1 comment:
Bureaucracies have positive and negative aspects attached to it; I agree with your point of view that in countries such as Pakistan there is little chance of bureaucracies succeeding. Perhaps, corruption is to blame. Nevertheless, the concept of bureaucracy has become rather redundant throughout the world because the world is not what is used to be - it seems that following radical systems prove to be more rewarding.
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