1. Formal Organizations and Bureaucracies

2. The Rationalization of Society
Why Did Society Make a Deep Shift in Human Relationships?
Marx: Capitalism Broke Tradition
Weber: Religion Broke Tradition

3. Why Did Society Make a Deep Shift in Human Relationships?
Until recently, people lived in traditional societies. That way of life is very different from ours. A good part of socialization is learning one’s place in the group, the obligations one has to others.
A second key aspect of traditional society is the idea that the past is the best guide for how to live life today.
Production in industrial societies is based on impersonal, short-term contracts, not personal relationships.
This change to rationality is a fundamental divergence from all of human history.
Until recently, people lived in traditional societies. That way of life is very different from ours. A good part of socialization is learning one’s place in the group, the obligations one has to others. A second key aspect of traditional society is the idea that the past is the best guide for how to live life today.
Production in industrial societies is based on impersonal, short-term contracts, not personal relationships. This change to rationality is a fundamental divergence from all of human history.

4. Marx: Capitalism Broke Tradition
When Marx analyzed this change, he concluded that capitalism was breaking the bonds of tradition. People who tried capitalism were impressed with its greater efficiency.
They found that it produced things in greater abundance and yielded high profits. This encouraged them to invest capital in manufacturing. As capitalism spread, traditional thinking receded.
When Marx analyzed this change, he concluded that capitalism was breaking the bonds of tradition. People who tried capitalism were impressed with its greater efficiency.
They found that it produced things in greater abundance and yielded high profits. This encouraged them to invest capital in manufacturing. As capitalism spread, traditional thinking receded.

5. Weber: Religion Broke Tradition
Max Weber, who developed the term capitalism, traced this change to Protestant (Calvinist) theology, which he said brought about capitalism.
Max Weber, who developed the term capitalism, traced this change to Protestant (Calvinist) theology, which he said brought about capitalism.
Capitalism: an economic system characterized by the private ownership of the means of production, the pursuit of profit, and market competition.

6. To understand the sociological significance of this photo of a woman in Bangladesh applying fresh cow dung to jute sticks to be used as firewood, compare what you see here with the list of characteristics of traditional societies in Table 7.1.

7. Formal Organizations and Bureaucracies
The Characteristics of Bureaucracies
“Ideal” Versus “Real” Bureaucracy
Goal Displacement and the Perpetuation of Bureaucracies
Dysfunctions of Bureaucracies

8. Formal Organizations
Formal Organization: a secondary group designed to achieve explicit objectives.
Central Feature of Today’s Societies
Develop into Bureaucracies
Formal organization: a secondary group designed to achieve explicit objectives.
Although formal organizations used to be rare, with rationality they have become a central feature of our life today. Society has changed so greatly that most of us are even born within a formal organization.

9. Today’s armies, no matter what country they are from, are bureaucracies. They have a strict hierarchy of rank, division of labor, impersonality and replaceability (an emphasis on the office, not the person holding it), and they stress written records, rules, and communications—essential characteristics identified by Max Weber. This photo was taken in Pyongyang, North Korea.

10. The Characteristics of Bureaucracies
Separate levels, with assignments flowing downward and accountability flowing upward
A division of labor
Written rules
Written communications and records
Impersonality and replacability
Bureaucracy: a formal organization with a hierarchy of authority and a clear division of labor; emphasis on impersonality of positions and written rules, communications, and records.
These five characteristics help bureaucracies reach their goals. They also allow them to grow and endure.

11. When society began to be rationalized, production of items was broken into its components, with individuals assigned only specific tasks. Shown in this wood engraving is the production of glass in Great Britain in the early 1800s.

12. “Ideal” Versus “Real” Bureaucracy
Characteristics are Ideal Types
Often, Bureaucracies Operate in Non-Ideal Ways
The characteristics of bureaucracies that Weber identified are ideal types; that is, they are a composite of characteristics based on many specific examples.
Bureaucracies often differ from their organizational charts. The real lines of authority (“going through channels”), for example, may be different from those portrayed.

14. Technology has changed our lives fundamentally
Technology has changed our lives fundamentally. The connection to each telephone call used to have to be made by hand. As in this 1939 photo from London, England, these connections were made by women. Long-distance calls, with their numerous hand-made connections, not only were slow, but also expensive. In 1927, a call from New York to London cost $25 a minute. In today’s money, this comes to $300 a minute!

15. Goal Displacement and the Perpetuation of Bureaucracies
Bureaucracies may take on a life of their own
In a process called goal displacement, even after an organization achieves its goal and no longer has a reason to continue, continue it does
In a process called goal displacement, even after an organization achieves its goal and no longer has a reason to continue, continue it does.

16. The March of Dimes was founded by President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s to fight polio. When a vaccine for polio was discovered in the 1950s, the organization did not declare victory and disband. Instead, its leaders kept the organization intact by creating new goals—first “fighting birth defects,” and now “stronger, healthier babies.” Sociologists use the term goal displacement to refer to this process of adopting new goals.

17. Dysfunctions of Bureaucracies
Red Tape
Lack of Communication Between Units
Bureaucratic Alienation
Resisting Alienation
The Alienated Bureaucrat
Bureaucratic Incompetence
Peter Principle: Each employee of a bureaucracy is promoted to his or her level of incompetence
Bureaucracies can be so bound by rules that the results defy logic.
Perceived in terms of roles, rules, and functions rather than as individuals, many workers begin to feel more like objects than people. Marx termed these reactions alienation, a result, he said, of workers being cut off from the finished product of their labor.
Because workers want to feel valued and to have a sense of control over their work, they resist alienation. A major form of that resistance is forming primary groups at work.
Others become alienated but remain in the organization because they see no viable alternative, or they wait it out because they have “only so many years until retirement.”
Peter Principle: Each employee of a bureaucracy is promoted to his or her level of incompetence; a tongue-in-cheek observation that the members of an organization are promoted for their accomplishments until they reach their level of incompetence; there they cease to be promoted, remaining at the level at which they can no longer do good work.

18. Bureaucracies have their dysfunctions and can be slow and even stifling. Most, however, are highly functional in uniting people’s efforts toward reaching goals.

19. How is this worker trying to avoid becoming a depersonalized unit in a bureaucratic-economic machine?

20. As technology transforms society, it breaks down the “usual” ways of doing things. In one of the latest changes, some companies such as AKQA have opened virtual offices on Second Life. An AKQA avatar interviews avatars for real jobs. The real person, not the avatar, is actually hired and receives the real paycheck.