Problems with Bureaucracies

• Inefficiency, rigidity

  • alienation
  • bureaucratic personality, inertia, ritualism
  • oligarchy
  • Parkinson’s Law and Peter principle

• Resistance to change

• Perpetuation of inequality

• Dehumanization

Previous slide

Next slide

Back to first slide

Index   Home

Bureaucracies should function to increase the operation of society. However, problems arise. Weber was very concerned about the dehumanizing aspects of bureaucracy. He regarded the impersonal treatment in such structures to be dehumanizing and predicted the growth of alienation.

Ritualism develops in organizations as members begin to over rely on rules and regulations to the point of obstructing organizational goals. Moreover, bureaucracies tend to perpetuate themselves via inertia.

Oligarchy is the rule by a few. Michels suggested that powerful persons in bureaucracies tend to accumulate power and use it to benefit themselves.

Parkinson's Law says that work expands to fill the time allotted for it. The Peter Principle says that bureaucrats are promoted to their level of incompetence.