Major Characteristics of Weber's Ideal Bureaucracy

4 Major characteristics (principles) of Weber's ideal bureaucracy

-Division of labour

Division of labour is a form of specialization which the production of services and products are divided into several segment or known as several separate tasks. Every person performed each of the tasks themselves. Based on Max Weber's design of this theory, division of labour is knowledge of the precise limit of each worker's and the authority to perform every task without overlapping to each other. In short, work is to be done by specialists, and people are organized into units based on the type of work they do or skills they have.

-Authority hierarchy

Each office and positions should be controlled and monitored (supervised) by a higher ranking office and positions because in authority hierarchy, all offices and positions are organised in a hierarchy form of structure. Furthermore, lower offices and positions should maintain a right to appeal decisions made higher in the hierarchy. This should have replace a more traditional system, in which power and authority relations are more diffuse and not based on a clear hierarchical order.

-Formal selection

Officials are recruited based on qualifications and they are appointed but not elected to the office. People are concern about the salary they gain but not concern about the benefits such as rights to land, power, authority and etc. This should be supplant more particularistic ways of staffing found in more traditional systems, where officials were often selected due to their relation with the leader or social rank. In fact, benefits such as land, rights and authority were also common ways to influence people, which can be replaced by a general salary matching qualifications. In short, all organisational members are to be selected based on technical qualifications which can be demonstrated by training, education or formal examination.

-Formal rules and regulations

Each company need rules and regulations. Therefore, according to Max Weber, in order to ensure all the employees work in a uniform ways and to regulate the actions of employees, every manager must depend heavily on formal organisational rules and written records as well. In short, the reason why lots of top management love to apply bureaucracy is because it allows them to control the actions of thousands employees which is thousands of miles far away from the head office.

Contribution and limitation of bureaucratic approach

Everything has positive as well as negative aspects. So nothing is perfect in this world. Similarly Bureaucracy also has its bright and dark side.

However bureaucratic approach has a very well defined division of labour from