Introduction Every organization has a certain objective to achieve.

However, members of the organizations do not necessarily share the same objectives, and therefore, a need for control over their activities arises so that the company is able to meet their objectives. Authority therefore is needed to advance and achieve the objective of an organization. Bureaucracy is a form of authority using structures and sets of regulation in place to control activity. It is represented by standardized procedure (rule-following) that dictates the execution of most or all process within the body. It is one of the most efficient and fair way of control over an organization, but however, is often accused of wiping out individual responsibility of the members in the organization. In this essay, I am going to discuss about bureaucracy and how it wipes out individual responsibility. First, I am going to talk about the main features of a Bureaucratic Organization and the advantages & disadvantages of it. After that, we will discuss on why bureaucracy has been accused of wiping out individual responsibility of the employee. We will then end off by addressing several ways organizations can improve themselves and return individual responsibility to the employees. Bureaucratic Organization A bureacratic organisation is simply an organisation run by the government. It is bureacratic because there is a lot of red tape involved. That means for a single thing to be done it has to be passed through the different heads of departments. So it will go from the president to the vice to surbodinates under him and the list is continuous. Max Weber is one of the most influential proponents of bureaucracy. He sees bureaucracy as technically superior over other organizational forms in precision, speed, lack of ambiguity, continuity, unity & uniformity, effective discipline & objectivity. As he described: The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organization. The fully developed bureaucratic mechanism compares with other organizations exactly as does the machine with the non-mechanical modes of production. He formed certain ideas on what an ideal bureaucracy would be like and defined. In this section, we shall discuss about Webers idea on the basic elements of the bureaucratic organization. Basic Elements of Bureaucracy The basic elements of the bureaucratic organizations are Written rights & responsibility, Hierarchical Order of Authority, Formal Appointment / Promotion, Expert / Technical Training, Fixed Monetary Salaries, Administration as a Full-time Occupation and the separation of Office & Person. We will discuss the following below: 1) Written Rights & Responsibility In a bureaucratic organization, rules & guidelines are all written down on paper, and employees are expected to work within the confines of this rules & guidelines. Job & departmental responsibilities are also stated clearly, and employees are to work within their specified areas. It is a cardinal principal that the incumbent in this position should never overstep the bounds of his authority.

2) Hierarchical Order of Authority The organization has a order of hierarchy and the division of power involves the ranking of offices to provide a clear chain of command. In bureaucracies, the hierarchy is also typically complex leading to many levels providing a highly differentiated structure of authority. 3)Formal Appointment / Promotion Appointments & Promotion of officers are formal, with specific titles and power which come from the office assigned to them. 4)Expert / Technical Training Employees are employed base on their technical competency in their position of employment. Factors like luck, favoritism or personal connection should play no part in the postion the officials attains; advancement should be decided by expertise and ability alone. 5)Fixed Monetary Salaries Employees are paid on a pre-agreed salary between the employer and employee. Salaries are tied to a pay grade system, with all employees in a certain pay grade drawing similar amount of salary. As they are promoted, they move forward in the pay grade, drawing a fixed salary for that particular position. 6)Administration as a Full-time Occupation Labor in the organization is divided into various portions, with a group of people doing fully administrative work. 7)Separation of Office and Person All dealings within the bureaucracy and with clients should be conducted on the basis of equal treatment according to procedural routine. The objective conduct of business should be free from any personal feelings.

The Eight Major Characteristics of the Bureaucratic Organization:

There are eight major characteristics of what is called the "bureaucratic form." Your organization likely uses most of these. Virtually all organizations that use the bureaucratic form seem to suffer the same suffocating and immobilizing symptoms that people call "bureaucracy." The characteristics of the bureaucratic organization are: 1. Most employees blame their organizations "bureaucracy" on senior management. They assume that management must want it, or it wouldnt be tolerated. 2. Senior managers dont want or like "bureaucracy" any more than the rest of the employees. The detestable effects of bureaucracy victimize everyone, regardless of level. Senior managers havent known what to do to get rid of it. Executives have tried many things to eliminate "bureaucracy," but the "program-of-the-year" approach generally hasnt worked, because they have been fighting symptoms, not the root cause. 3. The root cause of "bureaucracy" is the organizing model, the "bureaucratic form." Yet, the bureaucratic form is so pervasive that its destructive nature is seldom questioned.

4. If you were starting a new enterprise today, you could avoid "bureaucracy" by using a new organizing model called the "mission-driven" model. 5. Existing bureaucratic organizations can reduce the amount of "bureaucracy" by changing one or more of the basic organizing principles, either temporarily or permanently. The steps for de-bureaucratizing by changing basic organizing principles are: a. Make an assessment of the present state of the organization to learn how much permission to change and commitment to change is available from stakeholders and senior management. b. Depending on the amount of available commitment, choose the optimal goal state: a modest goal, a moderate goal, or an ambitious goal. c. The goal state will suggest the strategy for changing the organization. The strategy will range from a minimum effort based mostly on training to a maximum effort based on reorganization and a new way of managing called "continuous improvement." d. Continuous improvement is an entirely new way of operating in which the people closest to the product or customer, working in teams, are empowered to continuously improve the organizations quality, service, or both. Continuous improvement requires three things: i. A "shadow" organization chartered to make the changes necessary in the existing organization to achieve the desired goal state. ii. New forms of qualitative customer feedback from internal and external customers to be used to drive changes in quality, service, or both. iii. Training for employees enabling them to work in teams, to accept the offered empowerment, to identify and prioritize root causes of problems, and to find solutions they will use to continuously improve quality, service, or both. 6. Management people in the existing organization will need to learn and use new ways of managing. They will need to learn what they have been doing that adds to the "bureaucracy" in the organization. They will need to learn new ways of doing their jobs that diminish the amount of bureaucracy within the organization. Most importantly, they will need to provide empowerment for those who work for them, and protection and coaching to those who accept and act upon the offered empowerment. 7. People in the organization who currently arent managing will play a vital new role in the de-bureaucratized organization. The labor/management war, if it exists in your organization, must end. Everyone in the organization will need to act as one unified team, driven by a common mission, and aligned by a common vision of the new organization. People who today are not formally managing will be grouped into teams in which the

brainpower, skills, talents, and experience of the individuals will be harnessed to continuously improve the organizations quality, service, or both. People who are presently not in managerial positions will be drawn to enroll in the change effort because their new, expanded role offers less bureaucracy and more opportunity for motivation through personal growth, achievement, responsibility, recognition and more interesting work. 8. Finally, the vision of what your organization might look like, and be like, when you have achieved your desired goal state is outlined in detail in "Busting Bureaucracy." You will discover the rewards that come from working in an organization of empowered people who are satisfying or even dazzling their customers, and are doing so with few, if any, of the immobilizing and suffocating effects of bureaucracy.