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Max Weber Bureaucracy - YouTube
Channel: Organizational Communication Channel
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max weber has made
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lots of contributions to the areas of
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organizational studies
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management and organizational
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communication the main one
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is his contribution around the concept
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of bureaucracy
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first of all how do you pronounce his
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name i've heard weber i've heard
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weber i've looked all over the internet
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i've
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informally surveyed my colleagues in
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academia and it's about
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50 50. the weber pronunciation is the
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americanized style the americanized
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version of his name
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and weber is the more european
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pronunciation i think both
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are acceptable and i personally
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recommend however your teacher says it
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that's how you should pronounce it he
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was a german sociologist and political
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economist
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we use his concept of bureaucracy in
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organizational communication and
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organizational studies
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but he actually wrote quite a lot of
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different areas and has influenced
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many areas of academia beyond just the
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workplace studies
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he saw the rise of large organizations
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bringing together large groups of people
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to manage and and that's not an easy
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thing
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we're going from farms to factories from
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smaller shops to larger organizations
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and
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how are people going to do that well he
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believed that the existing approaches
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to organizing that he saw had really
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obvious
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problems especially around the area of
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authority
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he saw that most workplaces used
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relationships
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kinship or family in other words or
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customs to lead and make decisions this
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is called traditional
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authority and he saw lots of problems
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with that
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the main one was particularism where
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employees were hired
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or fired for a variety of
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non-organizational reasons such as their
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religion
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race sex and relation or family
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connections we call this favoritism he
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called it
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particularism because a particular group
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of people was having a very
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disproportionate
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influence over the organization so
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the decision making was isolated in the
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hands of a few people and it was very
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unlikely that they were going to
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be the most qualified people to run the
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organization
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at its best he saw this as a
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disadvantage
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to organizations if they let this happen
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and so he favored
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a more rational approach to running
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organizations he wanted them to achieve
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their goals more rationally
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especially through clarified leadership
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and clarified rules
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for decision making in terms of
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leadership
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he wanted what he called the legal
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rational
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authority where the legitimate authority
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of leadership positions should be
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formalized and fixed to those positions
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so it wasn't about if you had lots of
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charisma or if you're really persuasive
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or if you were related to a certain
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somebody your legitimate authority
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came from the position that you occupied
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in the structure
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in this way he wanted to be consistent
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with societal law where organizations
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should be run by formal
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rules and policies he wanted the
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organization's rules and policies to
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parallel the kind of
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rules that we see in society and most
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importantly
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he thought the authority should reside
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in the position
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or the office it should not reside with
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the individual person
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their personality because let's say they
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you're being supervised by somebody
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and they move out of that position and a
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new person moves in well the person
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who's occupying that position
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should have decision making power over
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you in your department the person who
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leaves should not still be
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having that kind of influence from the
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sidelines
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over the organization so he wanted to
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keep it much more
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legal and rational bureaucracy has
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numerous parts
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the first is division of labor among the
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participants
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so division of labor is where we divide
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work into small
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separate steps so let's say you want to
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finalize a semester schedule of courses
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at college you would think that you
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might be able to just walk in swipe your
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credit card
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take your seat and now you're enrolled
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in the course and off you go
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but if you've ever been to a college
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campus you know there's lots of
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different steps this is chopped up
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into seemingly endless steps so you have
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to figure out financial aid for
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one office you get advised somewhere
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else when you register that's a separate
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process you have to
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pay through various ways then you
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confirm your course schedule
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you get ad codes and drop codes from
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somebody else
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and so what should be or what could be
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very simple is divided into lots of
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different steps and there's reasons for
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this one of them is
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so that let's say you swipe your credit
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card and let's say the professor
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runs off with that money well you're
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protected against that because you pay
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one department and then you take a
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course with another department and so
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bureaucracy was meant to
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again protect against that
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disproportionate or lopsided
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influence hierarchy of offices is number
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two
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you're probably familiar with this where
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there's a kind of pyramid structure
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and at the bottom of that pyramid are
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all the employees
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and above that you have supervisors then
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managers and finally the big boss
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number three a set of general rules that
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govern performance was a big part of
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bureaucracy
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so there are rules that govern how you
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perform the supervisor the people
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running things can't just make it up and
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change it from
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depending upon their mood and who you
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are let's say you're working at a place
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and they say productivity is important
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and you show good productivity
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they say your sales numbers are
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important and you show that customer
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service is important and you show that
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well those are the
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general rules that everybody should be
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evaluated by
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they shouldn't mark you high in these
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things and still fire you
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you should be able to get rewarded
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promoted and maybe even get a raise
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if you uphold the goals and follow the
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policies
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number four a rigid separation of
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personal life
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from work life this guards again against
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particularism
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so let's say a couple gets married they
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meet at work they get married and one of
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the people is still being supervised
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by the other what happens in many
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organizations
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is they will put the person who was
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being supervised
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in a different department so that their
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spouse
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is not directly supervising them this
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guards against
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favoritism or that particularism number
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five the selection of personnel
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is done on the basis of technical
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qualifications
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and that pursues the equal treatment of
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all employees
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you're getting selected you're getting
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promoted because you are the most
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qualified not because you're the right
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right or wrong religion or race the
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wrong gender the wrong family
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relationships
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etc number six participants view
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employment as a career
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and tenure protects against unfair
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arbitrary
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dismissal tenure meaning if you've been
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there for a while
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and you have what you might call veteran
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status
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you're going to keep your job as long as
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you continue to do well they're not
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going to fire you for some
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minor or petty personal reason you're
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going to basically keep your job
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and these are the six points under
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bureaucracy
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and we see bureaucracies all over the
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place anytime you hear the word
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administration
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you're generally talking about an
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organization that has chosen a
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bureaucratic style like lots of
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different branches of government
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college campuses like i mentioned
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earlier or really
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ideal or or pure examples of
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bureaucracies the military is a classic
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example large companies even for-profit
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corporations
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often organize in a bureaucratic style
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and certainly factories like volkswagen
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or if you're in europe volkswagen just
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like we pronounce
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it weber in europe factories often
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choose to
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be organized in a bureaucratic style
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structure the legacy of weber's
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bureaucracy
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is a little bit mixed some people of
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course will still attempt to take
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advantage
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even though weber wanted a guard against
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particularism
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against favoritism some people of course
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can
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operate in just about any structure and
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try to find a personal
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advantage there's also the concept of
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red tape that's a term you often hear
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associated with
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bureaucracies and that's the
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overemphasis on structure
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policies and procedure that slows or
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prevents
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needed action so if you've ever worked
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inside a bureaucracy
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then you know what i mean it feels as if
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just to do
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anything you are constrained by the
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limits of organ
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of the organization and you are you're a
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constrained that's what it's there for
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however sometimes it's constraining what
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should be positive action
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weber called this the iron cage where
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people were trapped
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in what he's called calculated systems
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that pursue efficiency
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and control that threaten individual
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freedom
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so you might feel like you're just stuck
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in your own little box
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in your own little divided area of labor
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on your
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rung of the hierarchy and that's all you
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can really do is stay there and do the
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little bit of work
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that you're given so the legacy is mixed
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weber saw this as much
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better than the alternative like
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traditional authority and that
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particularism and certainly better than
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a more charismatic style of leadership
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whereas based upon the person's
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personality we look to max weber
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quite often in organizational studies
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his work has been cited consistently
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for decades by tens of thousands of
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researchers
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and scholars and very recently still
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his work is more cited than ever a very
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influential figure
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a foundational researcher and author in
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the area of organizational studies
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and that's why we study max weber's
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concept of
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bureaucracy
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