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Book ChapterDOI

Bureaucracy, Sociology of

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TLDR
The authors reviewed the major arguments, beginning with Max Weber's foundational ideal type and addressing subsequent work on bureaucracy's informal and cultural dimensions, external influences, internal contradictions, and pitfalls of societal bureaucratization.
Abstract
Bureaucracy is an organizational form that became dominant in business, government, and other arenas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Since then, extensive debates among sociologists and others have centered on its nature, rationality, and social impact. This article reviews the major arguments, beginning with Max Weber's foundational ideal type and addressing subsequent work on bureaucracy's informal and cultural dimensions, external influences, internal contradictions, and pitfalls of societal bureaucratization. While some have proclaimed bureaucracy's demise amidst today's postindustrial economy, evidence suggests that it lives on – with consequences that are just as ambivalent as in Weber's time.

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The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them, and describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative.
Journal ArticleDOI

Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy.

TL;DR: In this article, an investigation of singel factory seen in the light of Max Weber's theory of bureacracy is described, and a partial report, to be followed by another, is given.
References
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Book ChapterDOI

The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them, and describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative.
Journal ArticleDOI

Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness

TL;DR: In this article, the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society, is examined, and it is argued that reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the "oversocialized" way criticized by Dennis Wrong.
Book

The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective

TL;DR: The External Control of Organizations as discussed by the authors explores how external constraints affect organizations and provides insights for designing and managing organizations to mitigate these constraints, and it is the fact of the organization's dependence on the environment that makes the external constraint and control of organizational behavior both possible and almost inevitable.
Trending Questions (3)
Who developed the bureaucracy theory of organizational structure?

Max Weber developed the bureaucracy theory of organizational structure, which became dominant in business, government, and other arenas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

If bureaurcracy are all advantages and without disadvantages?

The paper does not explicitly state whether bureaucracy has only advantages and no disadvantages.

What is a definition of a bureaucratic organization?

The paper provides a definition of a bureaucratic organization as a form of organization that features elaborate rules and regulations, a division of labor, and a hierarchical command structure, all rationally designed to achieve established goals.