...Bureaucracy and you October 23, 2011 POS/110 Mary Ann Koehler Axia College The federal bureaucracy is the United States (U.S.) largest employer. They have millions of employees that literally help run the country we all know as home. Their jobs range from postal services, public broadcasting, and to being in control of student loans. The federal bureaucracy plays such a significant role in our everyday lives that sometimes we do not even realize it. My essay will explain five ways in which the federal bureaucracy regulates my everyday life. I will explain the five agencies that are associated with these regulations and give an in depth explanation of the agencies specific job description and how they affect my life. The federal bureaucracy affects my life more than I knew. I was very surprised to learn that almost every move I make and every think I do on a daily basis is based on the federal regulations. My fiancé is in the process of starting his own business so one of my first errands I or we have to run almost every day is to the bank. The bank that I use is run by the Federal Reserve Board (FRB). When I am home I wait for the mail to come because clients send receipts for invoices they receive and I have to keep track of all of them to ensure our books are straight and that all payments have been made. This goes for our monthly bills we get in the mail as well. The United States Postal Service is in charge...
Words: 1351 - Pages: 6
...Bureaucracy and You August 7, 2011 The Federal Bureaucracy affects so many aspects of my day to day life that it can be difficult to narrow it down. Everything that I do, from drive my vehicle, my recent home purchase, the food I eat and especially the food that I purchase. Even the internet that I have to use in order to take my classes online is controlled by our government. Everything that we do in our daily lives has been made capable of our government. It has already had to be preapproved and inspected in order for us to use or consume the product. I think of all the things that are affected by the federal bureaucracy the agencies that I was least amazed by were the Department of Transportation and the Internal Revenue Service. I believe that I was least amazed by these two agencies because they seem too obvious. We all know that we have to pay taxes on everything (from clothing, gas, cable, electricity, etc). We cannot escape it. The same goes with the roads that we all have to drive on in order to get from point A to point B. The agency that surprised me the most was the U.S Food and Drug Administration (also known as the FDA). The FDA is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (fda.gov 2011). Because of my son’s severe food allergies, I was very aware that this agency was in charge of regulating the allergy warning labels on food products. I was not aware that they are also responsible for assuring the safety and security...
Words: 617 - Pages: 3
...Week 7-POS/110 American National Government Assignment Bureaucracy and You By Timothy R Cole Throughout our daily lives there are so many different bureaucrats that run our days it is completely amazing. I believe the one branch of bureaucrats that amazed me the most was the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I never realized how much these individuals actually do within my daily life whenever it comes to inspecting, approving, or running some facet of our lives. The agency which surprises me the least would be the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, and Firearms as their entire purpose is to collect taxes whenever these items are sold. So when and why was the FDA formed? Was it in response to some national emergency or event? The “FDA is a branch of government housed within the department of Health and Human Services” (FDA,2010). The onset of the FDA was in direct correlation with the instituting of the Federal Food and Drug Act in 1906. The history of the FDA however can be traced all the way back to the latter part of the 19th Century under the US department of Agricultural Chemistry. Under the direction of chief chemist Harvey Washington Wiley in 1883 this branch of government began to investigate the adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs within the American government. (FDA, 2010) I do believe this was in direct response to an emergency as such drugs as cocaine, opium and heroin were consistently being added to medicinal elixirs and...
Words: 1097 - Pages: 5
...Victoria Typpi SOC-102 October 2, 2014 Dulce Medina Bureaucracy “Groups, people who think of themselves as belonging together and who interact with one another, are the essence of life in society,” (Henslin, 2013, p. 126). Groups are an important part of everyone’s well-being because they provide people with a sense of belonging. They also help shape who we are and there are two main types of groups. The first group, primary groups, include family and friends who provide intimate, face-to-face interaction, which give us an identity, a feeling of who we are (Henslin, 2013). After primary groups come secondary groups, which are much larger and more anonymous while being formal and impersonal (Henslin, 2013). An example of secondary groups are students and professors at a school. Since secondary are so impersonal, they usually break down into primary groups like how students form friendships within schools. Within society is a specialized group called a Bureaucracy, which is an organization which has become dominate in social life. There are five main characteristics of a bureaucracy and one organization that contains bureaucracy is the military. The first characteristic of a bureaucracy contains “clear levels, with assignments flowing downward and accountability flowing upward,” (Henslin, 2013, p. 133). Within each level the level above will assign responsibilities to the level below it and the level below are accountable for fulfilling those assignments assigned to them...
Words: 886 - Pages: 4
...When it comes to a beehive, the Queen bee is always the ruler. The Queen bee is the one who gives the orders and lays eggs while the worker bees do everything else. She is the superior one and her workers are the ones that do all the work; they collect pollen, make honey, and populate the hive. Each bee has a job, and becomes an expert at it. This situation is genuinely similar to bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is when a larger hierarchical organization, governed by formal rules and regulations have specified work task. In bureaucracy there is always someone in command, which means everyone has a boss. Each task is broken down to smaller task and different people work on different parts on the task; this is known as division of labor. Like I had...
Words: 270 - Pages: 2
...Max Weber on Bureaucracy I. Merriam Webster’s Definition of Bureaucracy: 1 a : a body of nonelective government officials b : an administrative policy-making group 2 : government characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority 3 : a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation II. Background and Description Max Weber was born 1864 and died 1920. Weber asks how is it a leader can give a command and have actions carried out? He answers the question by classifying claims to the "legitimacy" in the exercise of authority. His observations on bureaucracy were heavily influenced by his experiences in the United States. While traveling there, Weber was struck by the role of bureaucracy in a democratic society. The problem, as he saw it, was that modern democracy required bureaucratic structures of all kinds in the administration of government and even in the conduct of professional party politics. Handing over the reins to a class of unelected "experts," however, threatened to undermine the very basis of democracy itself. In particular, Weber stressed two problems: the unaccountability of unelected civil servants and the bureaucratic tendency toward inflexibility in the application of rules. Weber's interest in the nature of power and authority, as well as his pervasive preoccupation with modern trends of rationalization, led him to concern himself with the operation of modern large-scale...
Words: 1957 - Pages: 8
...organisational structures, and systems to produce norms (Balkaran, 1995). What corporate culture does is to influence employee perception, behavior and work attitudes. Compared to Bureaucracy, which has written, inflexible rules and consists of systems of administrations distinguished by its clear hierarchy of authority; corporate culture represents the personality of an organization and appeals to the emotional, non-rational, affective elements within employees (Ray, 1986). The purpose of this essay is to prove that corporate culture is the solution to the problem of depersonalized bureaucratic work. In the first part I will examine the differences between corporate culture and bureaucracy, and why corporate culture contains the possibility of being the best and most efficient system of control so far. And in the second part I will analyse if there are any similarities between both types of organisational controls; whilst also assessing whether there are any possibilities for the corporate culture to be just a continuation of the bureaucratic control by other means. Bureaucracy defined by Warwick is a “type of organisation designed to accomplish large-scale administrative tasks by systematically coordinating the work of many individuals” (1974). However the characteristics of bureaucracy were first systematically formulated by Max Weber who managed to see in the bureaucratic organisation a highly developed “division of labour”, where “every member has a specific...
Words: 1542 - Pages: 7
...Max Weber on Bureaucracy I. Merriam Webster’s Definition of Bureaucracy: 1 a : a body of nonelective government officials b : an administrative policy-making group 2 : government characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority 3 : a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation II. Background and Description Max Weber was born 1864 and died 1920. Weber asks how is it a leader can give a command and have actions carried out? He answers the question by classifying claims to the "legitimacy" in the exercise of authority. His observations on bureaucracy were heavily influenced by his experiences in the United States. While traveling there, Weber was struck by the role of bureaucracy in a democratic society. The problem, as he saw it, was that modern democracy required bureaucratic structures of all kinds in the administration of government and even in the conduct of professional party politics. Handing over the reins to a class of unelected "experts," however, threatened to undermine the very basis of democracy itself. In particular, Weber stressed two problems: the unaccountability of unelected civil servants and the bureaucratic tendency toward inflexibility in the application of rules. Weber's interest in the nature of power and authority, as well as his pervasive preoccupation with modern trends of rationalization, led him to concern himself with the operation of modern large-scale...
Words: 1950 - Pages: 8
...century? Western developed nations are undergoing a shift away from traditional, bureaucratic form. Bureaucracy has been the dominant form of organization for more than a century, but it has a bad reputation for being inefficient. It has also decreased the level of enthusiasm among the employees, resulting organizations which provide poor customer service and are not willing to change or create new innovations which are considered very important. “Furthermore, bureaucracies are considered effective in situations where large numbers of standardized operations are needed but it is argued that these conditions are increasingly rare in today’s business world, with even classic bureaucracies such as universities being forced to become more flexible to adapt to changing market conditions” 2. How do post-bureaucratic management practices differ from bureaucratic ones? Hecksher (1994) devised a list of ideal characteristics for “post-bureaucracies” which stand in contrast to Max Weber’s “ideal bureaucracy”: * rules are replaced with consensus and dialog based on personal influence * responsibilities are assigned on merit rather than hierarchy * people are treated as individuals rather than impersonally * the boundaries of the organization are opened. “Ritzer (1996) argues the world is becoming increasingly bureaucratic and for him there is no escape, with bureaucracy spreading first from the manufacturing industry to the service industry, and then to all areas of...
Words: 564 - Pages: 3
...Fundamentals of Supervision and Management Your Instructor: Patricia Addesso Lesson 1 Chapter 2 Managers and Organizations Organizations need managers more than ever today. You may have heard, a few years ago, about organizations cutting out a lot of the layers of management they used to have. This was known for a while as being "lean and mean." Well, someone still has to do the work! So organizations found that they had to add some management back in, as their "lean and mean" organizations became starved. Let's look for a moment at the history of management. The whole concept of "manager" is a fairly recent one, if you think about it. Think about the "good old days" of the early 1900s (well within the lifetime of some people alive today). There were very few professional managers. There were individual people who worked their land, like the farmers. There were people who owned their own small businesses, like the general store. But it was only with the rise of large organizations that the whole idea of needing a non-owner with authority over other workers arose. Scientific Management The industrial revolution is credited with starting the movement toward professional management. As the 1800s gave way to the 1900s, factories started springing up as a result of industry and machinery being developed. The first steps toward a science of management were called, aptly enough, "scientific management." The idea in the early 1900s was that there was probably one right...
Words: 1385 - Pages: 6
...Table of contents Introduction The loyalty The bureaucracy of Japan Face-saving The increasing stress Introduction For discussing about the culture of the Japanese companies, we think that the type of the culture in Japan business is the task type. In Charles Handy’s theory, there are four types of behavioral characteristics: Zeus (power); Apollo (role); Athena (task); Dionysus (personal). We think that the Japanese culture is the task culture. The task culture is job- or project- oriented. Much of the power and influence lies at the connecting points of the organization. The whole emphasis of the task culture is on getting the job done. It is the job of manager to be concerned with the continuous and successful solution to problems. Influence is based on expert power rather than on position. The task culture uses the unifying power of the group to improve efficiency and to link individuals with the objectives of the organization. It is appropriate where flexibility and sensitivity to the external environment is important, and where speed of reactions is important. Groups, project teams or task forces are formed for a specific purpose and can be reformed, abandoned or continued. The organization works quickly, since each group ideally contains all the decision-making powers required. Individuals find in this culture a high degree of control over their, judgment by results and easy working relationships within the...
Words: 2596 - Pages: 11
...MGMT 610 Professor Scanlan Feb 3, 2014 Originality score: 5% Bureaucracy According to the term, “Bureaucracy”, as coined by Max Weber, initially he felt it was a threat to personal liberties, but then realized this type of systematic structure was the most effective form of organizational functioning within the government and businesses. Weber spoke about six characteristics that determine success within a bureaucracy. The first characteristic is called rules and procedures. Every business has a standard code of conduct which is a guide on the do’s and don’ts of the work place. The second characteristic is specialization and division of labor, which means that each employee will have their own individual tasks they are responsible for completing within the allowed time. The third characteristic is hierarchy of authority. This gives each department an authoritative figure to maintain productivity and control. Characteristics of Bureaucracy The next characteristic is technically qualified personnel, which means being hired based on who best meets the criteria, not through favoritism or because you know that person. This gives all applicants an equal chance. Separate position from position holder is the fifth characteristic meaning that no employee is above another within a department. All employees were treated as equal, forcing them to work harder for promotions. The last characteristic is written communication and records. This gives the organization a written record...
Words: 1011 - Pages: 5
...Nowadays the poor image many bureaucracies have can be associated with the lack of caring for public opinion, which facilitates the growing distrust with these organizations. In his book William Pierce writes corruption is a traditional complaint about bureaucracies, and most federal bureaucracies in this country have reduced illegal behavior to a relatively unimportant problem (pg 111). In many cases the poor image is justified due to the sheer nature of things the bureaucracies are involved in, such as raiding Allgyer’s Acres Farm in Kinzer, Pa. In the article Algyer is targeted for being "engaged in milking cows and packaging, labeling, selling and distributing unpasteurized cow milk across state lines." We understand the duties of the FDA; however, the constitution gives us certain freedoms to choose the things we want to partake in. For the thousands of consumers that enjoy milk provided by Allgyer and similar producers, their wishes should not be infringed upon due to undocumented, unproven beliefs from the FDA and CDC about...
Words: 884 - Pages: 4
...Student Name: Brian Allen Student Number: 12459812 Submission Deadline: 7th November 2013 Essay Title: critique scientific management-as promoted by Frederick Taylor- and rational legal bureaucracy-as described and analysed by Max Weber- highlighting how they are both outcomes of enlightenment thinking. Your essay should draw on the assigned readings, as appropriate, from week two to week seven. Word count: 1000 “By submitting your work via this SafeAssign link you declare that all materials included in this submission are product of your own work and that due acknowledgement have been given in the text and in the bibliography to ALL sources, be they printed, electronic or personal. You also declare that you will not facilitate plagiarism by making your work available to others through hard copy distribution or other means. Furthermore, you declare that the submitted material has not been submitted for grading purposes in the past, be it for this module or other modules that you have undertaken as part of your studies.” Date: 6/11/13 Signature:Brian Allen Reflection: In general I found myself more capable of doing this assignment based on my results of my last assignment. In my last assignment I found that my result was very poor. This was as a result of numerous poor mistakes...
Words: 1537 - Pages: 7
...Organization and Management Theories Heather Lunn-Howard HCS/514 11/3/2014 Jeani Thomas In this paper I will give an overview of four areas of management theory: Scientific Management, Human relations Theory, Bureaucracy, and administrative science. Along with some background on where each theory came from. Scientific Management Frederick Taylor, with his theories of Scientific Management, helped mold our modern management styles. In the early 1900s, Frederick Taylor pushed for change from the personal management to a new idea of scientific management. Under personal management, a person in charge was chosen simply because they were smart and knew more and possible had more experience than the other guys. Taylor claimed that a group of ordinary men (cause at the time women were not allowed to be management), following a scientific method would outperform the personal management style. Taylor consistently sought to push the scope of current management and replace it with observations leading to the best practice. Following this philosophy he also introduced the efficient training of workers in the best process rather than allowing them to direct themselves through their daily tasks. He believed that a relationship between workers and management could develop and create the best possible working environment. Under these ideas Taylor further believed that the workload would be shared between the workers and management because...
Words: 1649 - Pages: 7
