Article Review on Bureaucracy in Public Administration

Running head: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION - ARTICLE REVIEW
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION - ARTICLE REVIEW
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION - ARTICLE REVIEW
Bureaucracy refers to the administrative system that is characterized by the clarity in the
hierarchy of the authority within the organization, the correct labor division, the proper
impersonal relationships within the concerned business organization as well as the various
inflexible procedures rules and regulations within the given business organization (Mitchell,
2017; Smith, 2016). The following paper attempts a discussion on an article on the bureaucracy.
The paper opens with the summarization of the given article and then proceeds to analyze the
claims of the author.
Summary
Merton (1940) in the article entitled “Bureaucratic structure and personality” attempts a
discussion on the matters that are related to the well-defined patterns of the several activities
within an organization that are related to the purposefulness of the organization. The concerned
article tends to state that a structured organization maintains a hierarchy within the various
departments as well as the offices within the given company. The article attempts a discussion on
the matters that are related to the obligations and the privileges of the concerned offices as well
as the limitations of the offices due to the rules and the regulations that are specific to the
concerned organization. The article further states that the authority and the power lie with the
designation within the hierarchy of the organization and not with the people who have been
holding the position at the given organization. This helps in the official actions within the
organization to maintain the rules and regulations that have been existent within the given
society. The concerned organization therefore tend to maintain a certain level of formality within
the various departments at the different hierarchical levels within the industry. this also results in
the clear definition of the social distance that is existent between the people who have been
adorning the higher positions of the organizational hierarchy and those who have been serving at