Public Administration: A Detailed Review of Bureaucratic Structures

This essay presents a review and analysis of an article focusing on bureaucracy and its impact on public administration. The article, originally by Merton (1940), discusses the well-defined patterns of activities within organizations and the structured hierarchy maintained across departments and offices. The analysis emphasizes the importance of rules, regulations, and designated authority within the organization, contributing to formal communication and operational clarity. It further explores the benefits of bureaucratic management, such as promoting employee engagement, minimizing internal competition, and aligning the workforce towards common organizational goals, ultimately improving the competitive advantage of the organization. Desklib provides access to a variety of solved assignments and study resources for students.

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

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the lower levels of the organizational hierarchy. The article opines that the formality that id
maintained within the organization helps in the facilitation of the communication within the
company despite the differences that might exist on the personal grounds among the employees
of the organization. The article claims that the bureaucratic style of organizations is the best
suited for the various business organizations that have been functional all over the world. the
article opines that the bureaucratic styles help in the achievement of the clarity among the
concerned members of the organization regarding the various activities that they have been
entitled to due to the positions that they hold in the given workplace.
Analysis
The author in the given article states that the concerned approach towards the
organizational management might be related to the bureaucratic style of management within the
given organization. The experts on the matter argue that the bureaucratic style of management
helps in the management of certain sections of the activities that tend to be implemented within
the organization in order to deal with a section of the organizational activities that can be met
only through the mechanism of secondary group activities rather than the application of the
primary group activities (Nistotskaya & Cingolani, 2015). The experts state that the life of a
bureaucrat revolves majorly around the graded career that had been planned around him. The
gradation in the life of the bureaucrat is majorly affected by the promotions within the given
organization. These promotions are generally based on the various conditions like the seniority
of the concerned employee, the pensions that are extended towards the concerned bureaucrats of
the organization as well as the increment in the salaries of the concerned employees of the
organization (Van der Voet, 2014). The discussed measures help in the implementation of the
incentives towards the concerned employees of the organization. The implementation of the

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incentives within the organizational workforce helps in motivating the concerned employees
within the organization to perform their duties in a proper manner. The bureaucratic governance
within a given organization helps in the promotion of the similar interests within the workforce
of the company (Dischner, 2015). This leads to the minimalization of the competition among the
employees of the organization and helps in the promotion of the shared goals of the employees of
the organization that have been set by the concerned management of the organization.
Thus, from the above discussion it might be derived that the bureaucratic style of
organizational governance assists the increase in the engagement of the employees within the
organization. The bureaucracy in the organization helps in directing the employees of the
organization towards a common goal that have been set by the organizational management.
Thus, the bureaucratic management helps in the improvement of the competitive advantage of
the organization in the given market.

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References
Dischner, S. (2015). Organizational structure, organizational form, and counterproductive work
behavior: A competitive test of the bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic
views. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 31(4), 501-514.
Merton, R. K. (1940). Bureaucratic structure and personality. Social Forbes, 18(4), 560-568.
Mitchell, W. (2017). The bureaucratic phenomenon. Routledge.
Nistotskaya, M., & Cingolani, L. (2015). Bureaucratic structure, regulatory quality, and
entrepreneurship in a comparative perspective: Cross-sectional and panel data
evidence. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 26(3), 519-534.
Smith, R. (2016). Bureaucracy as innovation. Research-Technology Management, 59(1), 61-63.
Van der Voet, J. (2014). The effectiveness and specificity of change management in a public
organization: Transformational leadership and a bureaucratic organizational
structure. European Management Journal, 32(3), 373-382.