Bureaucracy

A core term in political science, public management as well as many other social sciences “bureaucracy” has many potential meanings. In addition to common usages (including “red tape”, members or parts of an organization that do administrative work as well as a form of government where officials are too powerful) in management and organization studies it refers to a set of organizational characteristics associated with the work of Max Weber. The “ideal type” of bureaucracy has been criticised on the basis of a range of dysfunctions. Such dysfunctions may be identified within such organizations but are not clearly always consequences of it: indeed bureaucracy can produce many benefits.