Weber is the starting point for most modern thinking about bureaucracy. His vision was that bureaucracy would be adopted by all industrialized countries:
The scale of Weberâs ambition for bureaucracy can be seen in the fact that he thought bureaucracy might defeat capitalism:No machinery in the world works as precisely as this human machine (bureaucracy).1 From a technical and material point of view it is unsurpassable. But here are other than technical yardsticksâŠhowever much people may complain about the evils of bureaucracy; it would be sheer illusion to think for a moment that continuous administrative work can be carried out in any field except by means of officials working in offices âŠ. For bureaucratic administration is, other things being equal, always, from a formal point of view, the most rational type. For the needs of mass administration today, it is completely indispensable. The choice is only that between bureaucracy and dilettantism in the field of administration.2
Weber also said that: âFrom a technical and material point of view, [bureaucracy] is unsurpassableâ and he said that his bureaucratic model worked âexactly as does the machine with non-mechanical modes of production.â4 He added that, âPrecision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personnel costsâthese are raised to the maximum in bureaucratic organizations. Where charismatic rule is incalculable and transitory, and patrimonial rule personal and unpredictable, bureaucratic rule is both calculating and calculable, systematic, a coherent assemblage of parts manned by specialized personnel, ideally adapted to the domination and administration of men and the pursuit of ends through rules applied without regard to persons.â5Let us imagine that coal, iron, all mining and metallurgic products, in addition to alcoholic products, sugar, tobacco, matches, in short all mass products, today already produced by cartels, taken over by the State or State-owned enterprises, moreover, the State-run controlled big estates multipliedâŠworkshops and cooperatives for the needs of army and State officials also administered by the State, in land and foreign shipping controlled by the State, also all railways etcâŠand all these enterprises held in bureaucratic order⊠With regard to our society it is highly probable that bureaucratisation will master capitalismâsome time, as it happened in antiquity.3
Weberâs theory of bureaucracy failed to deliver what he had promised. Robert Merton described the performance deficit of the Ideal-Type in a 1949 assessment that is still relevant today,
The very elements which conduce toward efficiency in general produce inefficiency in specific instances...[and] also lead to an over-concern with strict adherence to regulations which induces timidity, conservatism, and technicism. Stress on âdepersonalisation of relationshipsâ leads to conflict in relationships with bureaucratic personnel. Specific behavioural orientations often mentioned are âbuck passingâ, âred tapeâ, rigidity and inflexibility, excessive impersonality, oversecretiveness, unwillingness to delegate and reluctance to exercise discretion.6
The Prussian Antecedents to Weberâs Vision
Up till a few years before his death in 1920 Max Weberâs thinking about bureaucracy was heavily influenced by the highly successful experience of the Prussian General Staff in response to challenges posed by the Industrial Revolution. In the nineteenth century armies were the largest organizations in Europe and America and the Prussian General Staff was recognized as the most efficient and effective organization in Europe and as an organization which had the best scientific expertise. It possessed all the attributes associated with modern bureaucracy namely, hierarchy, specialization, and action taken on the basis of written rules.7 Von Moltkeâs military bureaucracy had worked very well; the speed and ease with which victory was achieved in the wars of German unification in the 1860s established the Prussian military bureaucracy as the most efficient and effective organization in Europe and its methods were adopted by all the major European powers.8
Helmuth von Moltkeâs General Staff had developed the first modern bureaucracy, one that was capable of providing a more comprehensive, more realistic, and more predictably precise administrative performance, and at a much lower human cost than the Ideal-Type. The General Staff was a small, discrete, and highly unusual part of the Prussian army of fewer than 500 officers. For Robert Merton, the military characteristics of reliability of behavior, high conformity of personnel, and prescribed patterns of action are all functions of the bureaucratic discipline at the heart of the military institution. âThe military serves as the coercive arm of the state, the âusers of forceâ implied in Weberâs definition. Of course, the modern military is itself structured as a bureaucracy, its organizational characteristics of hierarchy, discipline, and conformity rationally designed to increase the effectiveness with which it can defend the state.â9
Supporting the idea of Weberâs enthusiasm for von Moltkeâs Staff, Weberâs wife Marianne said that the most memorable time in his life was 1870, the year of the Franco-Prussian War when the armies of Helmuth von Moltke, orchestrated by the Prussian General Staff, destroyed the military forces of France.10 The Prussians shared with Weber a belief in the game-changing ability of an administrative Staff to provide a new way of coordinating and directing the complex administrative arrangements made necessary by the Industrial Revolution . Although Napoleon and Gustavus Adolphus had to be personally present to command their troops, Staff, the new administrative technology developed by the Prussians, enabled its creator and commander von Moltke to destroy his Austrian opponent while he was 200 miles from the front.11 Weber and the Prussians also shared a belief about the importance of scientific expertise, historical analysis, discipline, and the means of compulsion, as well as office holders having a sense of calling.
Max Weber grew up in a country whose citizens enthusiastically supported the army and a growing number of patriotic associations celebrated Prussian military prowess. The Prussians, as was the case with the British and other European nations, had great admiration for all things military; ex-servicemen were accustomed to wearing their army uniforms and medals when they attended civic and family events. The victory over France was celebrated each year on Sedan Day. Reserve Officer army commissions of which there were 120,000 in 1914 were hotly sought after and veteransâ associations had 2.9 million members on the eve of war.
Like young men in many industrialized countries Weber did his national service in the army. In the autumn of 1883, when he was 19 years of age, Weber moved to Strasbourg in order to serve his year in the army. When his time as a recruit was over, he was used to military service, and he displayed more endurance than most one-year men even though he was a failure in the gymnasium. The result of Weberâs military training was admiration for its martial and patriotic mentality and he wanted to lead his own company in the field. Later in his year-long national service Weber became a âKorporal-schaftsfĂŒhrer (squad leader). The new responsibility took more time and energy. However, a year later, in the Spring of 1885, he returned to Strasbourg for his first officerâs exercise. He began to enjoy military life: âMy position really is different now from what it used to be, and if, as I confidently hope, I am promoted in two or three weeks, I shall experience the pleasant as well as the useful side of the military establishment.â12
During World War I, when Weber was unfit for active service, he became the director of an army hospital in Heidelberg. âDespite its hideousness this war is great and wonderful and worth experiencing. It would be even more worthwhile to participate in it, but unfortunately, they cannot use me in the field as they would have used me if it had been waged in time, twenty-five years ago. My brothers are all serving in the field or in garrisons; my brother-in-law Hermann Schaefer fell at Tannenberg.â13 Weber, who normally was isolated at his desk, now navigated in the middle of a stream of the most intensive communal labor. He controlled an expanding network, and under his administration nine new hospitals came into being in the town. In the last years of the war Weber served as a Captain in the reserves and was in charge of a number of military hospitals in and around He...