Scientific Management and Weber's Bureaucracy

Educational Leadership
Leading the Organization:
Scientific Management and
Weber’s Bureaucracy
Elaine Sharplin

Choose the word or words that best describe some aspect of
your organisation :
•An organism, a machine, a layered cake, a social club
•Decisions are made by:
consensus, democratic system, executive positions
or in accordance with rules and regulations
•Workers are motivated by:
money, peer influence, negative consequences,
intrinsic motivation
•Students are seen as:
raw materials, inputs/outputs, individuals with
personal needs, members of a class/year/peer group

EFFECTIVENESS
• An action is effective if it
accomplishes its specific aim.
• To be effective an institution or
individual must accomplish
something.
• The term implies deliberate action
aimed at achieving a specific target.

EFFICIENCY
• Efficiency involves accomplishment, but
implies without waste of effort or
resources.
• It has value-for-money connotations.
• The degree of efficiency is the extent to
which resources are consumed in
achieving the goal.

Take the following statements and
develop several scenarios which
illustrate these points.
a) A school can be effective but
inefficient
b) A school can be efficient but not
effective
c) A school can be effective and efficient
but not necessarily excellent (in the sense
of being best amongst its peers).

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
Taylor developed four principles:
1. Management must analyze work practices using time and motion
studies
2. Workers should be carefully selected, trained and paid to do a
good job
3. Workers and managers must cooperate for the new management
principles to succeed
4. Planning must be separated from the completion of the task.
Planning includes the creation of a suitable work environment

Henri Fayol (1841-1925)
Managerial activity consists of five
elements:
– planning,
– organizing,
– commanding,
– coordinating,
– controlling.

Managers needed to
possess certain qualities
1. Physical qualities - vigour, good health
2. Mental qualities - understanding, judgement,
adaptability
3. Moral qualities - loyalty, firmness, initiative,
responsibility
4. General education
5. Specialized knowledge - relevant to the field of
business or industry
6. Experience - in the field.

Lyndall Urwick (1891-1984)
Principles for the guidance of
managers
1. Objectives - all organizations should have a clearly specified
purpose;
2. Correspondence - authority must be equalled by responsibility;
3. Ultimate authority - higher authorities have absolute responsibility
for the work of subordinates;
4. Scalar principle - a line of authority exists from the ultimate
authority to the lowest position in the organization;

5. Span of control - supervision should be limited to
the direct control of no more than five or six
subordinates
6. Specialization - an employee's work should be
limited to one function
7. Coordination - all activities must be coordinated
and
8. Definition - each duty must be clearly described
(Wren, 1987).

LEGACY OF SCIENTIFIC
MANAGEMENT THEORY
Efficiency as the measure of managerial
success (The notion of economic
rationalism continues to be highly
influential.)
• Increased productivity through planning
of tasks,
• The division of labour and specialization
• Selection of staff and training for
efficiency.

• The use of time and motion studies.
• Use of monetary incentives
• The standardization of tasks
• The principle of unity of command - that
orders should be received from only one
super-ordinate
• Focus on formal organizational structures.

CRITICISMS OF SCIENTIFIC
MANAGEMENT THEORY
• 1. Man is viewed narrowly as motivated
only by economic considerations
• 2. The models developed are too
simplistic
• 3. The worker is viewed in isolation – as a
machine, not as a social being
• 4. The physiological emphasis is
inadequate without use of sociological
and psychological theories.

Weber‘s three types of authority
1. Traditional - precedent, usage, custom
2. Charismatic - rooted in individual
personality
3. Rational-legal - means to achieve
goals, authority rests on rules,
procedures.

Bureaucracy
• "... a clearly defined hierarchy where
office holders have very specific
functions and apply universalistic rules
in a spirit of formalistic impersonality"
(Silverman,1970, p.11).

Weber’s characteristics of an
ideal bureaucracy
1. Specialization of task
2. Rational, hierarchical, authority
structure
3. Formal system of rules/regulations
4. Impersonal/impartial allocation of work
5. Stable career structure based on
promotion according to competence
6. Clear lines of communication.

CRITICISMS OF WEBER'S THEORY OF
BUREAUCRACY
• encourages overconformity
• modifies the personality of bureaucrats
• encourages communications overload
• produces goal displacement
• prohibits adaptation to change
• raises the problem of the needs of the
organization versus the needs of people.

• Are you a scientific manager or a
bureaucrat?
• Is your organisation influenced by
scientific management or bureaucratic
ways of operating?