"Irrationality of Rationality" Page
From Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization of Society. Thousand Oaks, Calif:Pine Forge Press. 1996. Pp. 17-20.
A bureaucracy is a large-scale organization composed of a hierarchy of offices. In these offices, people have certain responsibilities and must act in accord with rules, written regulations, and means of compulsion exercised by those who occupy higher-level positions. The bureaucracy is largely a creation of the modem Western world. Though earlier societies had organizational structures, they were not nearly as effective as the bureaucracy. For example, in traditional societies, officials performed their tasks on the basis of a personal loyalty to their leader. These officials were subject to personal whim rather than impersonal rules. Their offices lacked clearly defined spheres of competence, there was no clear hierarchy of positions, and officials did not have to obtain technical training to gain a position.
Ultimately, the bureaucracy differs from earlier methods of organizing work because it has a formal structure that, among other things, allows for greater efficiency. Institutionalized rules and regulations lead, even force, those employed in the bureaucracy to choose the best means to arrive at their ends. A given task is broken up into a variety of components, with each office responsible for a distinct portion of the larger task. Incumbents of each office handle their part of the task (usually following preset rules and regulations), often in a predetermined sequence. When each of the incumbents has, in order, handled the required part, the task is completed. Furthermore, in handling the task in this way, the bureaucracy has used what its past history has shown to be the optimum means to the desired end.
The roots of modern thinking on bureaucracy lie in the work of the turn-of-the-century German sociologist Max Weber. His ideas on bureaucracy are embedded in his broader theory of the rationalization process. In the latter, Weber described how the Occident [the countries of Europe and the Western Hemisphere] managed to become increasingly rational -- that is, dominated by efficiency, predictability, calculability, and nonhuman technologies that control people. He also examined why the rest of the world largely failed to rationalize. As you can see, McDonaldization is an extension of Weber's theory of rationalization. For Weber, the model of rationalization was the bureaucracy; for me, the fast-food restaurant is the paradigm of McDonaldization.
Weber demonstrated in his research that the modern Western world had produced a distinctive kind of rationality. [Remember this for CULF 3330:Identify of the West.] Various types of rationality had existed in all societies at one time or another, but none had produced the type that Weber called formal rationality. This is the sort of rationality I refer to when I discuss McDonaldization or the rationalization process in general.
What is formal rationality? According to Weber, formal rationality means that the search by people for the optimum means to a given end is shaped by rules, regulations, and larger social structures. Individuals are not left to their own devices in searching for the best means of attaining a given objective. Weber identified this as a major development in the history of the world: Previously, people had been left to discover such mechanisms on their own or with vague and general guidance from larger value systems (religion, for example). After the development of formal rationality, they could use rules to help them decide what to do. More strongly, people existed in social structures that dictated what they should do. In effect, people no longer had to discover for themselves the optimum means to an end; rather, optimum means had already been discovered and were institutionalized in rules, regulations, and structures. People simply had to follow them. important aspect of formal rationality, then, is that it allows individuals little choice of means to ends. [Because] the choice of means is guided or even determined, virtually everyone can (or must) make the same, optimal choice.
Weber praised the bureaucracy, his paradigm of formal rationality, for its many advantages over other mechanisms that help people discover and implement optimum means to ends. The most important advantages are the four basic dimensions of rationalization (and McDonaldization).
First, Weber viewed the bureaucracy as the most efficient structure for handling large numbers of tasks requiring a great deal of paperwork. As an example, Weber might have used the Internal Revenue Service, for no other structure could handle millions of tax returns so well.
Second, bureaucracies emphasize calculability, or the quantification of as many things as possible. Reducing performance to a series of quantifiable tasks helps people gauge success. For example, an IRS agent is expected to process a certain number of tax returns each day. Handling less than the required number of cases is unsatisfactory performance; handling more is excellence.
The quantitative approach presents a problem: little or no concern for the actual quality of work. Employees are expected to finish a task with little attention paid to how well it is handled. For instance, IRS agents may manage large numbers of cases and, as a result, receive positive evaluations from their superiors. Yet they may actually handle the cases poorly, costing the government thousands, or even millions, of dollars in uncollected revenue. Or, the agents may handle cases so quickly that taxpayers may be angered by the way the agents treat them.
Third, because of their well-entrenched rules and regulations, bureaucracies also operate in a highly predictable manner. Incumbents of a given office know with great assurance how the incumbents of other offices will behave. They know what they will be provided with and when they will receive it. Outsiders who receive the services the bureaucracies dispense know with a high degree of confidence what they will receive and when they will receive it. Again, to use an example Weber might have used, the millions of recipients of checks from the Social Security Administration know precisely when they will receive their checks and exactly how much money they will receive.
Finally, bureaucracies emphasize control over people through the replacement of human with nonhuman technology. As you will recall, nonhuman technologies (machines and rules, for example) tend to control people, while human technologies (hammers and pens, for example) tend to be controlled by people. Indeed, the bureaucracy itself may be seen as one huge nonhuman technology. Its nearly automatic functioning may be seen as an effort to replace human judgment with the dictates of rules, regulations, and structures. Employees are controlled by the division of labor, which allocates to each office a limited number of well-defined tasks. Incumbents must do those tasks, and no others, in the manner prescribed by the organization. They may not, in most cases, devise idiosyncratic ways of doing those tasks. Furthermore, by making few, if any, judgments, people begin to resemble human robots or computers. Having reduced people to this status, it is then possible to think about actually replacing human beings with machines. This has already occurred to some extent: in many settings, computers have taken over bureaucratic tasks once performed by humans. One can imagine that once the technology has been developed and priced reasonably, robots will begin replacing humans in the office.
Similarly -- the bureaucracy's clients are also controlled. They may receive only certain services and not others from the organization. For example, the Internal Revenue Service can offer people advice on their tax returns, but not on their marriages. People may receive those services in a certain way only. For example, people can only receive welfare payments by check, not cash.
Thus, the bureaucracy, like the fast-food restaurant, is well-defined
by four basic components of formal rationality: efficiency, predictability,
quantification, and control through the substitution of nonhuman
for human technology.