Employees sometimes do things that exceed what is expected of them by the organization. However, they more often do less, perhaps far less, than they are expected to do. For example, contrary to the dictates of the formal organization, the most important things that take place in an organization may never be put down in writing. Employees may find it simply too time-consuming to fill out every form or document they are supposed to use. Instead, and contrary to the organization’s rules, they may handle many tasks orally so that if anything goes wrong, there is no damning evidence that could jeopardize careers and even the organization as a whole.
Ask Yourself
What specific bureaucracy came to mind when you read about Weber’s definition of this type of organization? Is there an informal organization at work there? How is it different from the formal organization? In what ways is it more effective or less effective than the formal one is?
The problem for organizations (and individuals) is somewhat different in the digital age. Rather than too little information in writing, the danger is now that too much information is in written form, such as e-mail messages, posts on the internet, tweets, blogs, and the like. Of particular concern are posts that can exist forever and be widely and endlessly circulated. This danger was pointed out in 2016 when WikiLeaks released some of the Democratic Party’s e-mails. They showed that the party, which is supposed to be neutral, favored Hillary Clinton over her close rival, Bernie Sanders, for the party’s nomination for the presidency in 2016. The release of the e-mails arguably contributed to Clinton’s losing the election (Sanger and Perlroth 2016).
Snapchat attempts to deal with the problem of information remaining on the internet forever by automatically deleting posts and photos after a few seconds (except for photos added to users’ “stories,” which remain for 24 hours). While this seems comforting, those who receive the information and photos can save them by taking screenshots. The sender is notified about any screenshots, but there are ways for those taking them to conceal their identities. Nothing ever really goes away on the internet.
While in some bureaucracies, power is meant to be dispersed throughout the offices, it often turns out that an organization becomes an oligarchy. That is, a small group of people at the top illegitimately obtain and exercise far more power than they are supposed to have. This can occur in any organization. Interestingly, this undemocratic process was first described by Robert Michels ([1915] 1962) in the most unlikely of organizations—labor unions and socialist parties that supposedly prized democracy. Michels called this “the iron law of oligarchy” (Martin 2015). Those in power manipulate the organization so that the leaders and their supporters can stay in power indefinitely. At the same time, they make it difficult for others to get or to keep power. While oligarchy certainly develops in some organizations, in reality its occurrence is neither “iron” nor a law. That is, most organizations do not become oligarchical. Nevertheless, the tendency toward oligarchy is another important organizational process not anticipated by Weber’s ideal-typical bureaucracy.
Weber’s model also makes no provision for infighting within organizations. However, internal squabbles, and sometimes outright battles, are an everyday phenomenon within organizations. This is particularly evident in the government and other very large organizations, where one branch or office often engages in pitched turf battles with others. For example, an anonymous official in the Trump administration published an op-ed piece in the New York Times dealing with the systematic resistance to Trump and his policies (Anonymous 2018). In Fear, Woodward (2018) details highly dysfunctional turf battles in the Trump administration. The secretaries of Defense and State not only battled one another but also an array of Trump’s advisers. More striking were the “nasty” and “bloody” battles among those advisers, including Trump’s daughter who had no official position in the administration but who called herself the “first daughter” (Woodward 2018, 145; 237).
Beyond the battles, bureaucratic principles are routinely ignored in the Trump administration. On several occasions officials, frightened by Trump’s proposed, ill-thought-out actions, took worrisome memos off his desk or “slow walked” actions proposed by Trump so that he would forget them or they would not be implemented. Trump himself undermined the formal organization by, for example, telling an assistant to bypass his chief of staff and come directly to him.
Contemporary Organizational Realities
As the social world has changed, so too has sociological thinking about many things, including organizations. New concepts are supplementing the concept of bureaucracy to enrich our understanding of these new realities. These concepts include gendered and network organizations and others that help inform our efforts to deal with organizational challenges such as sexual harassment, outsourcing of jobs, McDonaldization, and globalization.
Gender Inequalities
Weber’s model does not account for discrimination within organizations. In the ideal bureaucracy, any worker with the necessary training can fill any job. However, as “gendered organization” theorists, such as Joan Acker (1990), have shown, bureaucracies do not treat all workers the same. Jobs are often designed for an idealized worker—one who has no obligations except to the organization. Women, and sometimes men, who carry a responsibility for child-rearing can have difficulty fitting this model. Women may face the “competing devotions” of motherhood and work (Wharton and Blair-Loy 2006). Some women who face inflexible workplaces due to gendered organizational practices and family obligations opt to become self-employed (Thébaud 2016). Organizations may also discriminate (consciously or unconsciously) in hiring and promotions, with white men (who tend to populate the higher levels of bureaucracies) being promoted over women and minorities. Some women in male-dominated business organizations find that they hit a “glass ceiling”—a certain level of authority in a company or organization beyond which they cannot rise (Gorman and Kmec 2009; Wasserman and Frenkel 2015). This is also true in other contexts, such as medicine and higher education (Hart 2016; Zhuge et al. 2011). Women can see the top—hence the “glass”—but cannot reach it. Within other organizations, particularly female-dominated ones, men can find themselves riding the “glass escalator” (Williams 1995). This is an invisible force that propels them past equally competent, or even more competent, women to positions of leadership and authority (Dill, Price-Glynn, and Rakovski 2016).
In a global context, American female executives face a “double-paned” glass ceiling. There is the pane associated with the employing company in the United States, and there is a second pane women executives encounter when they seek work experience in the corporation’s foreign locales. This is a growing problem, because experience overseas is increasingly a requirement for top-level management positions in multinational corporations, but corporations have typically “masculinized” these expatriate positions and thereby disadvantaged women. Among the problems experienced by women who succeed in getting these positions are sexual harassment, a lack of availability of programs (such as career counseling) routinely available to men, a lack of adequate mentoring, and male managers who are more likely to promote male rather than female expatriates. Much of the blame for this problem lies in the structure of the multinational corporations and with the men who occupy high-level management positions within them. However, research has shown that female managers’ greater passivity and lesser willingness to promote themselves for such expatriate management positions contribute to their difficulties (Insch, McIntyre, and Napier 2008).
While most of these ideas have been developed based on studies of American organizations, they likely apply as well, or better, globally. For example, a recent study found that the glass ceiling exists in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Khuong and Chi 2017). Figure 5.2 shows where women in industrialized nations have the best chance of circumventing the glass ceiling—that is, of being treated equally in the