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Max Weber
(1864-1920)
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Max Weber
Contents
Background ............................................................................................. 4
Max Weber: Social Action ...................................................................... 4
Result of work on social action ............................................................... 7
Authority ................................................................................................. 7
Max Weber: Bureaucracy ....................................................................... 8
Weber’s Ideal Bureaucracy ................................................................... 11
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Max Weber
Background
 Born in Thuringia, Germany (1864)
 Was the eldest of eight children
 Weber was a sickly child
o Suffer from physical and mental torment
 His father was a prominent liberal politician and civil servant,
 His Mother was a moderate Calvinist and very religious.
 Parents were refugees from catholic persecution
 Parents had marriage problems because of different beliefs.
 Both Weber and his brother Alfred became a sociologists and
economists.
 Passionate reader
o At age of fourteen he was writing essays about references to
Homer, Virgil, Cicero, and Livy.
o Age eighteen he entered University of Heidelberg
 He was shy and thin, his shyness quickly disappeared when
he enter a dueling fraternity.
 With this he started to drink large quantities of beer
 He was engage for 6 yrs with his cousin Emmy , ended it because of
mentally and physical problems
 Age eighteen he entered University of Heidelberg
 He was shy and thin, his shyness quickly disappeared when
he enter a dueling fraternity.
 With this he started to drink large quantities of beer
 From time to time he would serve with the German army in Strasbourg.
 In 1884, he returned and study at the University of Berlin.
 He also attended University of Gottingen but was once again interrupted
for military training.
 In 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne
o She was later a feminist
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Max Weber
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o She collected and published Weber's journal articles as books
after his death
o After his father’s death, Weber became prone to nervousness and
insomnia. He developed psychological problems and was
institutionalized in a sanitarium.
o Took over 5years to recover
He was encourage to write
o In 1903 he became co-editor of the “archiv fuer
sozialwissenschaft”
o This became the leading social science journal in Germany.
He resumed his teaching duties during WWI
In 1904, he visited the U.S, which helped him with his recovery and was
fascinated by America.
o He delivered an essay bout the social structure in Germany in St.
Louis for the congress of arts and sciences.
Between 1892 and 1905 he wrote a series of essay and speeches, which
it addresses to the failure of German idealism.
o These articles dealt with the social and economic conditions in
eastern Germany.
o His works were rarely published during his lifetime.
o His works slowly got translated in English.
o In 1905, “The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism,” was
published
War broke out
o Weber was the first German to opposed to it
o Criticized the ineffectiveness of German leadership
The last few years of his life, he became very political.
o Wrote many political newspaper articles.
o He was founding member of and active campaigner for the newly
organized “deutsche demokratische partei”.
o There were proposals to make him a candidate for presidency of
the republic failed.
Max Weber died of Pneumonia in June 14, 1920
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Max Weber
Max Weber:
Social Action
Four Major Types of Social Action
 Purposeful or Goal-oriented Rational Action
◦ Both goal and means are rationally chosen
 Example: An engineer who builds a bridge by the most efficient
technique of relating means to ends
 Value-oriented Rational Action
◦ Striving for a substantive goal, which in itself may not be rational but
which is nonetheless pursued
 Example: Attainment of salvation
 Emotional or Affective Motivation Action
◦ Anchored in the emotional state of the actor rather than in the
rational weighing of means and ends
 Example: Participants in the religious services of a
fundamentalist sect
 Traditional Action
◦ Guided by customary habits of thought, by reliance on “the eternal
yesterday”
 Example: The behavior of members of an Orthodox Jewish
congregation
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Max Weber
Result of work on social action
 Weber maintained that human social action in general has become more
formally rational, or careful, planned, and by deliberately matching means
to ends
 Claimed that only in modern societies does formal rationality exist in all
spheres of social action
Max Weber:
Authority
Authority
 Three main modes of authority (claiming legitimacy)
◦ Rational-legal authority
 Authority may be based on rational grounds and anchored in
impersonal rules that have been legally enacted or
contractually established.
◦ Traditional authority
 Based on the belief in the sanctity of tradition, of “the eternal
yesterday.” It is not codified in impersonal rules, but inheres in
particular persons who may either inherit it or be invested
with it by a higher authority
◦ Charismatic authority
 Rests on the appeal of leaders who claim allegiance because of
their extraordinary virtuosity, whether ethical, heroic, or
religious.
This typology of various forms of authority relations is important on several
counts. Its sociological contribution rests more especially on the fact that Weber,
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Max Weber
in contrast to many political theorists, conceives of authority in all its
manifestations as characteristic of the relation between leaders and followers,
rather than as an attribute of the leader alone.
Max Weber:
Bureaucracy
 Formal organization of the officialdom of large-scale enterprise (e.g.,
government, military, economic, religious, educational), the ideal-type of
such as organization characterized by:
◦ Clearly defined division of labor
◦ Rationality (i.e., a business-like attention to implementing goals of
the organization)
◦ Impersonal application of rules
◦ Reutilization of tasks to the degree that personnel are easily
replaceable
 This bureaucratic coordination of the actions of large numbers of people has
become the dominant structural feature of modern forms of organization.
Only through this organizational device has large-scale planning, both for
the modern state and the modern economy, become possible.
Bureaucratic Form According to Max Weber — His Six Major Principles
Before covering Weber's Six Major Principles, I want to describe the various
multiple meanings of the word "bureaucracy."
1. A group of workers (for example, civil service employees of the U. S.
government), is referred to as "the bureaucracy." An example: "The threat of
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Max Weber
Gramm-Rudman-Hollings cuts has the bureaucracy in Washington deeply
concerned."
2. Bureaucracy is the name of an organizational form used by sociologists and
organizational design professionals.
3. Bureaucracy has an informal usage, as in "there's too much bureaucracy where
I work." This informal usage describes a set of characteristics or attributes such as
"red tape" or "inflexibility" that frustrate people who deal with or who work for
organizations they perceive as "bureaucratic."
As you read about the bureaucratic form, note whether your organization
matches the description. The more of these concepts that exist in your
organization, the more likely you will have some or all of the negative by-products
described in the book "Busting Bureaucracy."
In the 1930s Max Weber, a German sociologist, wrote a rationale that described
the bureaucratic form as being the ideal way of organizing government agencies.
Max Weber's principles spread throughout both public and private sectors. Even
though Weber's writings have been widely discredited, the bureaucratic form
lives on.
Weber noted six major principles.
1. A formal hierarchical structure
Each level controls the level below and is controlled by the level above. A formal
hierarchy is the basis of central planning and centralized decision making.
2. Management by rules
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Max Weber
Controlling by rules allows decisions made at high levels to be executed
consistently by all lower levels.
3. Organization by functional specialty
Work is to be done by specialists, and people are organized into units based on
the type of work they do or skills they have.
4. An "up-focused" or "in-focused" mission
If the mission is described as "up-focused," then the organization's purpose is to
serve the stockholders, the board, or whatever agency empowered it. If the
mission is to serve the organization itself, and those within it, e.g., to produce
high profits, to gain market share, or to produce a cash stream, then the mission
is described as "in-focused."
5. Purposely impersonal
The idea is to treat all employees equally and customers equally, and not be
influenced by individual differences.
6. Employment based on technical qualifications
(There may also be protection from arbitrary dismissal.)
The bureaucratic form, according to Parkinson, has another attribute.
7. Predisposition to grow in staff "above the line."
Weber failed to notice this, but C. Northcote Parkinson found it so common that
he made it the basis of his humorous "Parkinson's law." Parkinson demonstrated
that the management and professional staff tends to grow at predictable rates,
almost without regard to what the line organization is doing.
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Max Weber
The bureaucratic form is so common that most people accept it as the normal
way of organizing almost any endeavor. People in bureaucratic organizations
generally blame the ugly side effects of bureaucracy on management, or the
founders, or the owners, without awareness that the real cause is the organizing
form.
To read more about "what is bureaucracy" and how to keep the good parts and
get rid of the bad stuff click here to go to The Bureaucracy Busting Book.
Weber’s Ideal Bureaucracy
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Max Weber