4 . THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS rational and natural theories, which have generally opposed views of organizations, open systems theories can take either a rational or natural systems approach, but they look at the relationship between organizations and their settings, such as the labor market, competitors, the community, government, and the wider culture and society. These features of the external environment may be critical sources of ideas, standards, opportunities, resources, and constraints for the organization, all of which would be overlooked if one focused on the individual organization by itself as if it were closed off from the outside world. These different approaches to the study of organizations are well-represented in the readings in this volume, as well as the controversies they have produced. Many of these controversies relate to a further distinction among theories, between those that take a relatively benign view of organizations and those that are critical of their influence on society. The benign view often focuses on what makes organizations effective, takes a managerial point of view, and sees few fundamental conflicts between the organization's rulers and its members or between the organization and the wider society. Critical approaches tend to see deep conflicts of interest between managers and workers and between the power of large organizations and the general interest. The organization's power and actions are viewed within the contest of the broader social, economic, and political structure. In this view, organizations are tools not for achieving some common group purpose but for pursuing the particular interests of an individual, subgroup, or class (Fischer and Siriarmi 1984; Perrow 1986). These contrasts are also well-represented in the readings that follow. But whatever one's perspective, the significance of the subject matter is clear. Organizations affect people's lives. Everyone spends a lot of their time in organizations. They are an important building block of society, a pervasive feature of social structure. They affect the distribution of money, power, and happiness in society by their impacts on both their members and those outside the organization. Organizations can be efficient and inefficient, rationally ordered and incoherent. They are sources of income and income inequality, satisfaction and alienation, social cohesion and division, taxes for the public good, political advocacy for diverse viewpoints, and political influence for narrow interests. They can reinforce harmful social tendencies, such as discrimination, or help ameliorate them. They provide valued goods and services but can erect obstacles to the satisfaction of needs through bureaucratic rigidity, the promotion of materialism for its own sake, and degradation of the environment. Understanding organizations as a goal in itself is worthwhile, as is the desire to use this knowledge to improve their performance. But understanding organizations is also a step toward understanding how modern society functions and how we can live better with organizations and possibly make them serve our ends more effectively, or at least understand better the problems to be faced (Gouldner 1954, p. 2441). RATIONAL SYSTEMS I Classic Theories of Bureaucracy and Administration A. Early Definitions of Organization and Management B. Scientific Management and the Treatment of Labor A. Early Definitions of Organization and Management Max Weber The sociology of organizations begins with the work of the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920), whose work on bureaucracy was first translated into English in the late 1940s (Reading 1). Weber's position as the intellectual founder of the field is interesting because, although he wrote from a historical perspective and was mainly concerned with changing patterns of political authority and governmental organization, most subsequent research focuses on business organizations and has little interest in the kinds of historical comparisons that motivated Weber. Yet Weber's ideas remain a central contribution rich with implications, though not unchallenged by later writers. Weber was a rational systems theorist who believed that bureaucracy was the most efficient form of organization and a pillar of modern society. Americans today do not usually think of bureaucracy as efficient. Indeed, European writers and popular opinion scorned the rigidity, pettiness, and excessive influence of their government bureaucracies as early as the late eighteenth century (Albrow 1970). However, Weber's belief in bureaucracy's technical superiority makes more sense when it is compared to previous forms of state administration, and especially when seen in light of the spectacular success and discipline of the Prussian civil service and army, which turned Germany into a major European power after their reorganization in the nineteenth century in response to Prussia's defeat by Napoleon in 1806 (Albrow 1970). Weber compared modern bureaucratic authority to two other kinds of authority, charismatic and traditional. Charismatic authority is based on the unique personal s of an exceptional individual, such as a religious prophet or magnetic 6 . THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS political leader, rata than ^^«1— * emergence of ^7 ndrttos L ľvóoft leader's vision. Charismatic oppose established rules »»e, ™™°siye accomplishments, but because leaders can inspire their followers to mp ^ achievements can- such people are rare and eventually pass £™ lish a more conven- loo«op««ttonsb^cmpo^»*2 as monarchies, is based on Authority in traditional P°^cal syrtroi ,rind ,es such as the heredi-long-standing and seldom queshoned, often sacred, p P ^^ ^ tary superiority of nobles, ^^^ 'rot Traditional authority has necessarily related to one s abitóy to petto™ ^ ^ al great stabihty-nearly aU of tama^h**y because ft ^ ^ d on the authority systems-but ate> cto^m .^ (o make d technical qualifications or effectiveness <«M 0/auülority, Weber described I„ contrast to charismatic ^T^^- Bureaucracies are governed by boreaucn^asai^-lcgdfamrf^y „oWmally. wlthoUt a set of impersonal rules and P^ures that » ^ , ^ ratjonally regard to «he personal characteris«- °J P—^^ employ technically designed to serve some broader pmpae. responsibility in a logical qualified, full-time experts assigned^to T*"^s JUinates, and access division of labor. There ,s a ff^ľ^™ Subordinates obey superiors at to positions is based on knowledge and seniority S ^^ ^ work because they occupy a» f ^^Si holder possesses. The office not because of any personal ch*™™St^'ished ftom that belonging to the holder's personal property is cleanly »»^ is extensive use of «re- organization, rather than —gled^thit, and Me usuaU rrr^ÄTy-^rfeal breakthroughs m the rational further with traditional forms o autory. traditioy ^ ^ tion was not based on ^pe^nce but some com ^ ^^ ^ religious status, personal loyalty, or f^ship ,on ^ m a at me «him of superiors. They ^^ for SL 'work. The division of labor potíme basis and had no P^£T££ with overlaps and gaps in author-Long different functions was often haphaz^d, ot were arbitrary_ ity and responsibilities Decisions ««based & ^con_ depending on the individual making * ™ r tems were primitive. Office sistent application of principle, ^"Xces provided to them by the orga-holders often had property ^™**££Z rights to a share of tax receipts m nization, such as the right to sell ""^nal wi official property often areas under their administration. This nrangM > asowces t0 oper. gave officials a motivation o overtax^therufa s^ubj ^^ ^^ L independently of the ™ ^Xľcľtroľoveľresources or distinguish what ing difficult, because it was hard to Keep cun Organizations as Rational Systems I • 1 belonged to the organization and to the officials holding positions within it. In this context, it is easy to see why Weber would see rationality and efficiency as defining features of modern bureaucracy. A number of these contrasts also hold for the comparison of bureaucratic and charismatic authority, which has an even more personalistic, fluid, and unstable quality than traditional authority. For Weber, the use of expert specialists, impersonal norms, written documents, and the discipline of a command hierarchy give bureaucratic organizations a reliability, regularity, and precision in the execution of tasks that no other form of authority equals. In a bureaucracy, each member repeatedly executes a particular function according to prespecified standards in the service of a larger collective goal. It is not surprising that Weber famously described bureaucracy as a giant human machine, symbolizing not only its efficiency, but also its dehumanizing potential; and he also believed its further extension into all areas of social life was inevitable. Weber believed modernity meant rationality and the spread of a scientific approach to living, and he saw bureaucracy as the embodiment of these principles. By dividing tasks into logical pieces and parceling them out to full-time specialists, bureaucracies were ideally suited to accomplishing complex jobs of all sorts on a large scale. Modernity meant the spread of bureaucracy as the scale of tasks and the rationality with which they were approached increased. Not only the government civil service, but also churches, political parties, interest groups, armies, hospitals, charities, voluntary associations, business enterprises, indeed all large organizations become increasingly bureaucratic insofar as they require continuous administrative work by qualified professionals. Even intimate spheres such as the family are affected by government child welfare regulations, schools, and the social service bureaucracy. Weber predicted that socialist economies would be even more bureaucratic than capitalist systems, despite their Utopian aspirations, because a planned economy requires collection of more technical knowledge than market economies and tries to exercise more conscious and directive control over the economy through government planning—a perceptive insight considering that Weber died before the Soviet system took shape. Though developed as part of a comparative historical investigation, Weber's contrast between bureaucratic rationality and nonbureaucratic principles of organization applies to many contemporary situations. The separation of personal and organizational property would seem an obvious distinction today, but corporations and government agencies have had to develop increasingly strict rules regarding the value of gifts that purchasing managers and others with power to award contracts may accept from suppliers or potential contractors. If someone runs a very small business as an avocation and it grows, then at a certain point he or she will have to set up a business account separate from his or her personal finances to keep clear track of the business profits. The owner will also face the problem of how to choose a successor if the company is to continue to operate after current owner-manager retires or dies, just like a charismatic or other person-centered collectivity. Succession is a problem for nonprofits as well. Media reports regularly describe exceptionally successful social service organizations that generate excitement and hope that their achievements can be replicated elsewhere, but that owe their MicĽĽss m ;m uiilimiíiIIv energetic and charismatic leader rather than to THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS — -i 1.4 V.. mm «- i**- -í ■»■T*. -^S > a_jiŕst*4 »> .4 -; -cr^^v . Standard formula. ^£ž££gJÍ££ZXZZ« problem when its charismatic leader wthtew' lved the largest share of fizzled into irrelevanee just eight Y^™ £ 1992. Authoritarian govern-votes of any ted party ^^^Xr than a rational-legal bast ments run by ^^^IZlsľúZ their ease the failure to plan for a "Both personahstic political orgamzu™ ndJ^^ ^^^ tempted to fall back on traditional »*« *a" ' ^ afemty or ment sion procedures. rationality, precision, and calculation Weber placed such a great empha««ationah y P contemporary reader i„ bureaucratic administiation »d ™°^ľ Holever, these principles also have might find his assertions puzzlmgly^obvou^*o ^ ^ that Weber „rote relevance for both the recent past ^^Q t U.S. corporations, General about the spread of bureaucracy one of the tog ^^ ^ der Motors, entered a cnsis that would ^"^ ^ „ineteenth-century style entre-and then-president of GM, was a ^^f™6^ or procedures and who ran ^eneur wno had little ^^J^^l htľmemoirs, Alfred Sloan, ^S^it^Ä^ssionsofhtsboss: X was of two minds about M, ^itÄTSTx Ä*Jt« tíľn his generous human qualities, and ,h!?^ÍOaaed himself. Important decisions sloan gave an examPie T-*rr:sS~ building in Detroit that was to be the U^est m tn Boft sloan Bulldml though later it was renamed^he Genera Mo ^ d ^ SS Ä0 ^ —-■*- a suitable site for the n building, giving a number of reasons: X mentioned diese thmgs to Mr Oa.nt, — * ^S « £.%"f- ^parent reason, at some apartment house, . H - ^ ^ f we wanted, and turned to me and s d ^^J^ decide to pay for them. I us and M, Prentis Ithe GM ^^^^ live in Detroit. (Sloan 1963, p. 26) wasn't in the real-estate business. I didn t even a ■„ 1Q1Q Though this project was success The events Sloan described «^^SSi^ntto resign as president o. ul, by 1920, GM's creditors and ^f^f^A chaotic expansion plan ha, the company he had ^^^^oBUit was discovered using hi collided with a downturn in the economy, Organizations as Rational Systems I • 9 personal wealth and credit to try to prop up GM's stock price. This tied the organization's success to Durant's personal fortunes more than GM's backers found comfortable. Durant was successful at founding a very large corporation, but did not know how to organize or operate it on a logical basis. Rationality in business decision making was not always an obvious or standard matter in American corporations, even by 1920. The problem is repeated today in many small- and medium-size businesses that grow larger. They often face difficulties when informal procedures and intuitive decision making by family members or other nonprofessionals are no longer adequate to solve new and larger problems. Leaders of the organization then face the need to formalize procedures, add more structure to their operations, and hire outside expertise they did not need when problems were simpler. The organization moves away from a family or informal basis and toward a more bureaucratic basis (see Reading 24). Sloan, who became president of GM shortly after Durant's resignation, reorganized the company along lines that set the standard for the modern American corporation. Though many would come to see his creation as too rigidly bound to bureaucratic rules and procedures in a later, less stable era (see Reading 25), there is no doubt that the company could not have continued to operate in the personahstic and haphazard fashion of Durant. Another key insight from Weber's work actually emerges from one of its flaws or ambiguities. Sometimes, Weber suggests that bureaucratic authority is based on position in the hierarchy of command, but other times he suggests it is based on expert knowledge; indeed, Weber considered them closely related so that those making most decisions had highly developed expertise. Weber did not clearly distinguish managers, who give directions, from professionals, who apply technical knowledge. In the modern corporation, this difference is reflected in the difference between "line" and "staff" departments. Line management forms a clear hierarchy of authority from the chief executive to division, department, or plant managers and first-line supervisors, and is responsible for the organization's core activities, such as production. Staff provides advice, support, and control in areas such as research and development, personnel, and accounting. Weber's failure to distinguish the two kinds of bureaucratic authority is notable, because the line-staff distinction originated in the Prussian army's use of a general staff to advise commanders on technical military matters (Wren 1987, p. 149). More important, these two kinds of authority are often in tension with one another in modern organizations, as subsequent sections will show. Line management almost always has more formal and informal power in most organizations, whereas staff has more technical expertise and can control certain levers of power as a result, which can lead the two kinds of functions to conflict (see Reading 29). An exception to the generally inferior position of staff is organizations whose principal outputs are professional services, such as universities or hospitals, in which case there is a situation of plural authority, and a large part of the administrators' job is serving the professionals. Because internal relations among professionals are usually more egalitarian and collegial, some critics of bureaucratic organizations see professional organizations as an alternative model for organizations in general (Heckscher and Donellon 1994). Even though Weber tended to conilate hierarchical and expert authority, subsequent sociologists who ied the distinction have used it as a fruitful basis for understanding a 10. THE SOCIOLOGY 0* ORGANIZATIONS ^"~ *■ v. J** %«/'■■' )F ORGANIZATION it in detail, he recognized that tew 8 ,iaments, business or P™^10 rf organon such as ft-^mportant form of legate authon i Organizations as Rational Systems /»li 1930s. Unlike Weber, Fayol was not an academic but a mining engineer who became chief of a large French coal-mining and steel company. Toward the end of his career, Fayol formulated general principles of management or "acknowledged truths" that he thought applicable to all large organizations, public and private. As a practitioner as well as a thinker, Fayol did not have the same kind of misgivings regarding bureaucracy as Weber had. Fayol described the bureaucratic organization in terms similar to Weber's. A division of labor and specialization of function allows administrators to develop specialized knowledge and proficiency in their tasks. A chain of authority ensures coordination, discipline, and constancy of purpose. As one of Fayol's followers, Luther Guliek, reasoned, work, once divided, needs to be coordinated and knit back together according to a central design by a "single directing executive authority" (Guliek and Urwick 1977, p. 6). Individuals and departments need to subordinate their interests to those of the organization. Top management provides a unified sense of direction for the organization, but circumstances will dictate the degree to which discretion and decision-making must be centralized in the hands of superiors or decentralized to subordinates. Above all, Fayol emphasized the need for order, discipline, and rationality, citing the military as a positive example. Fayol wrote that the function of management is to plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control. The language has a highly rationalistic tone, as do Fayol's definitions: "To prepare the operations is to plan and organize; to see that they are carried out is to command and coordinate; to watch the results is to controF (Fayol 1937, p. 103 emphasis in original). Like Weber, Fayol also spoke of each part of an organization as "only a cog in a big machine, all of whose parts must work in concert" (Fayol 1949: [1916]), but unlike Weber, he seemed less troubled by the possible human implications of this view. Still, Fayol believed that management should encourage social harmony in the organization by being fair to workers, concerned for their welfare, and competent enough to elicit their "loyalty and obedience." Indeed, Fayol had reason to consider all these to be other aspects of organization, if only secondarily. He referred in the reading to the "great strikes of miners, railwaymen, and civil servants which, in these latter years, have jeopardized national life at home and elsewhere" (Fayol 1949 [1916]). In fact, strike activity in France had increased markedly after the turn of the century, around the time Fayol was writing (Shorter and Tilly 1974, pp. 361ff.). Nor were problems restricted to employers and workers. Fayol looked favorably on the French army and believed it embodied his principles of organization (Fayol 1937, p. 110). However, in 1917, thousands of French soldiers mutinied when their commanders, safely removed from the battle lines, ordered their troops to make yet another in a series of suicidal and fruitless mass attack on German trench positions. Commanders regained control over their mutinous troops only after conceding to their demands and then executing some partici-• its to serve as examples to the rest (Smith 1994). Here is an example, close to "I'-me, of leaders whose lack of ability and sensitivity did not inspire the confi-■ice and loyalty of their subordinates, though they were able to recognize their stakes and respond to dissent from below at some point. Not all countries were lucky. Comparable, more rigidly enforced policies prompted similar mutinies Russian soldiers that contributed to the revolution that brought the Bolsheviks power. However, Fayol generally saw things from a managerial perspective, ..THESOC^OGYOKOUGAMZATK« «LI. -• )F ORGANIZATION ciflc espies of leadership MUngs did not fmd the, and these specific examy 0rganiza- hiS WntlXless Fayol confuted to the technical ^^orftoate receive Nevertheless, ťayoi reCommended mat nu ^^der, and tional structure in -«r«^ as this win lead »—o«, *- ^ fet orders from «ore than one SJ supervisors conflict bayo Bi «ill «hen the ^cnves °f ^« a(ion charts to.^l^troducedthe strong arguments f ^J^cafe areas of «sp»-^^commending and communication ^d * ** ff int0 ^ study of orga"»ement does not distinction betweenJme and st ^ ^ operatl g managem ^ that staff perform * long term ^ ^ of subordinate ^ have time to condu^oteerv t de ^ 4« m^ J^ ^ geIS foCUS, ™uTS ontemporary P^'^nesTo subordinates and Gul» made F^ C°XTn skills and aptitudes, and ^Z^jobs in an hierarchy explicit Peopto dtffcr«. ed ^ ^rg^ ^ ^ greater P»ficienChyo^e station leads to coordinaü™ pr ^^ office or factory, however,^p r 0VMall taskmUfade torn^^. possibility that the centralP™?0 function. For Gultck,*"°™ who has slon of labor uilu d Urwick 1977 [193 /]j. ny r m Both Weber andFay^ resm «^ designed ol used to ^J^,. zation. Organization are en ^ ^ proper desgn 01 J cy goals, and the question they d ^ t meanun«^ Reflecting the commonsense vi Organizations as Rational Systems I »13 to explain the reasons for this rigidity. In order to perform reliably, bureaucracies require their members to adhere strictly to rules, but this leads members to treat the rules as ends in themselves. Because conformity is clearly rewarded in the organization's rule book while departures from the rules put an official in uncharted waters, officials have a positive incentive to be cautious and refuse to make exceptions. Officials also derive their professional identity from consistent application of the established rules, irrational as that may be sometimes. However, another source of inflexibility is the norm of impersonality, which requires an official to treat individual cases according to an equal standard and which we might view as more justified. Merton's work is only one of the first to engage the large question of the merits of the bureaucratic model, which is a central debate throughout history of organization studies. B. Scientific Management and the Position of Labor Weber and Fayol discussed organizational structure and functioning from the perspective of managers and civil servants. Another classic rational systems thinker, Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), is best known for his views on how to organize factory work and manage blue-collar workers. Taylor came from an affluent family in suburban Philadelphia and made the unusual decision to drop out of Harvard to become a machinist apprentice. Taking a job at Midvale Steel as a common laborer, Taylor rose to chief engineer within six years, earning a mechanical engineering degree along the way. In his different positions at Midvale, Taylor experimented with methods to improve output and developed a method and philosophy later called scientific management. Around the turn of the century, he became a business consultant and began publishing his ideas, which quickly found a wide audience. Until his death, Taylor promoted scientific management with missionary zeal, and he became the center of an efficiency movement, even craze, throughout United States and within international industry, teaching courses in scientific management during the early years of the Harvard Business School (1909-1914; Wren 1987). Although few businesses applied Taylor's principles exactly as he prescribed, his practical influence on organizations was enormous, but also controversial. t Large-scale factories first began to eclipse small-scale craft production in the nineteenth century, but management techniques did not always change as rapidly, as is clear from Durant's performance at GM as late as 1920. On the shop floor as well as in the office, knowledge, rules, and procedures were relatively unsystematic, but becoming more precise and methodical—a process Weber called rationalization. Above all, Taylor wanted to transform the idiosyncratic work practices he first observed at Midvale into what he considered a rigorous science of work through observation and measurement. Taylor saw that management permitted each worker to perform his tasks differently, some of these variations reflecting previous craft practices and others merely the individual method of the worker. Neither anient nor the worker knew which method was the best in terms of ■■■ ■- "icy and minimizing strain on the human body. 14.THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS «ÍL. Moreover, compared to management, workers had more intimate knowledge of the tools, methods, and materials with which they worked, and they used this knowledge to control their work pace. Small work groups used peer pressure to enforce a moderate work pace on all their members, a practice known as restriction of output. They feared that if anyone worked too hard at any time, management would require all of them to work to that standard all the time, a speed-up, without any increase in pay. This practice was known as rate cutting, because those paid by the piece would now be paid a lower rate per unit produced. Issues of restriction of output and conflicts over appropriate effort levels were to arise repeatedly in both the history of American capitalism and the literature on organizations (see Readings 7, 8,12,15, and 30). Taylor recognized an important fact about all organizations: If one works alone, the problem of work discipline is only one of self-discipline; but in a cooperative or collective work process, there is a problem of control or how to ensure that other people will do what you want them to do, sometimes known as the principal-agency problem (see Reading 21). Taylor was determined to eliminate restriction of output and break all worker resistance to management control of work methods and pace. Taylor saw his mission as recapturing knowledge and control of the production process from the workers for management by using the scientific method. He interviewed and observed workers, conducted controlled experiments to determine the most efficient techniques and maximum output levels, and devised detailed work rules and wage incentives to enforce those methods and production targets. In order to gather the necessary information, Taylor had workers perform their jobs using different methods, and he observed and timed their every movement in detail, a procedure known as time and motion study. In this fashion, Taylor determined what he thought was the one best way a job should be performed. Until this time, engineers had standardized only physical inputs; now they would standardize the human inputs. Workers would work in rigid conformity to the prescribed method and would be expected to meet the output quotas that were determined to be feasible under this system. Taylor believed workers would not feel more tired, because the experiments were designed to find the procedure that imposed the least strain on the human body. To use a contemporary phrase, Taylor believed that people worked "smarter not harder" when they used the best methods devised by scientific management. Taylor also believed that group life exerted a negative influence on workers' effort norms and that management should divide the work force and bargain with workers individually. Individuals would be paid an individual incentive wage based on their ability to meet or exceed output targets as a way to break the power of peer pressure to restrict output. Taylor believed that scientific management was in the best interests of both workers and management, because it eliminated disputes over the distribution of the economic pie by raising productivity and expanding the pie. He warned managers not to jeopardize reforms by cutting rates and confirming the fears that \&d workers to restrict their output. Even if workers were initially resistant to changing their accustomed behavior, he believed that they would embrace the new methods and work more diligently when they saw their incomes rise. Weber, Fayol, and Guliek all wrote about the importance of the division of labor, but no one carried the principle further than Taylor. As a consequence of " Organizations as Rational Systems I • 15 his techniques, workers who used to perform whole tasks, such as craft workers, found their jobs subdivided into narrow, simple tasks with a separate individual assigned to each. Perhaps the best illustration of this principle is the substitution of assembly lines and semi-skilled workers in the automobile industry for the previous hand-made methods of auto production involving predominantly craft workers (Womack, Jones, and Roos 1990). The division of labor also dictated that all planning functions previously performed by craft or other workers be transferred to growing industrial engineering departments in the managerial bureaucracy, because Taylor believed workers lacked the time, expertise, and motivation required to conduct work experiments. Workers lost all discretion and now simply followed management's orders, and all planning was to come from above. If the organization were compared to a human body, management would be the brains and workers the hands. This philosophy continued to dominate U.S. manufacturing until the early 1980s, when managers began to rethink the idea that "workers should check their brains at the door." Taylor and his followers also extended scientific management beyond the factory floor. Taylor developed methods of cost accounting that rationalized existing systems of record keeping, quite apart from labor management. One of his followers, Henry Gannt, also developed charts to track output and costs. William Leffmgwell applied Taylor's principles to clerical work and office management. Certain kinds of routine white-collar work, such as insurance claims processing, were often organized along factory lines, and similar work today, such as data entry and telephone call centers, is often still organized along scientific management principles. Lillian Gilbreth applied scientific management to home economics and wrote such books as Management in the Home: Happier Living Through Saving Time and Energy (1955). Her husband Frank, a colleague of Taylor's, applied scientific management to his personal life, such as finding ways to reduce his shaving time by seventeen seconds by using two brushes to lather his face (Wren 1987). However, most of Taylor's influence in organization studies relates to his treatment of labor. Taylor believed that workers would not mind the restructured jobs even if they were dull, repetitive, and stripped of all decision making, because the tasks would involve less physical strain and because workers could make more money than they would earn using the existing, less productive work methods. Having spent many years on the shop floor, Taylor considered himself to be a friend of the worker, though not of organized labor. He wrote during a time of labor agitation, high strike rates, and socialist politics, and he believed his methods would solve management-worker conflicts and inaugurate an era of industrial peace and cooperation. The reality was quite a bit more complex. Speed-ups and rate cutting were common in manufacturing before scientific management and, although Taylor icized the practices as fostering mistrust, employers found his method of time 1 motion study ideally suited for just this purpose of instituting speed-ups and 'ting rates. After industrial engineers or efficiency experts schooled in Taylor's thods visited an employer, workers might find themselves working consider-y harder for little or no extra pay. Workers' discontents with scientific manage-nt led to a number of well-publicized strikes and a congressional investigation ing Taylor's lifetime. Many came to view Taylorism as a management ideology )ol to control labor, output levels, and work pace. 16. THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS ORGANU*»— v, of Taylor's influence , ■ p HarrvBraveiman is the sharpest mttó of Wtor Within social seien«, Hairy Brav man views Taylonsm r "mV6 al »grow «L managers substitute^cheaper woto^ ^ ^ to ÉpfÉillllI wmmmm creations could run of *em^v , correct physical layout ot the wo find the human element rareiy \> -4, Bureaucracy and Legitimate Authority Max Weber HI The Types of Legitimate I. The Basis of Legitimacy 2. The Three Pure Types of Authority There are three pure types of legitimate domination. The validity of the claims to legitimacy may be based on: 1. Rational grounds—resting on a belief in the legality of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands (legal authority). 2. Traditional grounds—resting on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them (traditional authority); or finally, 3. Charismatic grounds—resting on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him (charismatic authority). In the case of legal authority, obedience is owed to the legally established impersonal order. It extends to the persons exercising the authority of office under it by virtue of the formal legality of their commands and only within the scope of authority of the office. In the case of traditional authority, obedience is owed to the person of the ■ľ"16. fr?"! Economy and Society; An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, by Max Weber (1924/1968). Copyright © 1968 by -ahfornia Press, for United States and Canadian rights; Mohr Siebeck for worldwide rights. Used by permission. 17