Bureaucracy Must Be Rational

Max Weber, studying society, identified 3 main stable ways of establishing domination (the expectation that a manager’s instructions will be carried out): by tradition (kinship), the leader’s charisma (regular manifestations of superhuman abilities), and bureaucracy.

Moreover, he considered bureaucracy a rational (knowledge-based) way of establishing domination; that is, a person obeys another person because that person knows more, and also on the basis of logical rules accepted by both sides (not elections, but certification). Career advancement is an important part here: it places competent managers in their positions.

As usual, the ideas were somewhat simplified, applied as best as possible (as desired), and we got what we got. Although Weber warned against this.

Reading all 1,500 pages of his book "Economy and Society" is probably not very useful, and it is not easy to buy it anymore; you can read, for example, a short excerpt.

A confirmation of the ideas expressed 100 years ago is that employees consider a robot a more objective manager. Despite the recent introduction of an "auto-manager", it appears that replacing managers with robots will occur not in the near future.