Practice question · Select all that apply
Which are pathologies of bureaucracy identified by later critics rather than by Weber himself?
Hints
- Three are mechanisms described after Weber; one is his own phrase.
- The iron cage is Weber's.
Show the answer
- B. Merton's goal displacement, where rule-following becomes an end in itself
- C. The self-reinforcing cycle in which each failure produces another rule
- D. Rules surviving the purposes that justified them
Why
The iron cage is Weber's own, and including it here is the trap. He named the costs of rationalisation in general terms; Merton and Crozier supplied the specific organisational mechanisms by which a well-designed bureaucracy degrades into the thing the word now insults.
Practise The Weberian Model of Bureaucracy
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