Bureaucratic Structures Essay

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Bureaucratic structures in organisations are inherently unethical. Discuss and illustrate with appropriate examples. In recent months the economic downturn has brought to the fore a series of questions on the validity of the bureaucratic system. Particularly with regard the efficiency and level of corruption existing in the public service and administration sector. Indeed a call for public sector reform is the aim of the day. I would not attempt to defend the inadequacies and corrupt, unjust behavior that is now widely regarded as part and parcel of the bureaucratic system. However the question of whether the bureaucratic system is “inherently unethical” is not so simply distinguished. The question of ethics, morals and virtue, although of paramount importance to a lot of us, is not usually one that is generally, seriously considered in the organizational management of a capitalist society. Aristotelian and Machiavellian discourse can account for the importance of the here and now, of adapting to one’s environment and acting accordingly irrespective of any utopian notion of idealism. Therefore weather bureaucracy and its structures are “inherently unethical” or have, along with almost all other sectors of society in a booming and prosperous economy, have simply been carried away with the selfish, extravagant and overzellesness of a wealthy economy, is paramount to this discussion. The question of ethics has in my opinion become quiet illusive in today’s western society. After all the “protestant ethic” [ the notion that those who are prosperous in life must be favored by God] according to Weber gave birth to capitalism. For this reason I will examine the “ethics” of bureaucracy in the context of the society in which we live. In its simplest form bureaucracy can be described as “the system of official rules and ways of doing things that a government

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