Year: 1973
Type: article
Abstract: The present paper is a summing-up of a more extensive work on the ideal type of ‚bureaucracy‘ of Soviet and ‚people’s democratic‘ provenience, and on the necessary conceptual delineation of that ideal type from the conventional notion of bureaucracy. - There are three dimensions relevant to the activities of any administrative organization - viz., one that comprises all the problems and performances relating to ‚humanization‘, and two others connected in the same way with ‚power‘ and ‚techniques‘, respectively. In a similar pattern there also do exist three organizational models, each one corresponding to one of those dimensions, and all in common having been decisive in shaping the manifest type of cadres’ administration: this administration has its roots in efforts to combine the MARXIAN concept of a universal and humanized administration with LENIN’S notion that administration is to be viewed as a transmitting agency (thus bringing ,power‘ into the picture); cadres’ administration, based on those two totality-aspiring conceptions, consequently represents the opposite of bureaucratic administration in the conventional sense (meaning an organization that is founded on the principles of particularism and of ,pure techniques‘). Supplementing the theoretical and socio-historical analysis of the subject, there is a presentation of empirical materials, in which the differentiation outlined above is reflected.
Source: Zeitschrift für Soziologie
Author: Bálint Balla
Institution: Technische Universität Berlin
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W112418207