The rationality paradox in Weber's bureaucratic design based on Weber's hierarchical bureaucracy theory

In Weber's bureaucracy theory system, "legitimacy" and "rationality" are the two most basic concepts. All research on Weber's bureaucracy theory needs to start from these two concepts in order to Grasp the true meaning of his thoughts. In a sense, the entire Weber academic ideological system is developed on the basis of these two concepts and is a further extension and development of them. Rationality is an important theoretical presupposition of Max Weber's bureaucracy theory and a basic principle for his design of modern bureaucratic organizational models, while the concept of legitimacy is the key he uses to understand ancient bureaucracy. Compared with modern bureaucracy, various types of bureaucracy in ancient times were not rational, but why was this kind of irrational bureaucracy common in ancient China, Egypt, India, and medieval Europe? exist? Weber's explanation is that although these bureaucracies are not rational, they are legitimate.

Weber conducted comparative studies on the history of the emergence and development of bureaucracy in a series of works such as "General History of the World Economy", "Confucianism and Taoism", and "Economy and Society". He concluded that any kind of desirable rule It has a legal basis. Since bureaucracy has a long history of existence and development in human history, its legitimacy is the prerequisite for its existence. He believed that bureaucracy is the embodiment of specific relationships of power application and obedience. The possibility that an order with special content or all orders can be obeyed by a specific group of people can be called "rule". This kind of rule is mainly based on voluntary obedience. Voluntary obedience is based on the "belief system" that forms a personal value atmosphere. As an individual, only by accepting this belief system can he have consistency and continuity of actions without causing inner tension and ultimately achieve success. Voluntary obedience. Weber regarded this system of individual voluntary obedience as a legal system. The existence of this legality system enables everyone to obey orders from authority, whether these orders come from individual rulers or from abstract legal provisions, regulations and other forms of orders generated through contracts and agreements. From the perspective of power relationship, this is a "command-obey" power relationship. With this relationship of command and obedience, rule is naturally legitimate.

Furthermore, legitimacy is derived from a belief in legitimacy. Weber believes that legitimate beliefs can be divided into two categories: one is subjective legitimacy, including emotional legitimacy, value rationality, and religious legitimacy; the second category is the so-called objective legitimacy, Including the legitimacy of customs and the legitimacy of law. With the support of these two types of legitimacy beliefs, the direction of development from heart to action can be identified as four different types of actions:

(1) Emotion type action;

(2) Value rationality type actions;

(3) Traditional type actions;

(4) Purpose rationality type action.

Among these four types of actions, the first three have legitimacy only due to emotional, value rationality, religious and customary legitimacy. Only the last type of action has obtained legitimacy. Actions supported by legal legitimacy are therefore not only legal but also objectively reasonable.

Corresponding to the above four types of actions are three types of dominating behavior or three types of rule, namely charismatic, traditional and legal rule. Charismatic rule is based on the charisma of a leader with extraordinary temperament. Administrative positions are not a stable career, and there is no promotion according to normal channels. They are all directly designated by the leader's personal will. Institutions are characterized by capriciousness. Traditional rule is based on the requirement for the sanctity of customs and ancient traditions. Administrative officials are just retainers of the king, regardless of their actual talents, but must obey orders. Officials can be hereditary, and the administrative management system and officials are extremely subordinate. Legal-based rule is based on the requirements for proper behavior based on formally established rules and decrees. It is a bureaucracy as a type of legal-based rule. Among these three systems, charismatic rule does not take the form of bureaucracy. Only traditional and legal systems take the form of bureaucracy. However, among these two forms of bureaucracy, although the traditional bureaucracy is legal, it is not rational. If it is rational, it is a kind of subjective value rationality. What Weber strives for is objective rationality, that is, a bureaucracy that is both legal and rational. Therefore, the focus of all his theoretical work was on designing this legal and reasonable bureaucratic scheme.

It should be said that Weber was an idealist. In his theory of bureaucracy, he first established a concept of rationality and then designed a rational bureaucracy model. Therefore, his description of historical bureaucracy is based on rationality. The result of the analysis is that historical bureaucracies lack rationality. In this case, you need to take matters into your own hands to establish a rational bureaucracy. Of course, bureaucracy is a product of social practice and it is impossible for scholars to establish its project, but scholars can describe its theoretical model. Weber's work is of this nature. So Weber is the architect of the rational bureaucracy model. According to Weber, bureaucracy first exists as an organizational form and is the system and system within which organizations exist. This organizational form, both in the past and now, is characterized by a hierarchical system in which superiors lead and monitor subordinates, and subordinates report to superiors for approval and execution. This is the basic characteristic of all bureaucracies. However, the new feature of modern bureaucracy is that officials in bureaucratic organizations are civil servants who are hired, trained and paid according to contractual relationships. Although, as a bureaucratic organization, it is also structurally divided into high-level and low-level, so Bureaucrats are also divided into superiors and subordinates, but they work in accordance with legal provisions, so the relationship between them is not a vassalage. Because of these characteristics, modern bureaucracy has greater advantages than traditional bureaucracy. It can enable good decision-making and implementation of administrative affairs, and is precise, strict, and unified.

Specifically, the bureaucracy design based on the principle of rationality and absorbing the experience of traditional bureaucracy has the following characteristics:

First, bureaucracy is a legalized hierarchical system and should be a set of consistent and procedural command-obedience relationships. The direction of action of any official is determined by officials at a higher level. Officials are subject to non-politicized management, and evaluations of officials are mainly technical.

Second, the subordination relationship between officials is determined by a strict hierarchical sequence of positions or tasks. The power relationship does not have the personality characteristics of power, but is based on the organizational structure of the position itself. Therefore, personal emotional entanglements are required to be completely excluded. Officials in each position have clear and specific powers to ensure that everyone can act according to the rules without exceeding the scope of their authority.

Third, the relationship of personal dependence is eliminated. Since the source of power does not come from blood or hereditary factors, but from formal legal concepts and formal legal systems based on practical rationality, the work and interests of an official are not determined by the personal likes and dislikes of his superiors. , but depends on the proceduralization and objectification of actions stipulated by the system. His seniority, work experience, sense of responsibility and professionalism, etc., can all be quantified in form. In this way, the object of personal obedience is no longer the individual holding a specific position, but the specific position held by the individual. In other words, he serves the objective, impersonal organization and organizational goals.

Fourth, we have extremely perfect technical procedures and means. Under the guidance of experts, most of our daily work involves information, various knowledge, collection and summary of information, proposal and demonstration of multiple feasible decision-making plans, etc. All will have technical support, and the organizational goals and the process of establishing these goals also tend to be technical and rational. That is to say, based on the scientific and technical rational orientation, relying on various experts in management methods and approaches will promote the entire bureaucracy and organizational behavior to become more scientific and rational. Weber's rational design of modern bureaucracy is an ideal design, which is very similar to the ideal model in natural science. So, does and can such a fully rational bureaucracy exist in reality? If it is just an ideal model, the possibility of its existence in reality will be greatly reduced. Therefore, Weber had to admit that bureaucracy, as an ideal type of thinking structure, may be as rare as a physical reaction calculated in a hypothetical absolute space. In a sense, this ideal type is just a "utopia" constructed by the mind. However, Weber also believed that this ideal type was not constructed out of thin air, but came from reality itself, and was obtained by highlighting and emphasizing the typical factors in reality. Weber looked at this issue this way: "An ideal type is a concrete individual that unilaterally highlights one or more viewpoints and synthesizes many diffuse, unconnected, more or less existing, and occasionally non-existent concrete individuals. These phenomena are organized into a unified analytical structure based on those unilaterally emphasized viewpoints.” Therefore, the ideal type of bureaucracy constructed by Weber is the specific historical and realistic type. It is a spiritual product that extracts certain main properties and outstanding characteristics of individual bureaucratic organizations and synthesizes them. In the real world, it is almost impossible to find a single bureaucratic organization that possesses all the characteristics of the ideal type of bureaucracy.

Weber tried to explain the reason why he constructed the rational bureaucracy of the ideal type in his theory, that is: in the study of history, as a method of historical epistemology, the "ideal type" is a means of cognition rather than the purpose of cognition. This is not the case in sociology, where ideal types are determined by sociology's task, since sociology needs to establish general laws about events, regardless of their temporal and spatial significance. Therefore, for a sociologist, Weber believed that his task was to establish an ideal bureaucracy model. Indeed, for scientific research, Weber's view is in line with the general principles of scientific development. Therefore, it is understandable that Weber established the ideal type of rational bureaucracy. However, no matter how pure science is in constructing ideal types, it should be based on the logical integrity of science itself. If there are logical paradoxes in science itself, then the ideal type should be established on the logical fault zone. It cannot be considered a wise choice. This is true even for social science. It can abstract typical factors from social reality, but these typical factors must contain the complete totality of reality. Losing this totality means that science itself is a deformation. system. Weber's theory of bureaucracy is exactly like this. The concept of rationality that he uses as the basis of his theory is precisely a one-sided rationality without totality. How can one-sided rationality be called rational? Whether in everyday language or scientific thinking, one-sided rationality is precisely irrationality.

Therefore, unlike what some scholars believe, after Weber established the ideal type of bureaucratic organization, he should compare it with the actual situation of bureaucratic organization, but he did not do such work. In fact, whether this comparison is made or not, it has no substantive significance for Weber. Moreover, in Weber's era, bureaucracy did not fully develop and encounter structural crises like it did in the 20th century. Even if Weber made a comparison, he could not come to the conclusion of negating the ideal type of bureaucracy. It was even impossible to modify the ideal type of bureaucracy based on reality. Because in the process of constructing the ideal model of bureaucracy, Weber has fully considered the difference between the ideal model as a theoretical construction and reality. Therefore, for Weber's ideal bureaucracy model, the substantive problem is that the concept of rationality as the basis for bureaucracy design itself has a logical fracture zone.

Weber's efforts to establish an ideal bureaucracy model were carried out in historical narratives. Therefore, he regarded the formation process of bureaucracy as a process of social rationalization, a rationalization in the process of objectification and materialization of social relations. Of course, this rationalization is the result of historical development. But Weber did not believe that this rationalization process was an inevitable historical direction, but was premised on the emergence of citizens who could think and act rationally under special historical conditions. In Weber's view, as far as action is concerned, in traditional society, the self-discipline control of various elements such as the means, purpose, value, and result of action is very weak. However, in modern society, the self-discipline control of citizens' actions has become very weak. Only when it is strengthened can the rationality of actions be increased. Therefore, throughout the sociology of religion and social history research, Weber regarded the emergence of rationality, that is, the rationalization movement, as being linked to the specific historical conditions of Western society. Only in Western society did this kind of rationalization movement appear. . In the process of narrating, Weber divided the rationalization movement into action, value field and social structure. In his opinion, from the perspective of action, in traditional society, the self-discipline control over the constituent elements of action (i.e., means, purpose, value and results) was extremely limited. However, in modern society, its self-discipline control has been significantly improved. Improvement means that the rationality of actions has also been improved. This is Weber’s division of action types we mentioned earlier. He divided action types into four categories, namely purpose-reasoned action, value-justified action, emotional action and traditional action. From the perspective of value fields, in traditional society, various value fields were not differentiated but were integrated with each other. However, in modern society, various value fields have been differentiated into partial systems with relative autonomy, namely, cognitive-technical fields, aesthetic- the realm of performance as well as the moral-practical realm. At the same time, each value field is in a continuous process of rationalization and self-discipline. From the perspective of social structure, it is the transformation from traditional bureaucracy to modern bureaucracy.

Out of the need for the design of ideal bureaucracy, when Weber discussed the rationality of bureaucracy, he required an objective description of different rationalities empirically, that is, to determine the categories of rationality from the cause-and-effect relationship, thus showing that he was completely A positivist classification of bureaucracies embodying different rationalities. Therefore, Weber distinguished two kinds of rationality, namely formal rationality and substantive rationality. The so-called formal rationality means that in the relationship of domination, the mode of action tends to be quantified as much as possible in terms of its means and procedures, so that the action itself and the prediction of the procedure for achieving the goal after the action is completed become a task that can be calculated . This is a purely objective rationality. Substantive rationality is entirely based on value judgment. It evaluates the purpose and consequences of actions, such as whether it conforms to religious beliefs or religious teachings, whether it conforms to habits, whether it shows some intellectual virtue or good deeds, etc. Substantive rationality is only a kind of rationality related to ethics or moral ideals. It only realizes value judgments on actions, strongly emphasizes the social concerns of actions, and ignores the efficiency of actions. This is a kind of subjective rationality. On the contrary, formal rationality regards not only the course of action as calculable, but also the purpose itself as calculable. Weber believes that the purpose actually means the rationalization of social order, or to make it show the maximum program calculability. Therefore, formal rationality is instrumental-purpose, while substantive rationality is ethical and moral ideal. Weber emphasized that substantive rationality is the essential feature of the traditional social order. In modern society, this rationality has basically lost the social atmosphere of its existence. The increasingly complex production and life in modern society will inevitably require the efficiency of action to be given a very important position, and social management will inevitably become more and more bureaucratic. In economic life, governed by the laws of capitalist market economy, a company has to handle its business continuously, accurately and as cost-effectively and as quickly as possible; on the issue of modern nation-states, modern states The rule increasingly relies on bureaucratic management methods, which makes its military, judicial and administrative personnel increasingly separated from the material means of administrative organizations. Bureaucrats who receive wages and salaries are completely freed from the conditions of office they were assigned in the past. It has been widely and universally employed; in the field of public life, newspapers and other public opinion not only formed a mechanism with a clear division of labor and orderly operation internally, but also increasingly interacted with the bureaucratic country externally. Trusted and guided by professionally trained activists or party officials of all types. At the same time, the public space in society is increasingly bureaucratic: in party politics, bureaucratic political parties find ways to technically strengthen their ability to manipulate the people's indifference and "consent", and carefully calculate the process of their actions in advance. and achievable results. Since formal rationality is caused by the trend of social development, it is logical to highlight the formal rationality and objectivity of bureaucracy in the design of modern ideal bureaucracy. Because, Weber arbitrarily pointed out, "from the perspective of rational action based on purpose, value rationality is always irrational."

In view of the practical difficulties of bureaucracy and the many criticisms it has received in theory, contemporary Weber believers always emphasize that Weber's concept of rationality is based on narrative needs when defending Weber. Of course, judging from Weber's works, the concept of rationality does indeed appear as a narrative need and is a narrative framework used to analyze and understand modern society, especially bureaucracy. In fact, the situation is not that simple. Because, for a thinker, there is no pure narrative. All narratives serve the construction of theory. What's more, Weber was not recognized by the academic community as a philosopher, but as a sociologist. attracted the attention of academic circles. His goal is not to use the concept of rationality to analyze modern society, but to construct an ideal bureaucracy model based on the concept of rationality. As for Weber's tireless distinctions between types in his works, it does not prove that he is just a typologist in the field of sociology. The so-called objective and empirical factual descriptions that are not affected by personal values ????that he personally emphasized repeatedly do not. overshadowing his enthusiasm for constructing an ideal type of bureaucracy. Therefore, in Weber's view, the concept of rationality is ultimately subordinate to the need for the construction of the ideal bureaucracy model. It is for this reason that he separated the relationship between value rationality and purpose rationality, formal rationality and substantive rationality, abandoned the totality in theoretical pursuit and one-sidedly emphasized tool-purpose rationality and formal rationality. objectivity. Weber advocated "value neutrality" in sociological research. This value-neutral principle has also been applied as a norm to the design of bureaucratic organizations in public administration. Therefore, in bureaucracy, what people see is the value of the system, the scientific nature of the structure and the technicalization of operation, but the value of people as the main factor in this system is ignored. In this way, in the ideal model of bureaucracy, everything is subordinated to scientific rationality. This scientific rationality is Weber’s formal rationality. The ideal bureaucratic organization with formal rationality was regarded by Weber as having "more than any The technical superiority of other forms of organization," and Weber's assertion that this "fully developed bureaucratic organization compares with other organizations as machinery compares with non-mechanical forms of production" shows that Weber describes him passionately. The ideal type of bureaucracy.

Weber believed that this kind of governmental organization with a scientific structure had the advantages of fairness, science, and high efficiency. Of course, Weber also saw that bureaucracy contained the possibility of abuse of power, and there would be phenomena such as illegal behavior, inefficiency, and bureaucracy. And he specifically pointed out that the trouble with bureaucracy is that officials don't always act in the way they should, and they have a natural human tendency to try to increase their power and expand their rights. Rather than acting as a faithful servant, they seek to become masters of the portion over which they have jurisdiction. The monopoly on documents is often a very convenient weapon in their hands. By virtue of the conversion from official intelligence to confidential information, by virtue of careful processing of evidence and selective description of facts, they can dominate or strongly control the situation under the guise of administrative impartiality. to influence policy so that government ministers act like employees of their own departments or become figureheads. However, Weber's pursuit was still objectification, and the solutions he proposed were still scientific. Because he designed a plan to cure bureaucratic diseases in this way: first, implement a collegial system within administrative functional departments to expand the scope of decision-making participation; second, change the non-professional phenomenon of administrative heads, because as long as non-professional officials rely on professionals help, then the real decision is always made by the latter; third, implement direct democracy to ensure that government officials are directly subject to parliamentary supervision. Therefore, solving the problems caused by bureaucracy does not come from within the bureaucracy. The key to solving bureaucratic diseases can only be found outside the bureaucracy.

It should be admitted that Weber's thoughts are contradictory. As a thinker deeply influenced by Enlightenment thought and modern philosophy, he had liberal beliefs and advocated personal value. However, his theory showed the suppression of individuality and elimination of initiative. Thought. In his theory of bureaucratic organizations, this contradiction was completely replaced by a one-dimensional pursuit of objectivity, and his belief in liberal and personal values ??was completely buried by the objectivity of bureaucratic organizations. Therefore, rational bureaucracy is to a large extent only an ideal or purely theoretical organizational system, and there are many conditions that are difficult to achieve in reality. The most critical issue is that Weber's bureaucracy is actually a genuine power-based system. In this system, bureaucrats are dominated by a strong fetishism of power, and bureaucrats regard the pursuit of power as the main purpose of their administrative behavior. Target. In this way, it will inevitably lead to unethical power-seeking behavior among officials. Officials will regard the way of providing good services to society through loyalty to their duties and through their own administrative actions as a very difficult way, and they will Will choose human relations, speculation and other means to obtain power. As a result, an atmosphere of mutual strife and intrigue will be created among officials, thereby increasing the internal friction of the entire bureaucracy.

Even if we avoid talking about the practical effects of bureaucracy, the theoretical analysis of Weber's description of bureaucracy can still see its fatal flaw, that is, behind this objective and formalized rationality, there is a lack of understanding of human beings. negation. We know that from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, God was kicked out of the pursuit of rationality. The entire development of modern thought was further deepened under this theme, but how to eliminate the interference of God in the irrational field and The affirmation of human value only began after Nietzsche declared the death of God. Therefore, the mainstream philosophy from the Renaissance to Nietzsche is a progress from affirming human rational value to irrational value, while Weber's bureaucracy theoretical design is opposed to this mainstream philosophy. Because it one-sidedly emphasizes objective formal rationality in this scientific and technical design, thereby fundamentally denying people, which is tantamount to announcing the death of people in the bureaucracy. Because in Weber's view, modern bureaucracy means the bureaucracy of the entire modern life, and the complete bureaucracy of modern life means that tool-teleology has completely controlled the general social psychology. While the process of capitalist rationalization eliminates and displaces other forms of life, it also tends to become an end in itself. This tool-teleology echoes the efficiency of modern society. It may be a manifestation of social progress and an overwhelming world trend in the process of social development. All areas of daily life tend to become dependent on disciplined hierarchies, rational specialization, and the organized instrumentalization of individuals themselves and their activities.

We believe that the trend of historical progress is human development. In the construction of public administration systems, the goal is also the all-round development of human beings. People are the highest value of society, the driving force of social development, and the purpose of social development. This is a social-based value orientation. Because the Duhui-centered approach is actually people-centered, that is, it emphasizes human status, human rights, human dignity, and emphasizes human personality development and value realization. This is the overall goal and the most basic value orientation of the construction of the public administration system. In order to achieve this overall goal and basic value orientation, the internal consideration of its system construction must be to improve the ethics of administrative personnel, requiring the personal development of administrative personnel to take a different path from the human development of ordinary members of society. . If the development of ordinary members of society is achieved through the prominence of personal rights, personal dignity and personality, then administrators precisely need to respect the personal rights of others, maintain the dignity of others and serve the personality of others. In the process of development and providing guarantees, we can obtain the sublimation of our own personality, achieve perfect moral cultivation, and thus move towards all-round personal development. Therefore, for administrative personnel, the significance of human development in society as a whole lies in the realization of personal personality, and personal personality is realized through the development of morality.

From the perspective of administrative law, the power system of modern public administration is also called an administrative authorization mechanism. In this kind of administrative authorization, administrative personnel have a large part of administrative discretion. How this discretion can ensure the consistency of the administrative personnel's personal administrative behaviors with the overall goals of public administration is mainly It relies on the moral awareness of administrative personnel to provide guarantees. Of course, the institutional design of administrative laws and administrative systems seeks procedural control. However, due to the theoretical or logical paradox between procedural control itself and discretion, there will inevitably be embarrassments that are difficult to deal with in practice. Therefore, all procedural controls on administrative discretion cannot be successful. Only by moving away from the idea of ????procedural control, or by treating program control as a strong program and weak control, and highlighting the role of administrative ethics of administrative personnel as much as possible, can we provide an ideal way for administrative discretion to function.

In short, bureaucracy should not be a management system that eliminates people, but should first be a people-centered system. To be people-centered requires highlighting the subjectivity of people, and affirming the value of people and the role of their values. In this way, the objectivity and rationality of bureaucracy are transformed into human subjectivity and moral priority. Therefore, we cannot agree with the opposition between the death of man and the prosperity of the system. What we want to see is that the prosperity of the system becomes the support of man. Specifically, factors such as the legal system of public administration should become the support for the administrative behavior of administrative personnel, rather than a tool specifically used to restrict and control administrative personnel. Administrators rely on the legal system of public administration to become stronger and more effective in providing public products to society. This will lead to a situation in which the legal system and the administrative staff's subjective activities are coordinated. The administrative staff will not feel that the legal system is in opposition to him everywhere, but will feel that the legal system is supporting him everywhere.