Publisher: Heinemann, 1976, 412 pages
ISBN: 0-435-82473-2
Keywords: Management
Professor Jaques' new book sets out the most significant advance in the understanding of bureaucracy since Max Weber's Theory of Social and Economic Organization. In sharp contrast to other writers, he demonstrates that, properly organized, bureaucracy is not inevitably monolithic and stultifying, but can make a prime contribution to pluralism and the open society.
A rigorous and systematic definition of bureaucracy is used to cover all employment systems — in industry and commerce, public and social administration, education, and in religous and military organization.
The theory is based upon the discovery of a universal and uniform underlying structure in the stratification of managerial or work levels in the bureaucratic hierarchy. The postulate is made, and evidence presented, that this uniform underlying stratification is an expression of discontinuity in trhe distribution of work-capacity in human populations.
The book covers a wide range of important social and economic issues: level of work in bureaucracy as the hard core of socio-economic status system; elimination of labour exploitation with the retention of productive economic competition; the phenomenology of work and of social interaction in work; nature of role relationships and social structure; interplay of social and individual personality in the funtioniong of social systems; social stratification and bureaucratic stratification; employee participation; equitable differential payment; career progress and level of aspiration.
The theories presented are of importance not only to socilogy but to social psychology, social anthropology, economics, politics, and social philosophy. They are also of practical concern to organization theory and the behavioural sciences in business and administrative studies.
This is one of the most ignored and probably most influential books on management and organization during the 20th century!
Mandatory reading, as this is the gurus secret source! You certainly can't loose by reading, and it will probably change your outlook while reading it.
The only complaint is that it is written in highly academic jargon, with words you may have to use a dictionary to understand the first time, especially if you're non-British and non-university educated.
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