Max Webers Concept of the Iron Cage in Relation to the Rationalization of Work in the Modern World - Term Paper Example

Max Weber’s concept of the “iron cage” in relation to the rationalization of work in the modern world 2008 Weber’s concept of “iron cage” is used in relation to the modern bureaucracy and capitalism, as an epoch of rationality. This concept emphasizes the dehumanized way of doing things in the society, where members have no common high values, where a man lives and acts guided by his rationality and pursuit of economic interests, where science claims to be able to explain everything rationally and rejects existence of anything behind the seen material world. The objectives of this work being to outline the concept of the “iron cage” and critically assess it in relation to the rationalization of work in the modern world, the paper offers a consistent examination of Max Weber’s thought and teaching on rationality, bureaucracy and capitalism. Weber viewed bureaucracy as the natural stage of historical evolution and as the most efficient way of governing the modern world’s society. On the other hand, comparing it with “the iron cage” he underlined the drawbacks of bureaucratic machine and highly rational approach to life, and admitted that as a result we live in a “polar night of icy darkness." Bureaucratic approach being recognized as the out-of-date management style, the modern society tries to adopt new methods of work. Yet, work continues remaining highly rationalized. Weber’s “social action.” To understand Weber’s concept fully, one should turn to his methodology, throwing light at the way of Weber’s thinking. Weber based his methodology on the category of the ideal type, which is the interest of the epoch, “a utopia,” expressed in a form of theoretical construction, a scheme. This ideal type helps to understand the common rules of the events, proving basis for economic, esthetic and moral values of people. With the help of understanding, a sociologist should examine the actions of an individual, who puts some sense into all of his actions. An individual’s actions become social actions conditioned by two factors: subjective motivation and orientation towards others. This orientation towards others makes an action a social action. Social action can be carried out only by individuals. To understand the social processes taking place in a state, a family, or any other social group, it is necessary to understand the motives of actions of the separate individuals composing the examined social group. Yet, understanding is not sufficient for a deep insight into social processes. Rational actions should serve the instrument of sociology. Weber offers a typology of social actions based on “a continuum of decreasing rationality” distinguishing four types of actions: purpose-rational, value-rational, affectual and traditional. 1) An instrumental rational action or purpose-rational action (my translation) (Zweckrationalitat) is the ideal case. This action is entirely dominated by means-ends calculation. Purposeful, methodical, scrupulous, intelligible and efficacious, it is governed by predictability. In this action “the ends, the means and the secondary results (as well as alternatives) are all rationally taken into account and weighed,” success is the criterion of rationality. 2) Value rational (Wertrationalitat) is viewed as irrational in comparison with instrumental rational one. It is governed by ethical, aesthetical, religious, and other values and is self-valued irrespectively of the final success. 3) Affectual action is governed by emotions and passions. 4) Traditional actions are unreflective, governed by the “ingrained habituation” of traditional and customs. The industrial society is characterized by the domination of purpose-rational and value-rational actions, while the affectual and traditional actions were characteristic with the early stages of social development. Thus the modern social action is mostly rationally determined (In Elliott 1998). The theory of rationalization. Weber’s concept of rationalization has two meanings. Rationalization is interpreted as the possibility of rational maximal behavior, developed in all the spheres of human relationships. Rationalization is also distinguished as the major principle of the modern Western civilization development. Rationalization serves as the major concept in analysis of modern capitalism, where each aspect of human actions becomes a subject of calculation, measurement and control. According to Weber, rationalization of social processes leads to the following: 1) in economic sphere – the organization of production on the basis of bureaucracy and calculability of the profits through systematic accounting procedures; 2) in religion – the development of theology in intellectual strata, the disappearance of magic and replacement of religious mystery by personal responsibility; 3) in the sphere of legislation – the free establishment of laws on the basis of earlier precedents is replaced by the practice of deductive legal thinking basing on universal laws; 4) in politics – the replacement of traditional legal norms and charismatic leadership by bureaucratic apparatus; 5) in the moral sphere – great accent on the discipline and education; 6) in science – the reduction of the role of individual innovations in favor of collective researches, coordinated experiments; 6) in society – the spread of bureaucracy, state control and administration. This way the concept of rationalization became a part of Weber’s conception of the capitalistic society as an “iron cage,” inside of which an individual is deprived of religious sense and moral values, and is subject to state surveillance and bureaucratic regulation. Similar to Carl Marx’s idea of estrangement and alienation, rationalization leads to the separation of an individual from the community, church and family and placing him under the authority of legal, political and economical regulation at work, in education and in the life of the state (In Bendix 1977). Weber believed that rationalization of social action is the tendency of the world’s historical process. According to Weber, one of the major components of rationalization of actions is the replacements of the inner adherence to habitual customs and traditions by the systematic adjustment to the consideration of interests. This may lead to the entire exclusion of value-rational behavior in favor of purpose-rational one, when values are not believed in any more. When the role of purpose-rational action increases, the rationalization takes place in all the spheres of social life, in the way of thinking, feeling, and living. This is accompanied by the growing role of science as the embodiment of rationality. Science penetrates into manufacturing, in management, and finally in private life, and universal rationalization of society takes place (In Bendix 1977). Let us see, whether Weber’s ideas correspond the modern reality of work so far. Modern organizations operate mostly on the ground of calculability and in pursuit of final success. The managing system is usually hierarchical, with strict division of responsibilities and duties. Discipline and continuous education have become the major demands. The modern world is not a place for romantic discoveries and achievements of individuals. We do not know the names of those people finding breakthrough ideas in sciences and technologies, their work being mostly subject to a calculated business plan and carried out in teams, under the surveillance of their management. Lawyers have to act in the frames of bureaucratic apparatus, where few new solutions can be found. Individuals are guided by purposeful rationality pursuing economic interests and keeping loyalty to their corporations, usually to the prejudice of other spheres of their lives. Even spiritual development of employees has become the responsibility of organizations where they work. Everything is done on scientific basis, all the decision making being laid on the wheels of science. So far, Weber managed to precisely describe the reality of a modern individual, whose major role is usually that of an employee and professional. Weber’s teaching on modern capitalism and bureaucracy. Formal rationality displaces substantive rationality, with the focus on ‘the most efficient and technically corrects means within the bounds of accepted scientific knowledge’, strive for world-mastery, maximum calculability, predictability, knowledge, increased impersonality, control, and general neglect of substantive considerations. As Elliott (1998) explains, modern bureaucracy, characterized by ‘formalization, technical efficiency and specialized technical expertise’ and dominated by impersonality, is the best example of formal rationality. Modern bureaucracy leads to the management without emotions and passions, ‘resistant to substantive moralizing about fraternity, compassion, equality or caritas’. Abstraction, impersonality and “quantifying even the unquantifiable” are the features of formal rationality. As Weber wrote: “Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is “dehumanized”, the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation” (In Elliott 1998). Weber believed that rationalization determined the directions of social development in the western world due to the casual concourse of circumstances, where Puritan Christianity played a crucial role. The ideal Puritan would systematically arrange his lifestyle ‘with ruthless consistency’, rejecting all forms of art, tradition, personal loyalties or pleasure threatening his absolute commitment to the pursuit of God’ glory and personal salvation (Elliott 1998). This dehumanized domination of efficient means resulted in rejection of substantive values, in seeing them as irrational. This created an ‘iron cage’ of the modern society, and there is no escape from it. This oppressively efficient, inescapable and rigid social order subverts human dignity and freedom. This world is the world of disenchantment, the world where there exist no incalculable or mysterious forces. Science increasingly represented the universe as mechanical, cause-and-effect cosmos. As a result, humans have to seek there own gods, set there own moral principles and values, and construct their won meaning of life. Weber’s diagnosis sounds gloomy: “The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate world morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment’. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage” (In Elliott 1998). The rational approach to work has turned people into “specialist without spirit, sensualists without heart”. The ideas worded above precisely describe the processes taking place in organizations. Though HRM academics call to the increased personal approach and work-life balance, and declare HR as the major asset of organizations, organizations mostly continue being rather impersonal and indifferent to substantive considerations of their employees. Organizations need highly trained professionals possessing a wide range of knowledge and able to cope with the increased demands of work. Though organizations do seek employees, whose personalities fit into their culture and proposed workplace, the approach to employees is rather mechanistic. If an employee cannot cope with ever growing load of work given to him, he is threatened to lose his job. Bureaucracy as the pure type of legal domination. Weber’s conception of domination composes the basis of his political sociology. Legal domination is the one co-governed by a group of individuals and meaning that a given order will meet obedience. This domination presupposes mutual expectations of those who give orders and those who obey. Weber distinguished three types of domination and subordination: charismatic domination (religious and familial), traditional domination (patrimonalism, patriarchs, feudalism), and legal or rational domination (bureaucracy, modern law and state,). Each type of domination needs a group of people to govern, and promotes the faith into its legitimacy. Weber believed that rational-legal authority was the result of social evolution and considered it to be the best type of domination of the modern world. Legal domination is based on the legality of the authority with purpose-rational action being the major ground of subordination. Obviously, this type is prevalent in the modern world. In such states people subordinate to strictly established laws and the apparatus of governing consists of specially educated officials, who act according to formalized regulations and rational rules. People subordinate to the legally established objective impersonal order (and authorities set by this order) by act of formal legality. The major categories of rational domination include: 1) consistent work of official organs of government, objective fragmentation (because of labor division) of responsibilities, arrangement of managers, distribution of the means of compulsion and possibilities to use them; 2) hierarchal management system; 3) the rules, determining the frames of actions (technical rules or norm), which demand special training; 4) entire alienation of the government headquarters from the means of government and means of acquisition (money); alienation of the official property and workplace from the personal ones; 5) accuracy in administrative documentation where all the major solutions and decisions are fixed. Bureaucratic domination is the authority on the basis of knowledge. The access to official professional information enhances the authority. Weber believed that businesspeople are the only individuals free from knowledge domination. Yet in the modern world big corporations are characterized by the same bureaucratic apparatus the state organizations used to be in times of Weber. In social relation, bureaucratic domination means: 1) a tendency to the average recruitment form the number of professionally most qualified specialist having universal scope of knowledge; 2) long-lasting professional education; 3) domination of formalized impersonality (an ideal official manages his organization without respect to the personality, observing formal equality in relation to everybody) (In Bendix 1977). Weber’s description provides an exact picture of bureaucratic organizations in the modern world. Modern organizations have hierarchical management systems. Set of norms and regulations fixed in their codes of business conduct dictate the frames of possible actions for all the employees. With the spring of IT, organizations have become very particular about documentation. Large databases store all the information about decisions and solutions ever made in the organization. This is believed to be useful in future crisis situations. Employees are primarily motivated by wages (though today ever more accents are made on spiritual aspects of motivation). Knowledge and skills continue remaining the major asset of employees. Professionals often get a narrow education, which lasts almost through three decades of life. Unlike the students of the past, many young people persistently pursue their goals, taking only specific professional courses and excluding humanitarian education. On the other hand, a new tendency is to get knowledge in related fields to be able to complete a wider range of responsibilities. The constraints of bureaucracy. Weber warned that being the most efficient and fairest method of control, rational authority may become troublesome, slow down the work processes and make an organization unresponsive to environmental changes. The problem with bureaucracy is that “in our desire for organizational order and predictability, we tend to focus too much on the rationality of the rules in and of themselves, overintellectualizing the moral and ethical values critical to our organizational lives and making decisions according to the rules, without regard to the people involved. We become so enmeshed in creating and following a legalistic, rule-based hierarchy that the bureaucracy becomes a subtle but powerful form of domination” (Barker 1993). Bureaucratic control is an irresistible force and it has a tendency to increase. Continual rationalization of bureaucratic relationships makes them rigidly structured and less negotiated. If the process goes on, organizational structures become immovable. As Weber wrote, “Once fully established, bureaucracy is among those social structures which are the hardest to destroy. Bureaucracy is the means of transforming social action into rationally organized action” (In Barker 1993). Eventually, bureaucracy starts putting constraints on the organization’s operations. It often happens that the accent is removed from the organization’s ends to its means, so that means (hierarchical power, strict discipline, rigid observation of rules, etc.) become end in itself. In fact, bureaucracy can be of two types: executive (resting on knowledge and skills) and authoritative (concentrated wholly on its power). Believing that bureaucracy and mass democracy are co-existing, Weber warned that increased impersonality of bureaucratic machine threatens democracy (Barker 1993). Modern science of management considers bureaucracy as inefficient. It lacks flexibility, hinders emergence of fresh ideas and innovations, makes employees unable to think independently, reduces personal interests in high performance, etc. Today it is generally believed that only participative style enhancing communication, cross-functional collaboration and joint decision making, in combination with flexible organizational structure and minimum of bureaucratic barriers to innovation can bring optimal performance level. It is viewed as the most beneficial in the constantly changing global economy, while it allows quick adaptation and re-organization of a company, providing numerous visions of the problems solutions and motivating employees to improve their performance. The ‘iron cage” becomes less rigid, yet rationalization continues governing organizations in their approach to HR. Weber’s concept of the “iron cage” remains relevant to the rationalized work in the modern world. References: Barker, James R. Tightening the Iron Cage: Concertive Control in Self-Managing Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly. Volume: 38. Issue: 3. 1993, pp. 408-415. Bendix, Reinhard. Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. University of California Press, 1977. 573 pgs. Elliott, Joel. The Fate of Reason: Max Weber and the Problem of (Ir)rationality. Article originally written for Craig Calhouns Social Theory course at UNC-CH. March 6, 1998. URL: http://www.unc.edu/~elliott/docs/weber.pdf Read More