Formal Organizations and Bureaucracy - Personal Statement Example

This offered motivation to many of the workers in the organization, and therefore, many CSR's worked very hard at their positions and went the extra mile of attempting to become excellent sales representatives as well, in order that the promised rewards would follow. One drawback of this bureaucratic institution that had a particular effect on me was the alienation that inevitably attended an organization of such immense size and structure. Every single minute of the day was planned out for me as an employee.

Breaks were scheduled, as were lunchtimes; and electronic systems and constant overhead monitoring made sure that no deviations from the stringent patterns were possible. Although rewards were merely possible, the punishment was a certainty. The overhead monitoring consisted of a number of administrators who had access to all that was done and said by the employees, but apart from a messaging box on the computer screen, these administrators were invisible and inaccessible. This gave me, and many like me, a feeling of distrust for the management.

Even though the visible managers might have appeared amiable and unexacting on the surface, the nature of the employees' situation at the firm made distrust the most salient sentiment toward them. In addition to this general mistrust was another type of alienation that Marx propounded: the alienation of the employee from the product, to which he or she feels very little connection. I must say that while working for that firm, I rarely felt that I was giving anything of value to society. It might have been the nature of the work itself, or the fact that talking to so many people per day made me feel as though I helped no one in particular.

This alienation might also have stemmed from the fact that, as Marx argued, my part in the process was so small that I felt it to be worth nothing at all. For all those reasons, I felt very disconnected from the production process and consequently from the firm itself. Meaninglessness so permeated my entire feeling and attitude toward the job that after only two months I was unable to continue. Bureaucracy informal organizations are an efficient system that keeps jobs impersonal to the point that almost anyone can fill them.

The ability of the job to be performed by anyone at all makes the bureaucratic and formal situation desirable to a firm that would like to endure beyond the life expectancy of the human individual. However, for the true individual, it can be a very taxing system under which to work. Such was my experience as a CSR, doing a job that was removed from my talents and gifts. Though I saw the ability of the bureaucracy to reward me for hard work, I was unable to endure the alienation that is almost inevitable in any such organization.