A bureaucracy is a formalized management structure with a high degree of specialization. Top management makes decisions, which lower-level managers and employees make. Bureaucracy is much more common in large, established companies than in startups, startups, or SMEs. The letters PME refer to small and medium-sized businesses.
This type of business or organization has what we call a functional structure.
Bureaucracy is characteristic of large government organisations, heavy industry, and large enterprise.
Top-down structure
In this type of organizational structure, top management achieves efficiency through standardization of work. It’s a very formal top-down structure. In other words, everything is decided at the top and is delegated vertically.
In this type of structure, decision making rarely changes horizontally.
Hierarchy lines, like decisions, also move vertically. While decisions move straight down, reporting lines move straight up.
John Lannoye, in a ToughNickel article about Delta Airlines, wrote:
“These types of organizations usually have very formal operating rules with a centralized power structure – meaning power flows from the top. `Machine Bureaucracy` type companies also have elaborate administrative structures that flow between management and front line staff.”
Machine bureaucracy – advantages
For some corporations, this organizational style works well, especially if the company performs routine tasks.
If you work in a large company where following precise specifications and protocols is crucial to achieving goals, a machine bureaucracy structure is effective.
Below are some advantages of this type of structure:
- Specialization: every employee is assigned a specialized task to perform. In other words, everyone knows what they have to do.
- Structure: It sets the pace and framework for the operation of the business or organization.
- Predictability and stability: Because everyone knows what to do, who does it, and who makes decisions, the organization is stable.
Disadvantages
- Rigidity: the organization is not flexible. This can be a serious problem if the work environment or market suddenly changes.
- Goal displacement: rules regarding organizational goals and objectives at each level become an end to themselves. This could eventually be at the cost of the overall goals and objectives of the company.
- Impersonality: a machine bureaucracy places procedures and compliance above the individual`s emotions and needs.
- Red Tape: this can become a serious problem in large organizations.
- Inter-Departmental Communications is much harder in this type of structure.
A machine bureaucracy is one of many different types of organizational structures. There are also, for example, divisional, flatarchy, and matrix organizations.
