Reading "Bureaucracy and legitimate authority"

By Max Weber

Three types of Authority:-

Type of authority	Authority Ground	Obedience Character
Legal Authority	Rational Ground	Owed to legally established impersonal order, by virtue of formal legality of their command and within the scope of authority of the office
Traditional Authority	Traditional Ground	Owed to person by traditional sanctioned position of authority, it is a matter of personal loyalty,within the area of accustomed obligations
Charismatic Authority	Charismatic Ground	based on personal trust in his revelation, his heroism or his exemplary quality, within the scope of the individual belief in his charisma

Bureaucracy structure has the following characters:-

• its authority is dominated by the principle of appointment, not elected, appointment is by free contract


• Technical qualification which are formalized and impersonalized by roles and procedures.


• Rational and supreme to other forms of organization, in precision, in stability, in the stringency of its discipline and in its reliability

Social consequence:

• levelling in the interest of broadest possible base of recruitment in technical competence


• Plutocracy


• formalistic impersonality

The greatly levelling of status, creating favourable situation for development of bureaucracy by eliminating the office-holder who rules by status and privilege other than technical ability