Scientific Management and Bureaucracy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Scientific Management and Bureaucracy - Essay Example Same can be observed for scientific management based organization structure. Both bureaucracy and scientific management structures are very interesting, evolved and comprehensive. Despite their respective merits and demerits they are still widely chosen forms of organizational structures the globe over. In the following paragraphs we examine each of these structures in some details focusing on their main features, merits and demerits and the specific type of settings where these can be preferred structures. The rationalization process is the practical application of knowledge to achieve a desired end. It leads to efficiency, coordination, and control over both the physical and the social environment. Weberian general theory of rationalization forms the basis for evolution of bureaucratic form of economic organization. Marxists sociologist had detected rationalization in factory settings and the several labor related concerns associated with it. Weber observed and extended rationalization to almost all social spheres - politics, religion, economic organization etc. Rationalization refers to increasing human mastery over the natural and social environment. ... Weberian sociology is conceptualized on the metaphysics of rationalization which eventually converts capitalist society into a system of interconnected bureaucracies. According to Weberian definition of rationalization in economic organization it was simply manifest in the organization of the factory in the bureaucratic form with the calculation of profit by systematic accounting procedures. In ethical connotations it essentially meant an increased reliance on discipline and training in society as a whole, the spread of bureaucracy, state control and administration. Thus bureaucracy held centre stage in Weberian sociology. Weber defines bureaucracy as "a hierarchal organization designed rationally to coordinate the work of many individuals in the pursuit of large scale administrative goals" (Haralambous, 1985).Its main features are a hierarchal structure based on commonality of codified purpose, specialization in the form of well defined division of labor which runs under a power system termed 'rational - legal authority'( based on the concept of domination prevailing in democratic societies and belief in the legality of certain rules. Those who issue the rules are seen as entitled to do so. It is possible to know which rules are formally correct, imposed by accepted procedures. This power authority system creates an impersonal order). That is each stratum expects the authority of higher strata and, in turn, exercises the same downstream for common purposes. Each bureaucracy position is gained by ability and competence. The 'consistent system of codified and abstract rules' and norms are adhered to an d administered with an intent of 'moralistic impersonality'. At its best bureaucracy has an almost a machine like character - each parts

Edmund Husserl Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Edmund Husserl - Essay Example In Husserl's characterization of conscious intentionality we see a kinship with Whitehead's notion of the vector character of experience: "The experiencer aims at the data even as the data aim at the experiencer" (). To explore this intentional structure of consciousness, Husserl attempts to develop a method to reveal the complex contents of consciousness as clearly as we experience a simple sense perception. But even a sense perception comes to us amid a lifetime of assumptions and beliefs about the cause and context of the perception. Husserl tries to work out a step-bystep series of phenomenological or eidetic "reductions" in which reality, as presented in our "naive" experience, is bracketed in hopes of bringing forth the structures that constitute phenomena (Hart 644). Husserl finds that the uniqueness of consciousness lies in the fact that the phenomena are "constituted" by conscious activities regarding the phenomena's essences (or meanings). Husserl does not mean to say that things are imaginary inventions. Entities are not created by consciousness, but their essences are constructed from the hyle, the stuff presented to the synthetic character of transcendental consciousness. Husserl describes these activities as meaning intentions of consciousness and fulfilling intentions of phenomena. For example, my awareness of my desk is not identical to the desk itself. The desk is solid, rectangular, and several feet wide, but my idea of the desk possesses none of those qualities. Although the hardness and size of the desk cannot physically enter my consciousness, they are somehow presented to me from the stuff of my idea of the desk (Hart 645). Husserl shows that this presentation is an exceedingly complex activity in which sense data take many forms and occur within a complicated array of potential sensations. But these sense data would be meaningless without the meaning intentions, the noetic activity of consciousness that assigns appropriate categories suc h as substance, quality, and explains the relations as the shape, size, of a material object; that is, noetic activities constitute the "whatness" of what is intended by consciousness (Schrag 278). For Husserl, the "detachment" proposed in any judgment, then, is the agreement of what is meant and what is given in fulfilling intentions. The difference between Husserl's transcendentalism and Heidegger's is found in the latter's attempt to express the way phenomena are constituted in terms deeper than Husserl's transcendental consciousness. (Hart 645). Husserl's attempt is far too idealistic, subjectivistic, and egoistic for Heidegger. In considering consciousness to provide the fundamental, presuppositionless beginning of philosophy, Husserl places himself squarely within the Cartesian tradition that takes the cogito to be prior to what Heidegger considers the ontological structure beneath, the sum. Husserl maintains the subject-object dichotomy so severely separated res cogitans and res extensa. Critics admit that Husserl goes far beyond Descartes in attempting to resolve how the activities of the knowing subject become connected to the known through the