The following short excerpt exemplifies how bureaucracy should work as well as the problem often attributed to it.

A man went to knock at the king's door. . .

A man went to knock at the king's door and said, Give me a boat. The king's house had many other doors, but this was the door for petitions. Since the king spent all his time sitting at the door for favors (favors being offered to te king, you understand), whenever he heard someone knocking at the door for petitionss, he would pretend not to hear and only when continous, pounding of the bronze doorknocker became not just deafining, but positively scandalous, disturbing the peace of the neighborhood (people would start muttering, what kind of king is he if he won't even answer the door), only then would he order the first secretary to go and find out what the supplicant wanted, since there seemed no way of silencing him. Then the first secretary would call the second secretary who would give order to the second assistant, and so on all the way down the line to the cleaning woman, who, having no one else to give orders to, would half-open the door and ask through the crack, what do you want. The supplicant would state his business, that is, he would ask what he had come to ask, then he would wait by the door for his request to trace back, person by person to the king. The king occupied as usual with the favors being offered him, would take a long time to reply, ang it was no small measure of his concern for the happiness and well-being of his people that he could, finally, resolve to ask his first secretary for an authoritative opinion in writing, the first secretary, needless to say, would pass on the command to the second secretary, who would pass it on to the third secretary, and so on down once again to the cleaning woman, who would give a yes or no depending on what kind of mood she was in.

Excerpt from "The Tale of the Unkown Island" by Jose Saramago (Nobel Prize Winner for Literature). As translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. Hardcourt Brace and Company, 1998. pp1-3

Characteristics of Bureaucracy:

1. Fixed and official jurisdictional areas/ Specialization and division of labor

a. regular activities and fixed duties

b. there are rules on authorities to give commands

c. only qualified persons are employed

2. Hierarchical positions

a. system of super and subordination, where there is a supervision of lower office by higher ones- unity of command; authority

b. serves a formal system of communication

3. System of abstract rules-rules persist whereas personnel change

a. exhaustive, stable and can be learned

4. Impersonal relationship

a. seperates the private (personal life) from the public (office life)

b. make rational desicions; avoiding emotional attachment

c. official activity demand the full working capacity of the individual

5. Merit principle (promotion and selection)

a. special examination are pre-requisite to employment

b. presupposes thorough and expert training

The position of individual:

1. Office is a vacation

a. loyalty to office is pure and does not establish a relationship to a person

2. Position is patterned in the following:

a. rules of rank order

b. appointed by a superior authority

c. tenure for life

d. regular compensation

e. official is set for a career