Max Weber??????????

Question

What exactly was Max Weber's Theory?

Answer 1

Max Weber's theory on social organization and bureacracy;

I. There is the principle of fixed and official jurisdictional areas, which are generally ordered by rules, that is, by laws or administrative regulations.

1. The regular activities required for the purposes of the bureaucratically governed structure are distributed in a fixed way as official duties.

2. The authority to give the commands required for the discharge of these duties is distributed in a stable way and is strictly delimited by rules concerning the coercive means, physical, sacerdotal, or otherwise, which may be placed at the disposal of officials.

3. Methodical provision is made for the regular and continuous fulfilment of these duties and for the execution of the corresponding rights; only persons who have the generally regulated qualifications to serve are employed.

In public and lawful government these three elements constitute 'bureaucratic authority.' In private economic domination, they constitute bureaucratic 'management.' Bureaucracy, thus understood, is fully developed in political and ecclesiastical communities only in the modern state, and, in the private economy, only in the most advanced institutions of capitalism. Permanent and public office authority, with fixed jurisdiction, is not the historical rule but rather the exception. This is so even in large political structures such as those of the ancient Orient, the Germanic and Mongolian empires of conquest, or of many feudal structures of state. In all these cases, the ruler executes the most important measures through personal trustees, table-companions, or court-servants. Their commissions and authority are not precisely delimited and are temporarily called into being for each case.

II. The principles of office hierarchy and of levels of graded authority mean a firmly ordered system of super- and subordination in which there is a supervision of the lower offices by the higher ones. Such a system offers the governed the possibility of appealing the decision of a lower office to its higher authority, in a definitely regulated manner. With the full development of the bureaucratic type, the office hierarchy is monocratically organized. The principle of hierarchical office authority is found in all bureaucratic structures: in state and ecclesiastical structures as well as in large party organizations and private enterprises. It does not matter for the character of bureaucracy whether its authority is called 'private' or 'public.'

When the principle of jurisdictional 'competency' is fully carried through, hierarchical subordination--at least in public office--does not mean that the 'higher' authority is simply authorized to take over the business of the 'lower.' Indeed, the opposite is the rule. Once established and having fulfilled its task, an office tends to continue in existence and be held by another incumbent.

III. The management of the modern office is based upon written documents ('the files'), which are preserved in their original or draught form. There is, therefore, a staff of subaltern officials and scribes of all sorts. The body of officials actively engaged in a 'public' office, along with the respective apparatus of material implements and the files, make up a 'bureau.' In private enterprise, 'the bureau' is often called 'the office.'

In principle, the modern organization of the civil service separates the bureau from the private domicile of the official, and, in general, bureaucracy segregates official activity as something distinct from the sphere of private life. Public monies and equipment are divorced from the private property of the official. This condition is everywhere the product of a long development. Nowadays, it is found in public as well as in private enterprises; in the latter, the principle extends even to the leading entrepreneur. In principle, the executive office is separated from the household, business from private correspondence, and business assets from private fortunes. The more consistently the modern type of business management has been carried through the more are these separations the case. The beginnings of this process are to be found as early as the Middle Ages.

It is the peculiarity of the modern entrepreneur that he conducts himself as the 'first official' of his enterprise, in the very same way in which the ruler of a specifically modern bureaucratic state spoke of himself as 'the first servant' of the state. The idea that the bureau activities of the state are intrinsically different in character from the management of private economic offices is a continental European notion and, by way of contrast, is totally foreign to the American way.

IV. Office management, at least all specialized office management-- and such management is distinctly modern--usually presupposes thorough and expert training. This increasingly holds for the modern executive and employee of private enterprises, in the same manner as it holds for the state official.

V. When the office is fully developed, official activity demands the full working capacity of the official, irrespective of the fact that his obligatory time in the bureau may be firmly delimited. In the normal case, this is only the product of a long development, in the public as well as in the private office. Formerly, in all cases, the normal state of affairs was reversed: official business was discharged as a secondary activity.

VI. The management of the office follows general rules, which are more or less stable, more or less exhaustive, and which can be learned. Knowledge of these rules represents a special technical learning which the officials possess. It involves jurisprudence, or administrative or business management.

The reduction of modern office management to rules is deeply embedded in its very nature. The theory of modern public administration, for instance, assumes that the authority to order certain matters by decree--which has been legally granted to public authorities--does not entitle the bureau to regulate the matter by commands given for each case, but only to regulate the matter abstractly. This stands in extreme contrast to the regulation of all relationships through individual privileges and bestowals of favor, which is absolutely dominant in patrimonialism, at least in so far as such relationships are not fixed by sacred tradition.

Max Weber (1864-1902) was born in Erfurt, the son of a prosperous and influential lawyer who was active in politics. Like his friend Simmel, Weber was brought up in Berlin. He studied law, history, economics, and philosophy and achieved early recognition, becoming a professor at the age of 30. Then he suffered a nervous breakdown which forced him to give up teaching. After he recovered, he spent most of his life in private study. His writings were extensive; although many volumes have been translated into English, a considerable amount remains untranslated. Weber believed that the same forms of social organization develop independently in different cultured, and his enormous historical knowledge enabled him to demonstrate the one point again and again. He was discussing religious congregations and the balance between preaching and pastoral care in such congregations. "Among those religious functionaries whose pastoral care has influenced the everyday life of the laity and the behaviour of political officials in an enduring and often decisive manner have been the counselling rabbis of Judaism, the father confessors of Catholicism, the pietistic pastors of souls in Protestantism, the directors of souls in Counter Reformation Catholicism, the Brahminic purohitas at the court, the gurus and gosains in Hinduism, and the muftis and dervish sheikhs in Islam. One of Weber's lifelong concerns was to show how the major segments of a society influenced each other in their historical development. His first important work, The Protestant Ethic aud. The Spirit of Capitalism, demonstrated how the religious values held by the luritan sects of the Reformation, especially their asceticism and their belief that God arbitrarily elects certain souls for salvation, contributed to the development of industrial capitalism in England and northern Europe by providing motives for hard work, austere living, and the accumulation of wealth. Although it was not his sole purpose, Weber refuted Marx's contention that all beliefs and values were mere superstructure, explainable by reference to the organization of production, by showing that beliefs and values could be equally well used to explain the development of a system of production. Because he provided an alternative explanation of the rise of capitalism and a different set of predictions about its future, Weber has been called "the Marx of the bourgeoisie." But his historical analyses go far beyond this one point; he was able to show the mutual dependence of economic systems, forms of government, social stratification, and religious beliefs in Greece and Rome, in the Middle Ages, in the ancient Near East, in India, China, Japan, and medieval Russia, indeed wherever civilization had left written records.

capitalism of to-day, which has come to dominate economic life, educates and selects the economic subjects which it needs through a process of economic survival of the fittest. But here one can easily see the limits of the concept of selection as a means of historical explanation. In order that a manner of life so well adapted to the peculiarities of capitalism could be selected at all, i.e. should come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life common to whole groups of men. This origin is what really needs explanation. Concerning the doctrine of the more naive historical materialism, that su

Answer 2

He had a couple...

The most famous are the protestant work ethic and the monopoly on force.

The monopoly on force is the theory that the government has the monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a society.

The protestant work ethic states that protestantism created an emphasis on saving and hard work that led to the cultural emphasis on work in the US and led to the development of capitalism.