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d ‘
Bureaucratic Structures’. Weber stated that bureaucratic organisations
have always been in purely technological superior over other forms of
organisations.

Weber did not define bureaucracy but however did attempt to identify
the main characteristics, which were later summarised by Stuart as
Specialisation, Hierarchy of Authority, Systems of Rules and
Impersonality.

· Specialisation – Applies more to the job than the worker, this being
because a worker may leave however the job will remain

· Hierarchy of Authority – Distinctive difference between the
management and the workers, also between different levels of
management. There are clearly seen in such organisations as the
police.

· Systems of rules – this creates an efficient and impersonal
organisation. The rules are relatively stable but however can change.
These rules need to be known by the employees in order for them to
hold a job in bureaucracy.

· Impersonality – privileges allocated and the use of authority should
consider with the system of rules already in place.

Prior to the 1920’s the main emphasis in business was on the
structure. However as the depression moved forward the emphasis
changed and turned its attention on behavioural and social side of
business.

A turning point came in ‘Hawthorne experiment’ this experiment took
place in Western Electric between the years of 1924 to 1932. The
Hawthorne Experience was under taken by a team of researchers among
which was Elton Mayo who was the main person behind the experiments.
The Hawthorne Experiments consisted of four phases. These phases were
Illumination Experiment, The Relay Experiment, The Interview Program
and Bank Wiring.

Illumination Experiment measured the affect on light intensity has on
productivity. The workers were split into to two groups, a control
group were the light remained constant and experimental group were the
lighting was changed. The experiment was found inconclusive. This was
due to the unapparent relationship between the lighting and
productivity in the experimental group. However productivity did
increase in the control group, which was strange as none of the
working conditions changed. With these two anomalies, it was obvious
that there was more than one contributing factors to increasing
productivity. The illumination experiment, lead to further experiment
being carried out.

The relay experiment took place in a factory an involved the assembly
of telephone relays. There were six women chosen for the experiment,
two of which were friends and the others chose at random. The
experiment was split up into thirteen sectors of which the working
conditions were changed, such as hours of work, refreshment
provisions, etc. the observers of the experiment adopted a friendly
manner to the subjects. They kept them up to date with the experiment,
but more importantly they listened to their complaints, which in turn
lead to an ongoing increasing level of productivity.

The interview programme was an experiment of simply listening to the
workforce. In order to gain the information of the workforce the
experiment interviewed 20000 employees. The interviewers questions
were originally set, however the employees felt some of these
questions to be unrelated an