Reexamining the organization theory: the validity of the bureaucratic and the human relations models

Abstract

Various organizational theories are based on divergent assumptions about human nature. Based on certain assumptions, the theorists justified administrative behavior in formal organizations. At one extreme the Bureaucratic theorists assert that their theory, based on the assumption that man is inherently selfish by nature, has validity and university in an ideal sense. According to Weber, for example: Experience tends universally to show that the purely bureaucratic type administrative organization … is from the purely technical point of view, of attaining the highest degree of efficiency and is in this sense formally the most rational known means of carrying out imperative control over human beings. It is superior to any other form in precision, in stability, in the stringency of its discipline, and in its reliability (Weber, 1947, p. 337)