Unit 8: Law, Courts, and Procedure

The Changing Police Bureaucracy

Police departments have been structured as hierarchical bureaucracies since the early l800s, and this structure survives to this day. The person who first described this model in detail was Max Weber. In modern usage, bureaucratic has come to mean the slowness, the ponderousness, the routine, the complication of
procedures, and the maladapted responses of the bureaucratic organizations to the needs which they should
satisfy and the frustrations which their members, clients, or subjects consequently endure. This, however, was not the original idea.

According to Weber: Experience tends universally to show that the purely bureaucratic type of administrative organization, that is, the monocratic variety of the bureaucracy is, from a purely technical point of view, capable 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. It thus makes possible a particularly high degree of  calculability of results for the heads of the organization and for those acting in relation to it.

It is finally superior both in intensive efficiency and in the scope of its operations, and is formally capable of application to all kinds of administrative tasks.

The major advantage of bureaucratic organizations is that they tend, because of standardized procedures, to treat people equally. This is exceedingly important in a government organization, where charges of favoritism can do extreme damage. Standardization is also important because of civil liability considerations. Following accepted procedures is generally a good defense in court.

There is, however, a coming trend where a combination of bureaucratic and participative management is becoming the norm. Participative management is a style where employee and public opinions are sought and participation in organizational operations and policy is encouraged. When officers participate in decisions, it gives them a sense of control and facilitates team building. A combination of participative and bureaucratic management styles can also help to overcome the major disadvantage of a bureaucratic structure-inflexibility