SOC 201 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Office Management

• School: UofL
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 201
• Professor: Austin

Document Summary

Ideal-type bureaucracies: there is the principle of fixed and official jurisdictional areas, which are generally ordered by rules, that is, by law or administrative regulations. People who work within a bureaucracy have specific jurisdictional areas, or places in the division of labor. That is, areas of authority are delegated to individuals. Workers must stay within their jurisdictional areas and must carry out their duties according to the rules. Thus, in the baker shoe company (see figure 8. 1 ) the vice president of sales would never try to give a command to a factory line supervisor. Bureaucracies have strict chains of command or authority structures. Generally these are shaped like pyramids with fewer people at the top of the bureaucracy than at the bottom. Orders or commands travel from the top of the organization to the bottom. Every worker has a known supervisor to whom he or she is responsible.