Following in the tradition of Weber, sociologists began studying the characteristics of
organizations and bureaucracies.
1. Merton (1940): Bureaucratic Structures and Member Personalities
Some of these authors began to observe that the bureaucratic characteristics
Weber had regarded as good could actually lead to bad, or dysfunctional, conditions when they interacted with human characteristics, such as personalities.
Merton (1940), for example, observed that specialization, elaborate rules, and an
emphasis on adhering to the rules can lead to “ trained incapacity, ” in which people
have trouble with problems that do not fit within the rules of their specialization.
Also, “ displacement of goals ” can occur, in which people worry so much about
adhering to the rules that their behavior conflicts with the goals of the organization.
In addition, people in different departments may pursue the goals of their department more than those of the overall organization.