By way of one further elaboration along these same lines, we do well to
consider how ideal-types apply to the topic of bureaucracy and the larger
theme of rationalization in the modern world.1 On this topic, Weber’s explanations
and especially evaluations are markedly ambivalent or equivocal: on the
one hand seeing the developments as a progressive and almost unavoidable
tendency toward greater efficiency and, on the other hand, as more and more
hampering autonomy, creativity and, in the plain sense, humanity (Weber 1978
2:973, 975). All this suggests that in deploying his notion of ideal-types to these matters Weber highlights a tension between what makes sense in terms
of the agents’ intentions or presumptions and what does not make sense thus
and even subverts them. Modern organizations tend increasingly to be bureaucratic
because they do promote efficiency, but efficiency of a certain narrow
kind; efficiency in a broader sense could conceivably come from more fully
realized human capacities.
Why now remark on these things? With the answers, several points emerge
that can conclude our analysis of what Weber achieves with his notion of idealtypes.
The first point is, again, a warning of the need to tie Weber’s ideal-types
to facts supported by empirical research, especially on the topic of bureaucracy.
Weber himself, of course, did significant research about bureaucracies of various
kinds, ancient and modern. But still, one general question for current and
future studies is whether bureaucracies that are strongly hierarchical, entirely
controlled by specialists, overly focused on technical means which thus become
ends in themselves, and so forth—whether, in other words, bureaucracies in
the rather negative light that they are often painted by Weber are typically and
necessarily such. Extensive studies by, for example, Chris Argyris (2004) as
a leading theorist of contemporary organizations support Weber but also indicate
ways in which bureaucracies can indeed be more open and fluid and thereby
actually more effective rather than less.