First, norms (a term encompassing standards, principles, policies and rules) have a pervasive effect on administration, shaping the activities retaken, the way in which they are underran and the efforts of individual administrators and groups of them (whether aimed at achieving the objectives enshrined in the norms or at frustrating them). Nonbiased organization is an important aspect of the idea of bureaucratic rationality which the Weberian tradition sees as a hallmark of the modern state