Women and Bureaucracies

Organization theory focuses on the development, maintenance, and transformation of organizations. It seeks to understand why such entities as bureaucracies come to exist, and continue to resist efforts to change them. Organization theory looks at the dynamics of organizational culture and leadership within organizations and attempts to develop theories about what already exists and what might come to pass in the future.

The intention in this paper is to look at that aspect of organization theory which concentrates on bureaucracies, attempting to understand how gender impacts both the organization theory, and the practice of functioning within bureaucracies. There is also a section that sets forth one feminist critique of bureaucracies.

According to Gortner et al. (1989), there is no such thing as organization theory as a single field. Instead, organization theory is a multileveled study that includes many different types of organization theory, differ

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nityowned, competitive, missiondriven, resultoriented, and customerdriven, certainly mostly things that most citizens would agree were desirable. Change in those directions, however, has been much more problematic. A Feminist Critique of Bureaucracy The feminist critique of bureaucracy is probably most akin to that of Hummel. It also views bureaucracy as dehumanizing, but sees it in terms of standard gender relations. For example, it sees both the bureaucrat and the client as operating in traditionally subordinate female gender roles. Ferguson (1984) concluded her critique of bureaucracies by noting that while women need power in order to change society, they do not need bureaucratic power because it is not changemaking power, but power to reinforce the status quo that is available in bureaucracies. As such, it serves to reinforce traditional gender roles, along with other types of power relations, even when it seems to have a mission to change, or transform, those relationships. A more contemporary feminist critique by Morgen (1994) focused on the way in which feminist health organizations worked against the bureaucratic ideal of impersonal, rolebased, and instrumental social relations. Morgen used interviews, archiv
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Development Besides, Catholic Church, Public Sector, According Gortner, Kim Mengistu, Critique Bureaucracy, Asian Americans, Bureaucracy Introduction, Specifically Morgen, Osborne Gaebler, organization theory, public administration, feminist critique, representative bureaucracy, career advancement, public sector, critique bureaucracies, mengistu 1994, feminist critique bureaucracy, personnel issues, for example, kim mengistu 1994, gortner et al, women's career advancement, mengistu 1994 noted,
Approximate Word count = 2955
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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