Book Review I

The Theory of Social and Economic Organization

By Max Weber

The Author, Occasion, Intended Audience, and Importance of the Book

Max Weber was born in 1864 of the German upper middle class family. He was the eldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr., a wealthy and prominent politician in the National Liberal Party (Germany) and a civil servant, and Helene Fallenstein, a Calvinist. Weber studied law at the University of Heidelberg, but he diverted from the legal field to become Professor of Economics at the University of Freiberg, which he left to become the chair of economics at Heidelberg. After only a brief tenure in this position, however, his poor health forced him to resign from his professorship for about four years. Later, he lived as a private scholar and published many of his works during these years. Weber died of pneumonia while he taught at the University of Viena in 1920.

Weber’s work on the Protestant Ethics became the starting point for comparative empirical studies of the relations between religious movements and the economic order of his time. This book is an introduction to Weber’s comparative study of the sociological and institutional foundations of the modern economic and social order. In this work originally published in German in 1920, Weber discusses the analytical methods of sociology and, at the same time, presents a devastating critique of prevailing sociological theory and of its universalist, determinist underpinnings.

This book grew out of Weber’s philosophical inquiries into the nature of authority and how it is transmitted. Weber identified three types of authority: the charismatic, based on the individual qualities of a leader and reverence for them among his or her followers; the traditional, based on custom and usage; and the rational-legal, based on the rule of objective law. Weber was a key theorist in the history of social and economic development. This is a crucial study for understanding how modern organizations work, arguing that bureaucracy is the most efficient way of implementing the rule of law if undertaken properly.

Summary of the Book

Divided into four major chapters, the first two chapters of the book engage with the fundamental concepts of sociology and the sociological categories of economic action. The third chapter, which the present review pays closer attention to, discusses types of authority and its imperative co-ordination. The last chapter deals with the social stratification and class structure. As an introduction to readers, the translator lays out important elements of Weber’s works: Weber’s methodology of social science, his view of economic sociology, his analysis of institutionalization of authority and modern western institutional system.

As the translator notes in the introduction, Weber critiqued the traditional concept that there is no point of contact between the natural science and social-cultural science. In contrast, he argued that there is a causal relationship between the two sciences. This is mainly to “attempt to assimilate the sciences of human behaviour as closely as possible to the natural sciences” (p. 10).  

In analyzing the institutionalization of authority, Weber categorized three basic types of authority: rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic. The rational-legal authority takes the form of “bureaucratic” structure, which, according to Weber, is the most efficient instrument of large-scale administration. The traditional authority has no specific defined powers or legislation as such, but everyone is required to follow the “traditional order.” The charismatic authority always has a sense of “revolutionary,” in which the charismatic quality of a leader has to be proved by his/her followers. In this case, the authority of the leader does not express the “will” of the followers, but rather their duty or obligation (p. 57-65).

In chapter one, Weber engages mainly with the fundamental concepts of sociology. Sociology, according to Weber, is a science of understanding social action [which means all human behavior] in order to reach toward a “causal explanation of its course and effects” (p. 88). In this case, not every kind of action is social, but only so far as it is oriented to the behavior of others. Weber gave two similar examples: religious and economic. As regard to religious behavior, it is not social if it is simply a matter of contemplation or solitary prayer. In the same way, the economic activity of an individual is only social if it takes account of the behavior of someone else. Hence, it is clear that not every type of human action has social character; but it is confined to cases where the actor’s behavior is rationally oriented to that of others (p. 112-113).

Based on the mode of orientation, Weber classified four types of social action such as rational orientation to a system of discrete individual ends (zweckrational), rational orientation to an absolute value (wertrational), affectual orientation determined by the specific affects and states of feeling of the actor, and (4) traditionally oriented action. Weber found zweckrational the most effective type of social action among these basic four types (p. 115).

Social action is related to social relationship in two aspects: “communal” and “associative.” The social relationship is called “communal” when both parties have “subjective feeling,” whereas the social relationship is called “associative” when there is “rational agreement” among parties by mutual consent. These social relationships can also be known as “open and closed relationships.” Weber seemed to relate a closed relationship with a “corporate group,” in which order is “enforced by the action of specific individuals (e.g. administrative staff) (p. 137, 145). There are two types of order in corporate groups: “administrative order,” and “regulative order.” The former governs “corporate action,” whereas the latter governs “other kinds of social action” (p. 150).

In chapter two, Weber discusses the sociological categories of economic action in many aspects. Due to space limitation, however, this chapter is focused in this review. The main focus, rather, will be on chapter three.

In chapter three, Weber discusses types of authority and imperative co-ordination within five aspects such as legitimacy, legal authority, traditional authority, charismatic authority, and routinization of charisma. As mentioned earlier, there are three types of legitimate authority: rational, traditional, and charismatic. In the case of rational [legal authority], “obedience is owed to the legally established impersonal order.” Employed a bureaucratic administrative structure, a leader [supreme chief] occupies his/her position of authority “by virtue of appropriation, of election, or of having been designated for the succession.” In this bureaucratic administrative staff, there is a system of “promotion” [according to seniority or achievement], but which is also “dependent on the judgment of superiors” (p. 333, 334). 

Unlike the legal authority, obedience in the traditional case is “owed to person of the chief” (p. 328). Hence, a traditional chief exercises authority with or without an administrative staff, recruited on the basis of “personal loyalty” or favoritism. There is no personal administrative in the most primitive types of traditional authority, except “gerontocracy” and “patriarchalism.” The former is applied where elders exercise their authority to control the group, where the latter is applied where authority is exercised by a particular individual designated by a definite rule of inheritance (p. 342, 346).

In the case of charismatic authority, it is the charismatically qualified leader who is obeyed by virtue of trust. The administrative staff of a charismatic leader is not chosen on the basis of social privilege, but it is rather chosen in terms of the charismatic qualities of its members. There is no such a thing as “appointment,” but there is only a “call” on the basis on the charismatic qualification. Moreover, there is neither hierarchy nor a definite sphere of authority and of competence in the case of charismatic authority; it is opposed both to rational and traditional authority in its application. The charismatic authority, according to Weber, is more of a typical anti-economic force from the rational economic point of view (p. 360).

Weber fully understood that the charismatic authority must be transformed into a “permanent routine structure” in order to alter its anti-economic character. There is a need for some form of adaptation of fiscal organization to provide for the needs of the group. Weber also knew about the reality of conflict in the process of routinization. He gave the example of transforming the absolute power held only by personal charismatic martyrs into a power of the office of bishop or priest. This usually has to take a long process, and conflicts must be expected a long the way in order to have a transformed charismatic authority (p. 369, 370).

Reflection and Critique of the Book

The book clearly describes bureaucracy as the most efficient and rational means of organization. It is also clear that Weber believes the purely bureaucratic type of administrative organization is, from a purely technical point of view, capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency. It is also, in this sense, the most rational known means of carrying out imperative control over human beings.

The book carefully analyzes the main principles identified as rational-legal bureaucracy, concerning how organizations are structured, specific areas of competence, the structuring of functions, the separation of administration from the means of production, and the recording of the rules and decisions. Though Weber is well known for his study and emphasis on the establishment of bureaucratic society, it seems he loses sights of its inefficiency in making decisions for individual cases. 

It is no doubt that aspects of the bureaucratic model remain alive and well today in many organizations where hierarchies and exhaustive rules dominate. It is also true that the most important feature of bureaucracy—its main strength as well as its main weakness—is its impersonality. This impersonality can become the strength of a bureaucratic structure, in that it minimizes the potential abuse of power by leaders, as well as it can become a weakness as delays in information movement make bureaucracies slow to react. Bureaucracy may be the most efficient leadership structure in society as well as in the church; but this concept may or should not be applied in every aspect of leadership. Other types of administrative structure, such as traditional and charismatic, can also become efficient tools in leadership depending on particular social and cultural contexts. 

Weber makes it clear that bureaucracy is superior in knowledge, both technical knowledge and knowledge of fact, which, as he himself argues, is usually “confined to the interest of a private business—a capitalistic enterprise” (p. 339). While this may be the most efficient leadership model in business field, it appears to be the opposite of biblical leadership. Both the Old and New Testaments confirm the importance of the call, rather than of human qualifications. This idea can be seen in the story of the would-be Israel’s king David and his brothers. Similar concept can be found in the life of Jesus choosing the disciples. They might not have been qualified according to Weber’s bureaucratic standard because they all will lack the technical knowledge of how to run a business. The point is that to believe that only bureaucratic model is the most efficient leadership might not be the best congregational leadership approach in practical. There is a need to find points of contact as the church tries to develop its leadership paradigms.