Book Review III

Robert W. Terry, Seven Zones for Leadership: Acting Authentically in Stability and Chaos.  Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Pub., 2001. 

Author of Authentic Leadership: Courage in Action, Robert Terry was the founder of The Terry Group, now Action Wheel Leadership, a leadership advisor, educator, and organizational consultant. Terry held a Ph.D. and M.A. in social ethics and public policy from University of Chicago, a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Colgate Rochester Divinity School, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University. He authored For Whites Only, a pioneering volume on what it means to be both white and anti-racist. It sold over 250,000 copies and was required reading in the U.S. military. His last book, On Being A Secular Theologian, remains unpublished.[1]   

Terry was honored with the Gordon L. Starr Award for outstanding work with University of Minnesota students, the 1995 Ethical Leader of the Year Award from the University YMCA in Minneapolis, and the 1998 Ted Kern award by the Senior Executive Association, which represents the senior executives in the U.S. federal government. He was also selected as one of the country’s 100 best educators and is included in a recent volume: Learning Journeys: Top Management Experts Share Hard-Earned Lessons on Becoming Great Mentors and Leaders, Marshall Goldsmith, editor. He died on September 20, 2002 at age 64.[2]

The main purpose of this book is to deepen and broaden the readers’ understanding of the content of leadership; to guide them in figuring out the current characteristics of external reality, the world around them; and to give the readers ways to make wise, adept choices.[3] The book has thirteen chapters organized into three parts: The first part, Leadership Choices, shows the readers around the leadership landscape. The second part, Leadership Zones, presents the first six leadership zones. Each zone is followed by an analysis of the core ideas of the zone and a discussion of the application of the ideas in practice. The third part, The Promise of Authenticity, explores zone seven and leadership actions and ideas that apply across all the zones. The author draws ideas from leadership and management thinkers and theorists, beside his own lived experiences.[4] This review gives emphasis mainly on the seven zones for leadership, rather than covering the whole book.

Terry develops his seven zones for leadership based on his model of action wheel,[5] which divides any human action into seven features, or components. The seven leadership zones come into existence within the universe bounded by agreement (tight to loose) and certainty (high to low), stretching from the past and stability to the future and chaos and change.[6] This book can be called the extension of the seven action wheels in his Authentic Leadership.

Zone 1 put emphasis on the past, which is important because it provides the fundamental character for all that follows. The criterion for authenticity is “correspondence,” and leadership is about preserving the best of the past and owning the present. In this zone, it is important to tie the values to the business, separating the core values from the shared values. The idea is that the past shapes people (present), and they in turn shape the future. Further, zone 1 leadership sees the world as an object, which demands attention and inquiry. The core competencies of stewardship include the knowledge of relevant history, clarity about core values, skills for remembering and celebrating, a willingness to face hard truths, and the ability to preserve the sacred past.[7]  

Zone 2 gives emphasis on resources, which sees the world as a fixable world, and leadership in this zone focuses on matching the right people to the right jobs. Competency is required.[8] Hence, knowledge and skills have become critical resources. According to this zone, organizations have to be filled with people with skill mastery to get the work done. The criterion for authenticity is “consistency,” and leadership is about sharing and building expert, technical knowledge. Zone 2 sees life as a machine; for this zone, the world is knowable through science, and there is a fix-it mentality in its leadership.[9]  

Zone 3 is interested in systems thinking, and it concentrates on “structure” with two primary leadership functions: designing sustainable systems and affirming shared identity. The former focuses on crafting system for future growth, whereas the latter focuses on inventing a more dynamic, living systems approach. The issue of identity becomes priority in zone 3 leadership.[10] In this zone, life is no longer like a machine; it is a body, a living organism. Machine is for efficiency, whereas body is for effectiveness. Hence, leadership is about position and executive control to make effectiveness. In this process, coherence and connectedness become the measure of authenticity.[11]

Unlike the previous zones, zone 4 pays more attention to power within individuals, shifting leadership concept from positional to potentially everywhere. As such, people empower themselves and codetermine the future of the community. Leadership, in this zone, is about sharing power and decision making. Life is viewed as a conflict between ups and downs, and truth is to be found in the workers (members). In this zone, leadership moves around, and power is to spread from top to bottom. As Terry put it, “leadership is more than power over. It needs to shift from power over to power with. It is vision. (emphasis original).[12]   

Zone 5 attends to the future, and it sees the world as unpredictable that requires anticipation. It has two parts: the first part concentrates on the desired destination (setting direction) and the second part explores the trip (anticipating change). In this zone, a leader needs to be out in society and know where the competition is going as well as where the customer is going in order to be able to anticipate. Life, in this zone, is understood as a journey; the world is unknown, and a leader needs to look for emerging patterns.[13]   

As the world becomes more unpredictable and unfixable, leadership in zone 6 lives in the midst of chaos. It can attend only to the now and act in the immediacy of the present.  Creating meaning in the processes or events on a chaotic situation is important in leadership. Put different, leadership is about discerning meaning, and people have to make up solutions because there are no models, no procedures to refer to.[14]  This requires a leader to be improvisational, rather than provisional. Moreover, a leader is encouraged to think outside the box and engage where there is no certainty about the consequences.

Zone 7 can be sum up with three leadership orientations: (1) making wise choices, which fit both external and internal to the context; (2) probing deeper in order to better inform practice; and (3) living the promise, meaning leadership lives hope and courage by addressing the issues of spirituality, evil, and theology.[15] As Terry put it, the world of zone 7 challenges leadership to make comprehensive choices, ask comprehensive questions, and face the most devastating aspects of human life. Making choices requires wisdom, which emerges out of interactions with others and experience of complex events. Further, everything in zone 7 appears to be problematic, like puzzles, and leadership takes the form of probing deeper. Terry says, “It offers the confidence to explore the puzzles, open to what will be discovered and learned.”[16] This zone is not just about intellectual mapping; it is about living one’s deepest commitment everyday. Leadership, in this zone, talks about religion and spirituality.[17]

Without a doubt, this book is valuable for a number of reasons. To begin with, it bridges three related domains in leadership field: the person, spirituality, and organizational development. By the end of the book, readers are guided into terrains of personal and organizational spirituality with words such as “authentic wisdom,” “leadership as a wildly transcending process,” “finding voice,” “scanning inward,” “organization’s grounded hope,” and “spirituality equals theology.”[18] Terry’s thesis is reflected in this exploration of the spiritual development of the organization’s leadership as the means to fulfill the promise of the organization’s existence.

The book also focuses on personal development, and it allows readers to assess their readiness to enact zone competencies. It offers an orientation, key questions, bibliographic sources, a veteran educator’s interpretation of research, and opportunities to reflect on personal and operational management. The use of many charts in this book also helps readers to comprehend the author’s expression of a particular subject, if not those charts are the only and best ways to describe his leadership concepts.  Unlike many development models, Terry does not suggest that progress consists of advancing from one leadership zone into another, but that it is achieved only when each concern is given its due. Every feature must be addressed in every action to the extent that it is relevant.

It is obvious that Terry demonstrates his dedication to both administrations and education when he declares, “I have longed for a diagnostic model of organizational development so I could more wisely offer sound advice - advice about selecting leadership actions in relationship to the great variety of real-world situations . . . there are few blueprints to place them in context so that people can make wise and adept decisions” (xvi). By doing this, he invites organizational leaders into a spiritual journey of leadership characterized by wisdom and authenticity.

This does not mean that this book is perfect and beyond drawbacks. Terry’s model seems to assume that through blending diagnostics and tactical insight, a leader can stem the affects of chaos. However, because of the neutralizing effect of such factors as culture, organization design, stage in life cycle, and the effect of political powerbases, a leader using this model can be vulnerable in an attempt to stabilize collective life. Moreover, a diverse of metaphors in this book can create unnecessary complexity and confusion for readers. For instance, the scenery metaphor, though it is helpful to account for many organizational development theories and research, seems to cover the simplicity the author promises. The result is that it is not easy for readers to be able to understand what the metaphors are all about.

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[1] Robert Terry, Seven Zones for Leadership: Acting Authentically in Stability and Chaos (Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Pub., 2001), xxiii. See also  http://www.action-wheel.com/bob-terry.html (accessed April 6, 2010)

[2] http://www.action-wheel.com/bob-terry.html (accessed April 6, 2010)

[3] Robert Terry, Seven Zones for Leadership, 1. 

[4] Ibid,., xix.

[5] The seven action wheels are: existence (the history, past, and memories in which the action is rooted or from which it arises—zone 1), resources (valued items, both tangible and intangible, used in the action—zone 2), structure (how processes and procedures are designed and implemented to get the action accomplished—zone 3), power (the energy or spirit that infuses the action—zone 4), mission (the direction of the action—zone 5), meaning (the significance and rationale of the action—zone 6), and fulfillment (the completed action—zone 7). See Robert Terry, Seven Zones for Leadership, 48. See also in his Authentic Leadership: Courage in Action (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993).

[6] Ibid., 48. 

[7] Ibid., 83, 86.

[8] Ibid., 48, 49.

[9] Ibid., 90, 91, 103.

[10] Ibid., 48, 49, 107.

[11] Ibid., 109.

[12] Ibid., 184-186, 217.

[13] Ibid., 244.

[14] Ibid., 270.

[15] Ibid., 50-52.

[16] Ibid., 337.

[17] Ibid., 381ff.

[18] Ibid., 310, 364, 208, 255, 382, 390. 

Book Review II

Leadership by  James MacGregor Burns

James MacGregor Burns [born August 3, 1918] is a two times Pulitzer Prize-winning Presidential biographer, political scientist, and a pioneer in the study of leadership. Author of more than a dozen books, he has devoted his professional life to the study of leadership in American political life. He received his doctorate in political science from Harvard University, attended the London School of Economics, and taught at Williams College. Burns was a Democratic nominee for the 1st Congressional District of Massachusetts in 1958 and also served as a delegate to four Democratic National Conventions. He is a former president of both the American Political Science Association and the International Society of Political Psychology.[1]

Burns’s key innovation in leadership theory was shifting away from studying the traits of great leaders and transactional management to focus on the interaction of leaders and led as collaborators working toward mutual benefit. Burns’s theory on transformational leadership has been the basis of more than 400 doctoral dissertations. His most recent book, with Susan Dunn, is The Three Roosevelt: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (Grove Atlantic, 2001). Prior to this book, he published, with Georgia Sorenson, Dead Center: Clinton-Gore Leadership and the Perils of Moderation (Scribner, 1999). Burns won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his biographies, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1956) and Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (1970). His book, Leadership, published in 1978, is still considered the seminal work in the field of leadership studies.[2]

The book is divided into five main parts such as (1) leadership: power and purpose, (2) origins of leadership, (3) transforming leadership, (4) transactional leadership, and (5) implications: theory and practice. As Burns clearly mentions in his introduction, the main focus of this book is to define two basic types of leadership: the transactional and transforming. The former type of leadership approaches followers with “an eye to exchanging one thing for another,” whereas the latter type of leadership is more potent. The transforming leader “looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower,” which converts followers into leaders and may convert leaders into moral agent.  This leads Burns toward the interest of focusing on the nature of moral leadership, which “emerges from, and always returns to, the fundamental wants and needs, aspirations, and values of the followers.”[3] Based on this initial statement laid out by the author, this review aims at tracing Burns’s major themes of leadership [instead of attempting to look at the book in details].

The first theme is power and purpose in relation to leadership. Burns defines leadership as a relationship of power for a specific purpose that is consistent with the motives, needs, and values of both the leader and the led. He states, “We must see power—and leadership—as not things but as relationships. We must analyze power in a context of human motives and physical constraints.”[4] In order to understand fully the elements of power, purpose, and relationship, Burns relies heavily on the notions of motives and values and their impact on purpose and behavior. He uses Maslow’s theory on hierarchy of needs[5] and Kohlberg’s theory on moral stages of development[6] to refine his ideas about the interplay between motives and values in the leader-follower relationship. Burns argues that leadership elevates people from lower to higher levels of needs and moral development, and that true leaders come from self-actualizing individuals who are motivated to grow, to be efficacious, and to achieve.[7] From this, Burns distinguishes between leaders and mere power-wielders. He states, “Leadership mobilizes, naked power coerces. To be sure, leaders, unlike power holders, will have to adjust their purposes in advance to the motive bases of followers.”[8] Burns discovers that power, purpose, relationship, motives and values are essential to leadership because the leader is engaged ultimately in lifting the morals of the follower. In other words, it is to help develop others to become moral leaders in the cause of achieving a collective purpose. This moral component to leadership concerns Burns the most.[9] It is a vital theme throughout the entire book.

Burns explains the relationship between motives and values, which become the essential theme of his leadership concept. According to Burns, motives are human beings’ inner drives, desires, inclinations, and wants. They are personal, individual, and powerful; they are the source of action and determination that move us in certain directions and the source of meaning for our behavior. For Burns, motives and values are somehow related. The distinction between the two may depend upon whether or not the inner drive is merely an expression of need, want or desire, or whether the inner drive becomes a standard and guide to action toward a desired end-state. In a sense, motives are those drives that are acted upon to be satisfied or deprived, while values are those inner drives and commitments that shape or enable us to act in certain ways or towards certain end-states. Values indicate desirable or preferred end-states or collective goals or explicit purposes, and values are standards in terms of which specific criteria may be established and choices made among alternatives. In this case, values serve as goals and standards, modes of behavior, and a representation of instrumental base for means and ends, and these are a formidable arsenal for any leader who can command them.[10]  

Another theme is transforming leadership and transactional leadership. The transforming leadership, as opposed to the transactional leadership, focuses on the more personal aspect of organizational interactions. Burns describes transforming leadership this way:

Such leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality. Their purposes . . . become fused. Power bases are linked not as counterweights but as mutual support for common purpose. . . . But transforming leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader and led, and thus it has transforming effect on both.[11]

Following Burns’s definition, Northouse explains that this type of leader is attentive to the needs and motives of followers and tries to help them reach their fullest potential. Northouse calls transformational leadership as “a socialized leadership, which is concerned with the collective good” of followers.[12] Burns points to Lenin, Mao, and Gandhi as examples of transforming leaders, because they met their people’s initial needs, purposes, and wants; they served to not only inform those purposes, needs, and wants, but also to bring their people closer to achieving their potential.[13] This type of leadership can shape and elevate the motives and values and goals of followers through the teaching role of leadership.  

On the other hand, transactional leadership focuses mainly on rewards or punishments in exchange for performance. This in many ways defines the essence of management. Burns defines it this way:

Such leadership occurs when one person takes the initiative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of valued things. The exchange could be economic or political or psychological in nature: a swap of goods or of one good for money; a trading of votes between candidate and citizen or between legislators; hospitality to another person in exchange for willingness to listen to one’s troubles. . . . A leadership act took place, but it was not one that binds leader and follower together in a mutual and continuing pursuit of a higher purpose.[14]

This type of leadership is what Burns calls the “reciprocal process of mobilizing, by persons with certain motives and values, various economic and political competitions and conflicts, in order to realize goals held by both leaders and followers.”[15]

Burns observes that both forms of leadership can bring contributions to human purpose. The transactional leadership is interested in modal values [honesty, responsibility, courage, and fairness, etc.], whereas transforming leadership is more concerned with end-values [liberty, justice, and equality, etc.].[16] Burns’s observations regarding the two forms of leadership serve to support his general theory of leadership and the structure of moral leadership. Burns says that “leaders with relevant motives and goals of their own respond to the followers’ needs and wants and goals in such a way as to meet those motivations and bring changes consonant with those of both leaders and followers, and with the values of both.”[17] To make the point more clearly, Burns says that to control things is an act of power, not leadership, for things have no motives. Power wielders may treat people as things. But the nature of true leadership is that leaders induce followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and motivations–the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations–of both leaders and followers. And the genius of leadership lies in the manner in which leaders see and act on their follower’s [as well as their own] values and motivations.[18]

It is appropriate to conclude this review by saying that Burns’s conception of leadership goes beyond the political theory and historical biographies. Burns’s drawing on many of his leadership theories from psychology in this book has earned more credits. As he consistently describes throughout the book, leadership involves a relationship of engagement between the leader and follower based on common purpose and collective needs. Hence, the key to leadership is the discerning of key values and motives of both the leader and follower and, in accordance to them, elevating others to a higher sense of performance, fulfillment, autonomy, and purpose.

Obviously, Burns points a way to clear up the confusion that sometimes exists as usually focused on traits, behaviors, roles or situations. He defines the distinct nature of leadership from that of management. Hence, he makes a significant shift in leadership studies in such a way as to departing away from talking about leaders to talking about leadership. In fact, this shift makes people view leadership in more philosophical ways instead of mechanistic. More importantly, Burns’s general theory of moral leadership brings a new understanding of what it is that makes a leader different from great managers and why leadership is a significant force in society.

Burns’s transformational leadership can be applied to missional leadership in different ways. To mention among many, the transformational leadership has a genuine concern for the needs, wants, and motives, and values of followers. In other words, transformational leadership pays careful attention to those elements in the followers, looking for a point of contact where meanings and purposes can be realized. In fact, the main emphasis of transformational leadership is not necessarily on the mechanism of an organization. Rather, it focuses on the common good of society. Similar to Burns’s transformational leadership, missional leadership pays careful attention to particular context and culture, where God is already at work. A missional church with transformational leadership mind focuses on people with different spiritual gifts and always attempts to find a way to help them discern the values and purpose of their spiritual gifts.  

Appendix[19]

1918 - James MacGregor Burns is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Presidential biographer; he is a pioneer in the study of leadership was born on 3, August, an American historian and political scientist.

1943-1946 - Burns served as combat historian in the Pacific Theater; he was awarded the Bronze Star and four Battle Stars.

1952 - He co-wrote Government by the People: The Dynamics of American National Government and Government by the People: The Dynamics of American State and Local Government.

1956 - Burns won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his biography, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox.

1958 - Burns was a Democratic nominee for the 1st Congressional District of Massachusetts and also served as a delegate to four Democratic National Conventions.

1970 - Burns won another Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his biography, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom.

1978 - His book, Leadership, was published and is still considered the seminal work in the field of leadership studies.

1982 - He wrote the 3-volume The American Experiment.

1997 - He was also the co-chair, with Georgia Sorenson, of the Salzburg Leadership Seminar in Salzburg, Austria.

2001 - His most recent book, with Susan Dunn, is The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (Grove Atlantic)

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[1] http://www.berkshirepublishing.com/brw/pjEditor.asp?parCID=70 (accessed March 10, 2010)

[2] Ibid.

[3] James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Perennial, 1978), 4, 20.

[4] Ibid., 11.

[5] Ibid., 73, 79. Maslow’s theory on hierarchy of needs is: (1) physical needs, (2) safety needs, (3) belonging needs, (4) esteem needs, and (5) self-actualization. See http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/maslow.html (accessed March 11, 2010).

[6] Ibid., 73, 79. Kohlberg’s six moral stages of development are: (1) obedience and punishment orientation, (2) individualism and exchange, (3) good interpersonal relationship, (4) maintaining the social order, (5) social contracts and individual rights, (6) universal principles. See http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.html (accessed March 11, 2010).

[7] Burns, 41-43.

[8] Ibid., 439.

[9] Ibid., 4.

[10] Ibid., 74-75.

[11] Ibid., 20.

[12] Peter G. Northouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice, 5^th ed. (Los Angeles: Sage, 2010), 172.

[13] Burns, 129-130, 137, 252-254.

[14] Ibid., 19-20.

[15] Ibid., 425.

[16] Ibid., 75, 426.

[17] Ibid., 41.

[18] Ibid., 18-19.

[19] http://www.s9.com/Biography/Burns-James-MacGregor (accessed March 11, 2010).

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.