ABSTRACT
The term "large organization" makes one think "bureaucracy"—i.e., unnecessary complications, constraining standardization, the stifling of individual personality. These seeming concomitants of the development of large organizations, and their spreading into all phases of human activity frighten many people. The chapter proposes a broader primary synthesis that integrates a series of cultural elements, after a first relatively rigorous theoretical generalization on the functioning of organizations. This synthesis will be more in the nature of a tentative hypothesis than a systematic theory. The chapter intends to elaborate a theory of the bureaucratic phenomenon that may be inserted both into a general theory of the functioning of organizations and into a general theory of cultural systems. The problems of human relations posed by the study of bureaucratic practices can be understood only if both the needs inherent to the functioning of complex organizations, and also the cultural givens to which all participants of the bureaucratic game, in a given society.
