Max Weber and the sociology of organization: Reflections on a concept of pre-modern organization

88 Pages·2023·1.284 MB·English

by  Philipp Jakobs

Philipp Jakobs
Max Weber and
the sociology
of organization
Reflections on a concept
of pre-modern organization
Max Weber and the sociology
of organization
Philipp Jakobs
Max Weber and the
sociology of
organization
Reflections on a concept
of pre-modern organization
Philipp Jakobs
Institut für Politische Wissenschaft und Soziologie
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Bonn, Germany
ISBN 978-3-658-40286-0 ISBN 978-3-658-40287-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40287-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Fachmedien
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Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Organization as a Theory of Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.1 American Neo-institutionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.2 Political Economy of the Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1.3 Systems Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
1.1.4 History of Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
2 Max Weber and the Sociology of Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
2.1 On the Reception of Max Weber in Organizational Sociology . . . . . .28
2.2 Bureaucracy and Rational Organization of Labor as
Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
2.2.1 “Bureaucratic Rule” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
2.2.2 Rational Organisation of Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
3 On the Concept of Pre-modern Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39
3.1 Internal Structure of Organisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
3.2 External Relations of Organisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57
3.3 Combative Organisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
v
Introduction 1
There may be some truth in the numerous diagnoses that describe our modern
times in the threatening light of organization. In terms like “corporate capitalism,”
“administered world,” or “organizational society,” there is an inkling of the im-
mense significance that consciously created, “rationally” structured special-
purpose associations have gained for our contemporary social situations in a vari-
ety of ways (cf. Weber, 1988a, p. 10; Adorno, 1972, p. 455f.; Schimank, 2001,
p. 278f.; cf. also Graeber, 2015, p. 144ff.). In contrast, the scientific sociology of
organization usually urges modesty: there is no such thing as an “organizational
society” or an “organization of the world”, since organizations do not constitute the
social whole, society cannot itself be “organized” (cf. Kühl, 2003b, p. 381f.).
However, organizational sociology also relates “organization” to modernity: only
here is the “ballast” of tradition thrown off and thus the social conditions are finally
given that make an organization of human relations possible. Only modernity
knows organizations in a sociologically unambiguous sense, and organizational
sociology must therefore limit itself to modernity.
Both for the analysis of organizations in general and for their limitation to mo-
dernity in particular, reference is repeatedly made – positively or negatively – to
Max Weber and his idealtype of rational rule by means of a bureaucratic adminis-
trative staff. This is astonishing in two ways. On the one hand Weber, as Renate
Mayntz very rightly pointed out early on, cannot be regarded without further ado
as a sociologist of organization (cf. Mayntz, 1968, p. 27ff.). On the other hand
Weber’s appropriation of the concept of organization for a restriction to modernity
is astonishing insofar as, as the historian Gerhard Otto Oexle points out, unlike his
sociological contemporaries Emile Durkheim, Ferdinand Tönnies, or Georg
Simmel, Weber did not draw any principled dividing line between the Middle Ages
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien 1
Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022
P. Jakobs, Max Weber and the sociology of organization,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40287-7_1
2 1 Introduction
and modernity, but rather, despite all “disenchantment” and “rationalization,”
sought to emphasize both historical continuities and precisely the “modernity” of
pre- modernity (cf. Oexle, 1994, p. 132ff.). Nevertheless, Weber’s concept of the
“bureaucratic administrative staff” as well as his concept of the “rational organisa-
tion of work” can certainly be seen as starting points for a sociology of organiza-
tion, which seem to support a modernisation-theoretical interpretation of “organ-
isation”. Such an interpretation is countered here by the assumption that
“organisation” can be understood more appropriately, also and especially with
Weber, as a general human potential that could be realised within the history of
mankind, not always, but repeatedly and surely long before the upheavals of the
last centuries that led to a “modernity” understood in whatever way.
While this may ultimately be an argument about words, that does not mean it is
inconsequential. Words have consequences – both in terms of our theoretical un-
derstanding of reality and in terms of our possibilities to act practically within it.
The isolated view of contemporary forms of organization that threatens to become
the norm in organizational sociology and even in our everyday thinking about or-
ganizations not only overlooks the great importance that organized social associa-
tions – be they state bureaucracies, temple schools, workshops, or warrior leagues –
have had for human history for thousands of years, but also obscures a realistic
view of the significance of organizations in our world today. If one also includes
pre-modern organizations in the consideration by dropping any principal dividing
line between today’s situation, in which the achievement of almost every purpose
seems to be within the realm of possibility through the work of private or state or-
ganizations – and therefore everything must be organized – and an allegedly “ir-
rational” past with religious mythologies, fully integrated kinship systems and
class orders, which would no longer offer any room for “innovations” through
consciously created, rationally structured associations – i.e.: Organizations –, the
view first opens up for the special structural features of modern organizations as
well as the not only numerically pervasive importance that organizations have at-
tained today. It seems to me that such a perspective, which seeks to emphasize the
individual and at the same time universal aspects of our present-day social situa-
tion, especially by looking back, is entirely in the spirit of Max Weber. And if one
takes a closer look at his work, a concept of organization that reaches far beyond
the modern age is much more plausible than one that is limited to it.
The aim of this essay is to elaborate such a non-modernization-biased concept
of organization on the basis of Weber. This is less a matter of the purely exegetical
problem of uncovering a general concept of “organization” already somehow con-
tained in Weber’s work. This would be futile for the interests pursued here, if only
because what was understood by “organization” in Weber’s time was quite d ifferent
1.1 Organization as a Theory of Modernity 3
from what is understood by it today, and the conceptual synthesis of organizations
as closed social systems that is common today, as will be shown in more detail
below, was also based to a large extent on the development of organizational re-
search that was just beginning at Webers times and that he therefore could not have
possibly known in its maturity. Rather, starting from today’s understanding of “or-
ganizations” as social systems we shall look for points of reference in Weber’s
work that make an extension of the concept to pre-modern times plausible and at
the same time specify the characteristics of organizations in general. This, of
course, also requires a critical reflection on today’s understanding of “organiza-
tion”, as it can be traced in various approaches of organizational sociology and on
the basis of the history of the term (Chap. 1). In particular, the various reasons for
limiting the concept of organization to modernity seem to provide important clues
for our purposes. Subsequently, a brief sketch of Weber’s reception in the sociology
of organization and a look at Weber’s own work will be used to determine the ex-
tent to which it is at all justified to take Weber as an advocate for a concept of or-
ganization that links organizations to modernity (Chap. 2). Finally, taking Weber as
a starting point and including some recent theoretical and empirical-historical find-
ings, a new concept of organization will be elaborated and the internal structure as
well as the external relations of organizations will be described (Chap. 3). If at the
end the reader then finds a theoretically somewhat plausible concept of organiza-
tion that can be applied across epochal boundaries, only a first small step has been
taken. The value of such a general concept results not from its theoretical deriva-
tion, but only from its usefulness for a always individualizing application to the
empirical-historical case it is supposed to explicate. To this main task of a historical
sociology of organization, the present work can only be regarded as a small step.
1.1 O rganization as a Theory of Modernity
Organizations as self-contained social units or “social systems” – and not organi-
zation in the sense of a structural feature of social systems or in the sense of the
process of coordinating actions – form the subject of organizational sociology (cf.
early on already Mayntz, 1963, p. 7; Kühl, 2020, p. 13f.).1 While there is still no
1 The distinction between the system concept and the structural concept of organization, as
recently developed by Rena Schwarting (cf. Schwarting, 2020, p. 111f.), is instructive in this
respect. In addition, there could be a “process concept” of organization, which encompasses
the action-related notion of planning and coordination, which is found above all in everyday
use, but also to some extent in scientific use of the word.
4 1 Introduction
agreement among the various theoretical schools as to how these social units
should be defined in a separable way, it is generally assumed that they are specifi-
cally modern entities, which may have one or two precursors in the “Dark Ages” or
only in early modern times, but which themselves appeared much later in the
course of various modernization processes. Even sociologists who do not deny the
existence of organizations in pre-modern societies, such as the “Hochkulturen” of
antiquity, nevertheless focus their consideration on the specifically modern form of
organization and align their conceptualization with this (cf. Scott, 2003, p. 3;
Luhmann, 2019b, p. 18).2
The different sociological schools provide different justifications for this tem-
poral limitation of their subject matter, each of which is related to a different defini-
tion of organization.3 Going beyond genuine sociological approaches to organiza-
tion, however, implications of modernization theory can also be traced in the
historical semantics of the concept of “organization” itself. As will be shown in the
following, the various justifications for limiting the organizational phenomenon to
modern societies are not compelling, assume a clearly under-complex picture of
past epochs, or simply refer to something other than what is usually and sensibly
understood by “organization” today.
1.1.1 American Neo-institutionalism
The most important decidedly sociological school of theory in organisational re-
search in the USA is the socological “neo-institutionalism”. It comprises a whole
range of approaches to organization theory, which are held together by a common
reference to social phenomenological and constructivist paradigms and by a com-
mon opposition to a one-sided economic view of organizations (cf. Senge, 2011,
p. 81f.; Scott, 2014, p. 47f.).
The concept of “organization” is defined by neo-institutionalists only rarely and
not uniformly in terms of content (cf. Kirchner et al., 2015, p. 195). However, they
2 One of the few exceptions is Hans Geser’s sociology of organization, which not only con-
cedes the existence of organizations of a certain kind to early advanced civilizations, but also
places such early organizations on a par with modern organizations in terms of their formal
structure and social effects (cf. Geser, 1982, p. 114f.).
3 In accordance with the interest in historical classification, only theoretical approaches that
explicitly deal with the connection between organization and (social) history come into ques-
tion here. Thus, for example, the micropolitical approach, contingency theory or behaviour-
istic approaches as well as the mainly business-oriented structuration theory approach are
left out here.
1.1 Organization as a Theory of Modernity 5
are usually at least in agreement that it is primarily a category of imagination or a
“cultural model”, which as such must already exist within a socio-cultural environ-
ment before social actors can create a concrete organization or transform an exist-
ing association into an organization: “Cultural models of organizing precede the
creation of organizations” (Scott, 2014, p. 195; see also Brunsson & Sahlin-
Anderson, 2000, p. 722). Thus, in the form of specific working techniques, norms,
values or theories that exist as so-called “institutional structures” in a sociocultural
environment, there may also exist ideas of a “rational” and therefore legitimate
“organization”, so that an “entrepreneur” as a deliberate decision-maker only needs
to put together the various “building blocks” to create an organization (cf. Meyer
& Rowan, 1977, p. 345; Scott, 2014, p. 183). At the same time, these models have
a normative force, so that they must be incorporated by existing social associations
in order for them to secure their legitimacy as “organizations” (cf. Meyer & Rowan,
1977, p. 345; Ahrne & Brunsson, 2011, p. 736).
According to the neo-institutionalist consensus, such models of “organization”,
and consequently organizations in the sense of associations structured according to
the models, do not occur in every social environment. Rather, their “institutional
structure” must exhibit a certain degree of “rationalization” that has only emerged
in the course of specific processes of modernization. Depending on the author,
these may include an increasing scientification of the world, a universalization of
theoretical and practical knowledge, the assertion of an idea of individuals and col-
lectives as independent actors, but also a decline in the importance of nation-state
authorities and the ideal image of a market as a regulator of social relations (cf.
Brunsson & Sahlin-Anderson, 2000, p. 739f.; Meyer et al., 2006, p. 40). These “in-
stitutional” conditions of organization-like associations have, according to the
common argument of neo-institutionalists, only formed within the last 200 years,
although the more precise dating varies. In terms of content, “organizations” and
the ideas associated with them are usually assumed to be facts of experience in
everyday life that do not require strict scientific definition, but some exemplifica-
tion at most. However, where the “modernity” of “organizations” is to be justified,
i.e. where a specific (historical) definition of boundaries is required, it is usually
possible to trace the authors’ scientific understanding of the term.
Nils Brunsson and Kerstin Sahlin-Anderson, for example, define the essential
aspects of organisations as identity, hierarchy and rationality. Identity implies that
individual organisations have a certain degree of autonomy and a clear definition of
boundaries, which distinguishes them from other organisations. Hierarchy in-
volves the coordination of actions through a vertical structure in which more or
less independent “managers” make independent decisions and exercise control.
Finally, by rationality, the authors mean, on the one hand, the intentionality or