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Best Sellers | | Home The Dynamics of Bureaucracy; A Study of Interpersonal Relations in Two Government Agencies. | |
|  | |  | | | The Dynamics of Bureaucracy; A Study of Interpersonal Relations in Two Government Agencies. | | | | | SKU:
VIN0226057267 | | Availability:
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Peter Michael Blau | | Paperback: | 334 pages | | Publisher: | Univ of Chicago Pr (Tx) | | Publication Date: | 1973-06 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0226057267 | | Package Length: | 8.4 inches | | Package Width: | 5.4 inches | | Package Height: | 0.8 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.85 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 1 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 1 customer reviews )
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3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
reciprocity and change in bueaucracy Jun 14, 2009
By not a natural
"Bob Bickel"
I came across this book when I was a freshman at Penn State browsing through the main library. I must admit that its initial attraction was its thinness, no long-winded dissertation turned into a tediously detailed book here.
When I began to read the book, I found it fascinating. An ethnographic piece based on exchange theory, showing that the static, role-bound, never-changing-from-inside-forces stereotypical bureaucracy was much more myth than reality.
Blau did a beautiful job of illustrating changes among workers and their relationships by focusing on the exchange of knowledge and skills in a way that rewarded some but left others feeling short-shifted. Here were bureaucrats -- ostensibly the most torpid of all organizational creatures -- exercising initiative, weighing costs and benefits, and actively creating informal organizational patterns to complement formal structures. So much for Ludwig Von Mises' excesses in making the case that bureaucratic organizations were rigid, brittle, and not subject to development.
When I mentioned Blau's book to my adviser, he was dismissive. I thought it was sociology as it should be done; he thought it was too social psychological, giving too little attention to structural factors. My adviser was a very bright and accomplished guy, but in this instance he was wrong. The Dynamics of Bureaucracy is a first-rate piece of sociological research.
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