Bureaucracy is used so often in such negative terms, most who use it forget its roots. Bureaucracy in its ideal sense, according to its most influential thought leader Max Weber, can be a positive term. At the time, the ideal bureaucracy was a more rational and efficient form of organization than the available alternatives. According to Weber, the attributes of modern bureaucracy include its impersonality, concentration of the means of administration, a leveling effect on social and economic differences and implementation of a system of authority that is practically indestructible.

Weber set down seven principles with which to govern a bureaucratic organization:

• Business conducted on a continuously.
• Business conducted with strict accordance to the following rules:
  • Officials must do certain types of work.
  • Official must have the authority to perform their assigned functions
  • Officials’ means of coercion must strictly defined and limited.
• Officials’ responsibilities and authority are part of a vertical hierarchy of authority, with respective rights of supervision and appeal.
• Officials are accountable for their use of the resources needed to perform, but do not own these resources.
• Official and private business and income must be separated strictly.
• Offices cannot be appropriated by their incumbents.
• Business is conducted on the basis of written documents.

Each of these seven principles must be present for a bureaucracy to function efficiently. Max Weber himself remarked that ideal bureaucracy is difficult to attain. Most often, the degradation of bureaucracy can lead to overspecialization, groupthink and even organizational inertia. With both strengths and weaknesses, the principles of bureaucracy laid a foundation still in use in modern organizations.