Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy

Alvin W. Gouldner takes readers through a case study of modern factory administrations in order to reveal the relations between workers and management at an industrial plant and in the community outside of it.

The process of bureaucratization is found to be composed of three distinct tendencies: the “mock bureaucratization” pattern, characterized by the failure to enforce or obey rules; the “representative” pattern, where rules are both enforced by management and obeyed by works; or the “pun...