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

In today's organizational sociology, organizations are usually regarded as late achievements of modernity in the history of mankind. Max Weber is repeatedly cited as the supposed guarantor of this thesis. But neither his type of "bureaucratic rule" nor his concept of "rational work organization" - although both are tailored to modern conditions - contain, on closer inspection, compelling arguments for a principled limitation of organizations as such to modernity. Both actually reach their d...