Max Weber

Max Weber
Name:
Institution
Rationalization
Weber was in the least macro level interested in patterns and regularities within civilizations, organizations, institutions, strata, groups and classes. Being the main theme of Weber's work as depicted by many modern sociology scholars, this theme was embroiled in the context of religious and cultural values and beliefs, psychological motivations and the economically oriented structure of the society. Weber began his investigation into the matter of rationalisation in the in The Spirit of Capitalism and Protestant Ethic and then continued his studies on the subject by studying bureaucracy and legitimate authority classification into three types namely Rational, traditional and charismatic where the rational is the dominant in the modernity (Weber, 1978).
Weber understood rationalization first by understanding the cost-benefit calculation and secondly on the wider context the organisations and the bureaucratic structures. Weber perspective for bureaucracy was that it was the middle-level expression of a general modernist trend
On rationality, Weber offered four types;
Practical rationality involves the judgement of worldly activity by based on pragmatic and egoistic interests. This type of rationality accepts specified realities and calculates how to deal with them
Theoretical rationality aims at mastering the reality through progressively abstract conceptions other than through actions. Theoretical rationality makes actors to transcend realities in the modern world so as to have a meaningful understanding of the world as an expressive cosmos
Substantive rationality involves ordering actions into patterns through value clusters.
– Expectation under this rationality is that all elements become compatible where any com partible value system becomes substantively rational. The value contents are not necessarily defined
Formal rationality is involved with calculating means and e...