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Honor in the Bureaucratic Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Lewis C. Mainzer
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Extract

How shall men know honor in the bureaucratic life? If not at all, we may largely lose sight of a virtue respected in the West, though not unquestioned, at least since Homer. A substantial and evidently increasing proportion of the members of a modem society, including many persons not “clerks” or “administrators” by vocation, works within bureaucracy. Though large organizations differ in the degree of their bureaucratization, for example, in the tightness of routine and control, they have common features which influence their members. These are: the anonymity of each participant, the joint nature of every action, the force of precedent and rules, and hierarchy in relations among members. These features work against honor.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , January 1964 , pp. 70 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1964

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References

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33 Op. cit., p. 6.

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