Alternative Organizational Formations: A Neoweberian Typology of Polycratic Administrative Systems

Abstract

Much of the critical attention given to Weber's tripartite scheme of legitimate domination has focused on the issue of its supposed incapacity to accommodate forms of organization not based on instrumental rationality. In fact substantive rationality is a continuous point of reference in Weber's analysis and surfaces in his brief and fragmentary outlines of three polycratic organizational forms: collegiality, mass democracy, and direct democracy. This article locates polycratic organizations in relation to the three monocratic structures indicated by the typology of legitimate domination. Extant examples of polycratic organizations are compared substantively. The three forms are then typologized in terms first of characteristics of participation by personnel, and second of the processes by which decisions are made.