Understanding values of bureaucracy has been a fundamental concern of organizational sociology. For Max Weber bureaucratic rationality was irreducible to formal calculation independent of human values. Instead, it was assumed to be guided by a value concern with a particular mode of human action, namely an action guided by calculation of most effective means to an end. A bureaucratically rational action was assumed to be underpinned by a value concern with both routinized control and impersonal universalism (Weber, 1956). Since Weber's seminal contribution, research on the values of bureaucracy has been divided among those who emphasize its preoccupation with standardization, power and performance (e.g. Merton, 1952; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Barker, 1993; Ritzer, 2011) and those who highlight the individualizing and pro-social implications of bureaucracy (e.g. Parsons, 1956; Kohn, 1971; Du Gay, 2005; Briscoe, 2007). Recently, there has been an increased concern with the reconciliation of these perspectives by highlighting the simultaneously constraining and enabling aspects of bureaucratic work (Adler, 2012).
Paradoxically, however, with one notable exception (Kohn, 1971), there have not been any empirical studies of the values of bureaucracy. While sociological conceptualizations of bureaucracy have provided a more generalized understanding of the role of values in bureaucratization, they have been little concerned with the empirical examination of theoretical insights. Empirical research on bureaucracy has typically derived conclusions concerning its normative goals from the study of bureaucratic workers or bureaucratic organization of work without directly appraising their values. While Kohn (1971) examined value differences among workers employed in bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic organizations, he focused only on the openness to change values, without considering the role of self-enhancement values that have been widely linked with bureaucratic rationality. The assessment of the values of bureaucratically rational as opposed to non-rational forms of action has been a key concern of the socio-psychological research on value measurement (Braithwaite and Scott, 1991). However, this research tradition has been primarily concerned with advancement of the methodology of value measurement and not with the more generalized conceptualization of the role of values in organization of work.
In this study, I examine the more generalized sociological insights on the values of bureaucratic rationality among the representatives of bureaucracy using a state-of-the-art approach to value measurement (Schwartz, 1992, 2007). To identify distinctive values of bureaucracy, I compare the values of the representatives of bureaucracy involved in clerical work, as a prototypically highly routinized and rationalized form of bureaucratic work (Weber, 1956; Crozier, 1964; Mills, 1951), with a comparison group of entrepreneurial workers, whose values are typically recognized to be most distinct from the values of bureaucracy (Weber, 1952; Kohn, 1971; Sorensen, 2007). Besides examining the values of the representatives of bureaucracy, I also assess the value implications of organizational bureaucratization for bureaucratic workers.