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Regarding the origin of "bureaucracy," I think the suggestion that it is
German in origin is accurate. As memory serves (but sometimes it doesn't
serve too well, so I could be wrong) the entire concept of bureaucracy was
developed by the German philospher Max Weber (1864-1930). I belive it is
detailed in one of his workes entitled something like "Capitalism and the
Spirit of the Work Ethic." (It's been over ten years since I read it.) He
may have been in the U.S. when he wrote the work, but it applies as well to
the German society.
BTW, he put forth bureaucracy (in its original concept) as a good thing.
He felt that it would lead to good organization, and a staff full of workers
who would each specialize in their own little portion of the task and
produce a better final product.
Ahem.
Rick Lippincott
rjlippincott -at- delphi -dot- com
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I think the concept of bureaucracy has been around for a lot
more than a hundred years. The Eastern Roman Empire was
especially noted for highly bureaucratic gov't
administration. Even today we describe a frustrating
bureaucracy as "byzantine". I suspect that there were
bureacracies even before that.
