Beyond Rational Bureaucracy: Changing Values and Social Integration in Post-Industrial Society

Abstract

Rational values and their bureaucratic embodiment as defined by Weber are declining in the United States. The rational production economy freed resources to support new groups with nonrational qualitative values. These groups adopted activism as a technique and appeared to threaten the bureaucractic system. Then activism was institutionalized, with elites representing activist movements incorporated into the system. These elites' qualitative values and outputs were unmeasurable, so that bureaucratic decision-making became a nonrational political process of appeal to outside publics for bargaining power. The institutionalization of activism has stabilized social integration, but new and ephemeral values arise in rapid succession, weakening what is left of the sense of moral direction formerly provided by rational values. Nonrational mass movements may emerge to fill the vacuum.