What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Bureaucratic Leadership?

Bureaucratic leadership has both advantages and disadvantages that are inherent in this form of management.

• Advantages of Bureaucratic leadership

Bureaucratic leadership focuses on ruling following a predefined set of standards or rules of governance and management. The term "by the book" is often used to describe bureaucratic leadership and as such, it provides an advantageous way of managing and leading in business when:
- employees are asked to perform certain routine tasks repeatedly, such as on a production line for example.
- employees are asked to understand and follow certain standards or procedures
- when cash is being handled.
- when people are working with delicate or dangerous equipment, or in dangerous lines of work.
- when safety and security training is being conducted.
- in any situation where there is not a stated procedure or guideline to follow, a leader can refer to their superiors to ascertain what new guideline needs to be installed to resolve the problem and allow workers to follow this advice in the future.

• Disadvantages of bureaucratic leadership

Bureaucratic leadership isn't ideal in all situations and there can be some disadvantages to this system, namely:
- resentment from the workforce under the manager over their management style, particularly if it is seen to be more autocratic than democratic.
- if work habits have formed that are unproductive, they can be hard to break and replace with new procedures and this can alienate and demotivate a workforce.
- if morale in a workplace is low and workers only do the minimum of what is expected of them, but no more.
- if the workforce are not allowed to feel part of the decision making process and their feedback is not considered by upper management, this can cause resentment and undermine productivity.

• Bureaucratic leadership: A conclusion

In short, bureaucratic leadership works well with a motivated team, with well defined procedures and within a productive business framework. In such circumstances, a business can thrive. However, if a business is not motivated, has poorly defined managerial structures and little to no apparent framework within which to operate, attempting this type of leadership can be counterproductive until these issues have been resolved.

The disadvantage would be that you can not vote.
The government will have all the power