What is a government bureaucracy?

Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected officials. Today, bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution, whether publicly owned or privately owned.

What is a bureaucratic organization?

Bureaucratic organization can be found in both public and private institutions. The foremost theorist of bureaucracy is the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), who described the ideal characteristics of bureaucracies and offered an explanation for the historical emergence of bureaucratic institutions.

Is bureaucracy a Greek word?

The term bureaucracy is a hybrid word whose roots go back to French and Greek. It's made up of the French word bureau, which means desk or office, and the Greek term kratein, which means to rule. The use of these two words together combine to loosely mean ruling by or from a desk or office.