Collegiality, Bureaucratization, and Professionalization: A Weberian Analysis

This article analyzes Weber's writing on the topic of collegiality in Economy and Society in order to reintegrate the concept of collegiality with his other concepts of legitimate domination, status group closure, bureaucracy, and legal formalism. An ideal-type of collegiate organization is identified, and the consequences of the emergence of collegial social structure of this form in professional contexts are examined. These arguments provide a critique of the predominant understandings of the relationship between professionalization and bureaucratization, in which professional ideology is conceived of as ethical commitment. The article calls for ar restoration of Weberian understandings of the rationalization of modern life as the outcome of a contest for domination between interest groups rather than as the institutionalization of transcendent normative structures.