How the Movie Office Space Exemplifies Weberian and Marxist Theories

Office Space is an excellent, though somewhat exaggerated example of bureaucracy in America. The structure of the business Initech exemplifies all six of Max Weber's characteristics of bureaucracy, as found in his essay, "The Characteristics of Bureaucracy". It also portrays the alienation of workers, as Karl Marx describes in his essay, "Alienation in Work". Office Space uses humor to point out the flaws of specialization, a hierarchy of offices, rules and regulations, technical competence, impersonality, formal written communication and alienation as found in bureaucracy.

Max Weber's first characteristic of bureaucracy is that of specialization. He sees a bureaucracy as having fixed and official jurisdictional areas of work for each employee. A bureaucracy assigns individuals highly specialized duties, as there is a specific job for each worker. Office Space displays this through the employees at Initech. Each worker has a different, specialized job to do, such as computer programming or management. Each member of Initech's staff had clear-cut duties and were specialists in their own areas.

Though each employee had a specialized job description, some characters in Office Space were ranked higher than others. This exhibits Weber's second characteristic of bureaucracy, a hierarchy of offices. In the movie, Lumbergh was considered the head of Initech. In Weber's theory he would be regarded as the very top of the pyramid of offices. According to Weber, a bureaucracy had one or very few leaders, but several different levels of management, so that if the offices were to be illustrate, it would resemble a pyramid. Below Lumbergh, Peter Gibbons was over Michael Bolton, Samir and Milton. Milton would be considered to be at the very bottom of the pyramid, with no authority over any other employees. Because of Initech's pyramid of management, grudges were held against the higher employees. Lumbergh, in particular, was despised for his leadership role. As Peter Gibbons said, "He represents all that is soulless and wrong!".

Just as Weber describes in the third characteristic of bureaucracy, Initech was strict on rules and regulations. Some of the boundaries put on Initech workers, such as the type of stapler employees could use, appear to be instituted purely as an example of how a bureaucracy should be organized and follow specific rules and regulations. Employees were required to fill out TPS reports on a regular basis. They were also expected to regulate their radio usage, dress nicely (except on Hawaiian shirt day), get to work on time and park in particular spots. Just as Weber described in his essay, Initech was a company which thrived to operate in a completely predictable fashion and used rules and regulations to do so.

Beyond following rules and regulations, Weber explains that a bureaucracy also seeks ultimate technical competence. As a way to evaluate the technical competence and efficiency of its workers, Initech hired Bob and Bob. These two men were appointed to assess all Initech employees and their effectiveness. They went from person to person within the company asking them each, "what do you do here?", trying to find the importance of each worker and determine their performance level. Bob and Bob were hired to figure out what each employee contributed to Initech.

Though a bureaucracy is concerned with each individual employee's technical competence, it is not typically interested in the employee as a person. As Weber expressed in his essay, impersonality is emphasized in the workplace of a bureaucracy. Lumbergh's popular question, "Did you see the memo about this?" portrays this characteristic wonderfully. Lumbergh was not interested in making connections with employees, but rather preferred to write impersonal memos to them. Just as Weber explains as a characteristic of bureaucracy, workers at Initech were treated somewhat uniformly. They were not recognized much as individuals.

Lumbergh's memos were also representative of Max Weber's sixth and final characteristic of bureaucracy, formal written communications. Management at Initech was based upon official documents. TPS reports were required of all employees. These reports were another type of formal written communication that Initech used. The company also kept files, or personnel records, on each employee. This emphasizes the value of formal written communication to Initech.

Most likely as a result of these six characteristics being present in the company, employees at Initech appeared to be alienated by their work. Just as Karl Marx described in his essay, "Alienation in Work", employees of Initech were not able to see the direct benefits of their labor. This left them with no motivation to work hard. Peter Gibbons despised his job, and said that it caused each day to be the worst day of his life. It is obvious that he felt very alienated from his work and that he felt worthless when he said,

We don't have a lot of time on earth! We weren't meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day...filling out useless forms...and listening to eight different bosses drone on about missions statements.

Peter and the other workers at Initech felt trapped in their cubicles. On one occasion, Lawrence yells to Peter about a girl on television, to which Peter responds, "Dammit, Lawrence! Can't you just pretend like we can't hear each other through the walls?". The employees' only motivation in their jobs was to not get fired. These are all strong proof that the workers of Initech felt alienated from their jobs, as Karl Marx described in his essay.

The six elements of bureaucracy, defined by Max Weber as specialization, hierarchy of offices, strict rules and regulations, technical incompetence, impersonality and formal written communications are depicted in Office Space in a humorous way. Karl Marx's theory of alienation is also revealed throughout the film. Though cynical and perhaps somewhat outrageous, the movie Office Space portrays bureaucracy in an eye-opening way.