Case Study: Max Weber Helped You Get Your Driver’s Licence
If you’ve got your driver’s licence, you had to prove your driving skills to a complete stranger who happened to work for your provincial department of transportation or public service delivery department. And it was nerve-wracking.
Although Max Weber is long dead, he would have fully understood and approved of the process you had to go through to get your licence. It demonstrated the following principles:
Hierarchical Structure
Provincial departments are organized as hierarchies. Senior officials in those departments who are charged with responsibility for driver licensing work in tandem with their minister to set the standards of driving skills. They may place additional expectations on young drivers.
Middle managers then establish the procedures to put those policies into practice. They hire and organize the training of driver inspectors.
Driver inspectors then put the licensing policy into practice. They conduct training sessions and road tests for driver applicants.
Unity of Command
Everyone in the departmental hierarchy has a role and is accountable to a superior. Ultimate responsibility for driver training and licensing policy rests with the responsible departmental minister in each province.
Specialization of Labour
Driver inspectors are specially trained. They are required to know the rule book and how to evaluate applicants. They have a specialized body of knowledge that they are expected to keep current. And only a driving inspector can give a driver’s test. No matter how good a driver someone working in the departmental mailroom might be, that person can’t give you your driver’s test.
Employment and Promotion Based on Merit
Driver inspectors are hired for their knowledge of provincial rules and regulations and of safe and legal motor vehicle operation and for their ability to oversee all aspects of driver education and testing in a professional, courteous manner. Promotion to more senior levels of management in driver education and training is based on a demonstrable record of achievement.
Positions Based on Full-Time Employment
Although some provinces use part-time driver inspectors, most hire full-time employees for this work. Such employees develop greater skills in dealing not only with the vast majority of routine cases that come their way but also with more unusual and challenging applicants. Middle and senior managers are invariably full-time employees, with an extensive base of knowledge and experience.
Decisions Founded on Impersonal Rules
When you took your driver’s road test, the inspector graded you based on various set requirements: entering traffic safely, making proper lane changes, consistently checking the rear-view mirror, obeying signage and light signals, knowing how to park. And you expected your inspector to base the evaluation of your driving on these skills alone. You would have been outraged had your inspector graded you on how you looked, or on your race or colour or gender. Impersonal rules protect citizens from such discrimination and arbitrary treatment. They also protect public servants from unfair accusations about how they have done their work.
Work Recorded and Maintained in Written Files
When you completed your test you received a written report from your inspector. If you failed, the report indicated how and why, and what you had to work on for a future test. If you wanted to complain about your inspector and how your road test was undertaken, the report would form the basis of that complaint. But the report would also stand as a defence for the inspector, indicating how he or she applied the impersonal rules of a road test.
Separation of Work Responsibilities and Private Interests
Driving inspectors are not permitted to take bribes or to doctor the results of a test. They are not allowed to operate private driver training schools. They are not permitted to fail people and then recommend that they take driver training from such a private school. All such behaviour would be a conflict of interest, for which the public servant could be disciplined, of even fired.
