Discussion| Analysis of a Bureaucracy

Step 1: The bureaucracy I will be using for this discussion is a blood bank that collects blood
products from donors. The reason I chose this topic to analysis is because I believe it will be
enlightening to break down what I do into a sociological manner. What better way to look at
what you do by breaking it down to a type of bureaucracy? You could break down the blood
bank by categorizing it into a utilitarian organization, an organization where people join to earn
some type of reward for the job or participation they are doing. (OpenStax 2015)
Step 2:
1. Specialization: To do what we do at the blood bank you have to be trained in
Phlebotomy and be adequate at drawing blood via venipuncture.
2. Hierarchy of offices: We have chains of command from collection staff, Team Leaders,
Supervisors, CEO, Board Members and Doctors.
3. Rules and Regulations: Our rules and regulations are in our handbooks and our SOP’s
that we have available everywhere we are and go for mobile blood drives. They give us
the proper guidance on situations and what we should know and in detail of how to do
certain task like how to use our machine called a Orsense to take our donors
hemoglobin’s.
4. Technical competence: We must be competent in phlebotomy, medical records, and
customer service. As employees we have years observations over how we do our job
and make sure we are doing it correctly.
5. Impersonality: This one is kind of tricky because my employment is nothing but
personality and how you treat other and be kind. The only thing that I can relate to this
topic is how we treat all donors the same. Example they must fill out a questionnaire
about multiple personal facts about themselves they are yes and no questions. Both
male and females must answer the “Are you pregnant now or have you ever been
pregnant?” due to people changing their gender and you never know a male may have
had a child when they were a female to, we must ask the same questions for both
genders.
6. Formal record Keeping: At the Blood Bank we keep all records of donations and keep
track of the donors and where their blood goes to. We also keep records of individual
employees of how many Whole Blood units they have stuck vs. Platelet units they have
stuck, that is for the one performance reviews that I talk about called KPI’s.
I believe the blood bank in mainly positive bureaucracy and what negatives they do have they
are working on. For example, some negatives are “people see you as a number” I believe
sometimes, which in many cases when a company is trying to get products, they look at a team
and just see the number of people going out and collecting said products. When they should
look at the number and the experience in those numbers. Some memes that you see saying “Id
rather work with 3 hard working people than 6 lazy people” sometimes not always you can tell
that’s the case. The positives and or advantages of my employment is you know exactly what
the standards are, and you know what you are supposed to be doing and when you are
supposed to be doing it. There are tons of structured task and knowing what is to be expected
of each individual working in that team and mobile unit. Another positive is you are required
not only to know how your job is done but to do it well. We have what is called KPI’s and they
are to evaluate how we are doing in other words job performance records. I feel like the blood
bank is a perfect example of bureaucracy and the fact we have hierarchy of offices and the rules
and regulations. We perform our daily task to get a product in which it not only saves lives
every single day, but we perform these tasks as a reward for being employed.

Citations:

 OpenStax. 2015. Introduction to Sociology, 2e. OpenStax College: Houston, TX.

(https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-sociology-2e) February 21, 2022