Sociology, for Max Weber, is "a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects".
Through its particular analytical perspective, social theories, and research methods, sociology is a discipline that expands our awareness and analysis of the human social relationships, cultures, and institutions that profoundly shape both our lives and human history.
According to the bureaucratic theory of Max Weber, bureaucracy is the basis for the systematic formation of any organisation and is designed to ensure efficiency and economic effectiveness. It is an ideal model for management and its administration to bring an organisation's power structure into focus.
Weber was an ''ascetic'' (self-disciplined) scholar whose approach to sociology is centred around: the theory of social action, understanding capitalism and the role rationalisation in society.
First, it suggests that sociology allows for a logical and rational approach to the phenomena encountered in schools. It also maintains that sociology aids teachers to understand and build culture which must inevitably affect educational principles and practices.
The value of sociology lies in the fact that it keeps us up-to-date on modern situations, it contributes to making good citizens, it contributes to the solution of community problems, it adds to the knowledge of society, it helps the individual find his relation to society, it identifies good Government with community, ...
Weber believed that modern societies were obsessed with efficiency – modernizing and getting things done, such that questions of ethics, affection and tradition were brushed to one side – this has the consequence of making people miserable and leading to enormous social problems.
In sociology, social action, also known as Weberian social action, is an act which takes into account the actions and reactions of individuals (or 'agents'). According to Max Weber, "Action is "social" insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course."
More substantively, Weber's two most celebrated contributions were the “rationalization thesis,” a grand meta-historical analysis of the dominance of the west in modern times, and the “Protestant Ethic thesis,” a non-Marxist genealogy of modern capitalism.
Weber believed that sociologists, unlike natural scientists, had the ability to understand social phenomena, and that this understanding achieved through systematic and rigorous research and rational procedure of study was verstehen.
Content analysis is a type of secondary data analysis. Max Weber believed that personal values should be completely removed from all aspects of the social research process.
While Weber praises bureaucracies for their efficiency and predictability, he feared that people would become too controlled by them. Weber does not appear to focus on the forces of freedom and equality that can come from bureaucracy.