His conclusion warned of a coming “iron cage” in which a rational civil service administration, whose true value was only technical, would be viewed as the “ultimate and single value in reference to which the organization of all affairs ought to be decided.” Those who lived in this cage would be “specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart.” Bureaucracy was soulless and insensitive, staffed by pliant men with a narrow vision, competent but lacking in creativity, without any sense of a deeper purpose.
