Rationalization traps people in systems of efficiency and control.
Weber's 1905 image, from The Protestant Ethic. His point is that the rationality was built for a purpose and outlives it, so the cage is made of instruments that have become ends.
In practice
- A charity that adopted timesheets to satisfy one funder is still filling them in six years after that funder left.
- A compliance function created to enable a business becomes the thing the business exists to satisfy, and nobody decided that.