Given that bureaucracy is held in such ill ________________________________ (1) today, it is hard to remember that it was once considered a great organisational innovation. By organising the ________________________________ (2) of labour, by making management and decision-making a profession, and by providing an order and a set of rules that allowed many different kinds of specialists to work in co-ordination toward a common ________________________________ (3) , bureaucracy greatly extended the breadth and depth of intelligence that organisations could achieve. Begun as a system of organising government activities, it has ________________________________ (4) to big business and large organisations of all kinds.

Max Weber, who ________________________________ (5) the systematic study of bureaucracy as its role in western society began to explode in the late nineteenth century, saw bureaucracy as both the most efficient possible system, and a threat to the basic liberties he ________________________________ (6) dear, thus foreshadowing the sentiments which bureaucracy frequently evokes today.

This is an official sample of a CPE test. Copyright © Cambridge University ESOL.
Used with permission.

1. 1. a) knowledge
   2. b) name
   3. c) notoriety
   4. d) repute
2. 1. a) detachment
   2. b) distinction
   3. c) divergence
   4. d) division
3. 1. a) culmination
   2. b) end
   3. c) finish
   4. d) termination
4. 1. a) carried
   2. b) caught
   3. c) spread
   4. d) transmitted
5. 1. a) fired
   2. b) launched
   3. c) opened
   4. d) sprang
6. 1. a) felt
   2. b) held
   3. c) knew
   4. d) loved