What is bureaucracy? What are the advantages and disadvantages of bureaucracy?

Bureaucracy is also meant to allow an organization,
governmental or private, to carry on its day to day business through changes in power. 
This is a tremendous advantage since if all of the people involved with day to day
operations were let go when a new administration or CEO came in, it would completely
disrupt the operations of the entity.  The institutional history and intelligence would
be completely lost in a change in power at the top.  New people would have to be hired
and trained, causing significant down time for any organization, which would be
completely impractical.  If I need a passport and there is a new president in January, I
do not want to wait for new people to be hired and trained in the interim. And that is a
fairly trivial example.  Image a complete turnover in the Defense Department for each
new administration! For the most part, in government and in private industry, a change
at the top effectuates not all that many personnel changes, so the bureaucracy can carry
on.  As much red tape as they seem to generate, we would be even less pleased without
them.