Final answer:
Impersonality is the bureaucratic characteristic describing the separation of management from ownership and the employment of managers as career professionals, which helps prevent favoritism and enables efficient service to many customers.
Step-by-step explanation:
The characteristic of bureaucracy that describes the situation where management is separate from ownership, and managers are career employees is impersonality. In the structure of bureaucracies, impersonality plays a crucial role in taking personal feelings out of professional situations to avoid issues like nepotism, backroom deals, and favoritism. Organizations like Walmart are often characterized as bureaucracies, which allows them to serve a large volume of customers efficiently, though sometimes at the cost of being perceived as lacking care for individuals and the community.