Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bureaucracy
“Bureaucracy”: the term was coined in 18th-century
France
Literally means: “power of the desk”
Power of the person behind the desk –
“bureaucrat”
An administrator
3 meanings of the word:
A form of social organization
A social class
Resistance to change
Official statistics
St.Johns Evening Telegraph, 1973 (from Albert Mills and Tony Simmons,
Reading Organizational Theory, Garamond Press, 1999, p.41-42
Even in a non-corrupt state (or a well-organized, efficient private
corporation), bureaucracy tends to develop these characteristics*:
Rigidity
needed to enable a bureaucracy to process large numbers of cases
under standardized procedures
Goal displacement
preservation of the organization itself trumps the goal for which it
exists
Impersonality
Empire-building and self-perpetuation. Parkinson’s Law:
(1) 'An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals'
Resistance to change
undermines efficiency
Secrecy
control of information as a source of power
Anti-democratic behaviour
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*Mills and Simmons, pp.54-60
Robert Michels, 1912, based on a study of the
politics of the German Social Democratic Party:
political opposition
Independent courts
Ombudsmen (pioneered in Sweden), Auditor
General
Decentralization of government functions
Citizen participation (requires access to information)
2. INFORMAL:
Public opinion
Independent media
Constituencies
Professional standards
Bureaucracy in the post-industrial age
Expansion of the practices of networking and
mutual adjustment, as opposed to hierarchy and
command
The dominance of markets over states
bureaucracy
Mechanisms for greater flexibility
Introduction of business methods to cut costs