Making Bureaucracy Work

Abstract

What gives bureaucracy such a bad name? Is it bureaucracy in itself, or the ghosts in the system who, in a million minor drifts, contribute to turning efficiency into red-tape? Undesirable side-effects need not be confused with necessary first-level effects. There is nothing wrong with the bureaucratic system as such. Ultimately we could not work without it as it is the only known way of coordinating vast numbers of people to treat mass problems. However, like any tool, it is only as good as the people who use it, and its results are largely linked to the very agendas of the users. Understanding what makes bureaucracy work requires a good look at the implicit biases in the bureaucratic model, mostly seeded by its various founders and theoreticians, as well as tackling pragmatic issues of creating and applying rules ± and where and when to change them. About 100 years ago, bureaucracy was hailed as the leading edge way to run anything, from government to corporations. Now bureaucracy is often thought to be a disease which afflicts large organisations, and the word itself brings to mind endless red-tape malevolently contrived by petty, self-serving and small-minded bureaucrats. Yet, regardless of how much bad press they get, bureaucracies remain, and to a large extent prosper. The postmodern, global world has blown a wind of downsizing, TQM and customer orientation over many venerable institutions, but still, the core model persists. If bureaucracies are so bad, why do we continue to have them? Because we cannot do without them. By and large, the lesson of the last decades is that if small is beautiful, big is powerful. And the most efficient way to organisè`big'' is still the bureaucratic model, no matter what fancy disguise we draw over it. The best way to deal with mass The bureaucratic organisation is in no way the only possibility of organising largish social or corporate systems. The feudal model has lasted long enough to prove its worth and, at a more organisational level, collegial systems, such as old fashioned universities, or very modern firms working on the principle of network organisations are viable alternatives to the bureaucratic organisation. Still, none of these other forms of organisation can deal with high volume of activity quite as well as a bureaucracy. Strangely enough, bureaucracies excel at the overall efficient use of resources. As customers or outside observers, we tend to see their wastefulness, but considering the volume of activity such systems handle, the waste proportion is often not that large with respect to the resources/activity volume ratios (although, undeniably, some bureaucracies do go haywire as we will discuss further). When operated sensibly, a bureaucracy is efficient because it benefits from economies of scale and avoids duplication of effort, whilst maintaining standards of quality. Of course, in the face of how bad some bureaucracies get, we might find such benefits laughable, but I am The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at