Bureaucratic organizations tend to maintain the status quo and have cultures that emphasize

When German political economist Max Weber first devised the bureaucratic theory of management in the late 19th century, his intention was to combat the nepotism and unproductiveness rife in the family-run businesses of the day. Weber believed that efficient organizations needed to ‘have a strict hierarchy or authority, clear rules and regulations, standardized procedures and meticulous record keeping.’ Ironically, the very organizational approach that set out to drive efficiency has, over time, resulted in the opposite outcome.

The larger an organization becomes and the longer it exists, the more bureaucratic and inefficient it often becomes. Recalling how this occurred at General Motors, former company board member Ross Perot once joked, “At General Motors, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is go hire a consultant on snakes. Then you get together a committee on snakes, and you discuss it for a couple of years. And the most likely course of action is: nothing.” Reflecting on such an inefficient state of affairs, Perot concluded in 1988 that “the GM system has to be nuked.”

While Perot’s criticism of GM’s culture is applicable to many other companies, at an even broader level, there are entire nations whose systems and processes have become so bureaucratic they need to be nuked – or at least ruthlessly pruned.

In his 2012 State of the Union Address, President Obama observed that one of the U.S.’s greatest challenges is its bloated bureaucracy.

“We must clear away red tape because there is no question that some of our regulations are outdated, unnecessary or too costly. I’ve ordered every federal agency to eliminate rules that don’t make sense. We got rid of one rule from 40 years ago that could have forced some dairy farmers to spend $10,000 a year proving that they could contain an oil spill – because somewhere along the line milk had been classified as an oil.”

Having worked with a wide range of clients in both the private and public sector, I have identified five reasons bureaucracy has the unique ability to destroy an organization:

1: Bureaucracy leads to responsibility being shared or shirked

One of the characteristics of a bureaucratic system is that it shifts the emphasis from the individual to the collective. While this makes organizations less vulnerable to ‘key person’ risks, it also leads people to hide behind systems and processes rather than take responsibility for action, or inaction. Blame gets spread across the whole organization. When something goes wrong, it is the system’s fault.

Anyone who has contacted a customer service call center only to be passed from one department to another because the person on the line lacks the know-how, will or authority to solve your problem, knows how infuriating this aspect of bureaucracy can be.

2: Bureaucracy creates cracks that get fallen through

The second danger of bureaucracy is that because systems and processes are rigid by nature, anything or anyone that doesn’t fit in the boxes on a form or the categories in a database tends to be rejected or fall through the cracks. Large organizations like government agencies are particularly vulnerable to this as countless child protection oversights can attest.

Just as people can fall through the cracks, so can ideas and opportunities. This was largely the case when Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) failed to capitalize commercially on many of its innovations due to gaps in communication between its research and marketing divisions.

3: Bureaucracy causes things get overlooked

Bureaucracy tends to mask underlying weaknesses and can cause the basics to be overlooked. Take the infamous exploding Ford Pinto – a car that became irreverently known as ‘the barbeque that seats four’.

An engineer’s early assessment and subsequent strong recommendation to buffer the Pinto’s fuel tanks disappeared entirely as Pinto reports filtered up Ford’s bureaucratic chain.

By the time the management committee approved the final specs for the car, no one was aware of the fuel tank recommendation and almost 30 Pinto drivers died as a result of this needless oversight.

This is the problem with bureaucracy: everyone assumes that someone else has ‘covered all bases,’ ‘asked the question,’ or ‘done the research’ when it is entirely possible that no one has, or someone has, and no one had paid any attention!

If the devil is in the detail, bureaucracy gives the the devil ample opportunity to wreak havoc without anybody paying attention or realizing it – until it’s too late.

4: Bureaucracy leads to risk being avoided and innovation being blocked

Highly bureaucratic and process-driven institutions tend to attract certain personality types and temperaments – namely those who like to know where the boundaries are, and who are seldom tempted to ‘colour outside the lines’. Over time, this tendency can result in a culture of conformity, close-mindedness and risk aversion.

A phenomenon which is common to most if not all bureaucratic organizations is that of the ‘clay layer.’ This term describes how those in the lower echelons of an organization often have the best ideas for improving performance, productivity or profitability, yet their ideas and insights typically fail to come to the attention of those who could act on them.

Why so? Because a ‘clay layer’ of middle management gatekeepers stifle such innovation in order to preserve and protect the status quo.

This aspect of bureaucracy played a role in Nokia’s demise as leader in the mobile phone business. Seven years before the iPhone’s release, Nokia’s research team developed mobile phones with color touch screens, mapping software and e-commerce functionality.

A few years later, Nokia designed a wireless-enabled tablet computer long before the iPad was even imagined. And yet, according to former Nokia chief designer Frank Nuovo, many cutting edge innovations like these never made it to market due to a dysfunctional corporate culture. Nuovo describes how, in addition to being fragmented by internal rivalries, Nokia’s research efforts were disconnected from the company’s operations departments who were responsible for bringing devices to market – resulting in missed opportunities that cost the company dearly.

5: Bureaucracy leads to inertia and non-responsiveness

Highly bureaucratic organizations are incredibly resistant to outside influences and lack the ability to respond quickly when shift happens. Like the ill-fated Titanic, bureaucracies often alter their course far too slowly when threats and changes emerge.

While bureaucratic process is a natural result of organizations becoming larger and more complex, leaders must remain ever-mindful of the fact that bureaucracy is a great servant but a terrible master.

Home Politics, Law & Government Politics & Political Systems

bureaucracy, specific form of organization defined by complexity, division of labour, permanence, professional management, hierarchical coordination and control, strict chain of command, and legal authority. It is distinguished from informal and collegial organizations. In its ideal form, bureaucracy is impersonal and rational and based on rules rather than ties of kinship, friendship, or patrimonial or charismatic authority. Bureaucratic organization can be found in both public and private institutions.

The foremost theorist of bureaucracy is the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), who described the ideal characteristics of bureaucracies and offered an explanation for the historical emergence of bureaucratic institutions. According to Weber, the defining features of bureaucracy sharply distinguish it from other types of organization based on nonlegal forms of authority. Weber observed that the advantage of bureaucracy was that it was the most technically proficient form of organization, possessing specialized expertise, certainty, continuity, and unity. Bureaucracy’s emergence as a preferred form of organization occurred with the rise of a money-based economy (which ultimately resulted in the development of capitalism) and the attendant need to ensure impersonal, rational-legal transactions. Instrumental organizations (e.g., public-stock business firms) soon arose because their bureaucratic organization equipped them to handle the various demands of capitalist production more efficiently than small-scale producers.

Contemporary stereotypes of bureaucracy tend to portray it as unresponsive, lethargic, undemocratic, and incompetent. Weber’s theory of bureaucracy, however, emphasizes not only its comparative technical and proficiency advantages but also attributes its dominance as a form of organization to the diminution of caste systems (such as feudalism) and other forms of inequitable social relations based upon a person’s status. In the pure form of bureaucratic organization universalized rules and procedures would dominate, rendering personal status or connections irrelevant. In this form, bureaucracy is the epitome of universalized standards under which similar cases are treated similarly as codified by law and rules, and under which the individual tastes and discretion of the administrator are constrained by due process rules. Despite the widespread derogatory stereotypes of bureaucracy, a system of government grounded in law requires bureaucracy to function.

Nevertheless, the words bureaucracy and bureaucrat are typically thought of and used pejoratively. They convey images of red tape, excessive rules and regulations, unimaginativeness, a lack of individual discretion, central control, and an absence of accountability. Far from being conceived as proficient, popular contemporary portrayals often paint bureaucracies as inefficient and lacking in adaptability. Because the characteristics that define the organizational advantages of bureaucracy also contain within them the possibilities of organizational dysfunction, both the flattering and unflattering depictions of bureaucracy can be accurate. Thus, the characteristics that make bureaucracies proficient paradoxically also may produce organizational pathologies.

Jurisdictional competency is a key element of bureaucratic organization, which is broken into units with defined responsibilities. Fundamentally, jurisdictional competency refers to bureaucratic specialization, with all elements of a bureaucracy possessing a defined role. The responsibilities of individuals broaden with movement upward through an organizational hierarchy. The organizational division of labour enables units and individuals within an organization to master details and skills and to turn the novel into the routine. Although the division of labour is highly efficient, it can lead to a number of harmful organizational pathologies; for example, units or individuals may be unable to identify and respond adequately to problems outside their competency and may approach all problems and priorities exclusively from the purview of a unit’s specific capabilities. This feature of bureaucracy also can lead organizational units to shirk responsibility by allowing them to define a problem as belonging to some other unit and thereby leave the issue unattended. Alternatively, every unit within an organization is apt to put a face on a problem congenial mainly to its own interests, skills, and technologies.

Bureaucracies have clear lines of command and control. Bureaucratic authority is organized hierarchically, with responsibility taken at the top and delegated with decreasing discretion below. Because of the risk of organizational parochialism produced by limited and specific jurisdictional competencies, the capacity to coordinate and control the multiplicity of units is essential. Authority is the glue that holds together diversity and prevents units from exercising unchecked discretion. Yet, few features of bureaucratic life have received so much adverse attention as the role of hierarchical authority as a means for achieving organizational command and control. Popular criticisms emphasize that hierarchical organization strangles creative impulses and injects hyper-cautious modes of behaviour based on expectations of what superiors may desire. Command and control, which are necessary to coordinate the disparate elements of bureaucratic organization, provide for increasing responsibility upward, delegation, and decreasing discretion downward.

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now

Continuity is another key element of bureaucratic organization. Rational-legal authority necessitates uniform rules and procedures for written documents and official behaviour. A bureaucracy’s files (i.e., its past records) provide it with organizational memory, thereby enabling it to follow precedent and standard operating procedures. The ability to utilize standard operating procedures makes organizations more efficient by decreasing the costs attached to any given transaction. Organizational files record procedures, antecedent behaviour, and personnel records. They also allow an organization to be continuous and, thus, independent of any specific leadership. On the whole, continuity is vital to an organization’s capacity to retain its identity and even its culture. Without its records, it would be impossible to maintain transactions grounded in legality. Yet continuity also has a dysfunctional side, leading organizations to behave predictably and conservatively or, worse perhaps, merely reflexively. Continuity also may lead a bureaucracy to repeat regularly activities that may be inaccurate and whose inaccuracies thereby cumulate.

Professionalization of management, another basic element of bureaucracy, requires a full-time corps of officials whose attention is devoted exclusively to its managerial responsibilities. In government, professionalization is vested in the corps of civil servants whose positions have generally been obtained through the passage of tests based upon merit. The civil service is sometimes considered a permanent government, distinct from the transient politicians who serve only for a limited time and at the pleasure of the electorate in democratic political systems.

In businesses and in other nongovernmental bureaucratic organizations, there is also a professional cadre of managers. Professionalization increases expertise and continuity within the organization. Even when organizations are temporarily leaderless or experience turmoil in their top leadership positions, the professional cadre helps to maintain an organizational equilibrium. The virtues of professionalization are clear: without a professional corps, organizations would suffer from crises induced by incompetency. Professionalization thus contributes to the superior technical proficiency that Weber claimed was the hallmark of bureaucratic organization.

Despite its virtues, professionalization also carries potential risks. Often the professional corps of managerial experts itself becomes a covert source of power because it has superior knowledge compared with those who are its nominal but temporary superiors. By virtue of greater experience, mastery of detail, and organizational and substantive knowledge, professional bureaucrats may exercise strong influence over decisions made by their leaders. The existence of powerful bureaucrats raises issues of accountability and responsibility, particularly in democratic systems; bureaucrats are supposedly the agents of their leaders, but their superior knowledge of detail can place them in a position of indispensability. In addition, although a permanent corps of officials brings expertise and mastery of detail to decision making, it also deepens the innate conservatism of a bureaucracy. The permanent corps is usually skeptical of novelty because the essence of bureaucratic organization is to turn past novelties into present routines. Professional bureaucrats, be they in the civil or private sector, also tend to favour the organizational status quo because their investments (e.g., training and status) are tied to it. Consequently, the more professionalized the cadre becomes, the more likely it is to resist the intrusion of external forces.

Rules are the lifeblood of bureaucratic organization, providing a rational and continuous basis for procedures and operations. An organization’s files provide the inventory of accumulated rules. Bureaucratic decisions and—above all—procedures are grounded in codified rules and precedents. Although most people dislike rules that inhibit them, the existence of rules is characteristic of legal-rational authority, ensuring that decisions are not arbitrary, that standardized procedures are not readily circumvented, and that order is maintained. Rules are the essence of bureaucracy but are also the bane of leaders who want to get things done their way instantly.

Rules restrain arbitrary behaviour, but they also can provide formidable roadblocks to achievement. The accumulation of rules sometimes leads to the development of inconsistencies, and the procedures required to change any element of the status quo may become extraordinarily onerous as a result of the rule-driven character of bureaucracy. One perspective holds that the strict adherence to rules restricts the ability of a bureaucracy to adapt to new circumstances. By contrast, markets, which can operate with very few rules, force rapid adaptation to changing circumstances. Yet, most major business organizations are arranged in bureaucratic form because hierarchy and delegated responsibility reduce the transaction costs of making decisions.

Thus, the most basic elements of pure bureaucratic organization are its emphasis on procedural regularity, a hierarchical system of accountability and responsibility, specialization of function, continuity, a legal-rational basis, and fundamental conservatism. The emergence of capitalism and the emphasis on standard currency transactions over and above barter systems created the need for bureaucratic forms of organization in both the private and public sectors. However, the critical elements of the bureaucratic form of organization also can conflict with one another and are often at the base of criticisms that regard bureaucracies as dysfunctional. In sum, what makes bureaucracy work also may work against it.