Several messages emerge from responses to this month’s column on the worthiness of bureaucracies. In general, there is a wide range of thinking about the value of bureaucracies and work done by bureaucrats; it leads some to devote thought to how bureaucracies can be made more effective in what they do.
One sentiment: Don’t confuse bureaucracies with deliberative (as opposed to intuitive) thinking, or with Daniel Kahneman’s ideas about “thinking slow.” Bureaucracies have functions that are largely not associated with decision making.
David Wittenberg addressed the semantics of the question regarding the role of bureaucracies this way: “Likening effortful, reflective thinking to bureaucracy misses the mark. Bureaucracies are focused on decision rights, not decision making,” Wittenberg wrote. “They are not created to deliberate or think.”
Ed Hare echoed Wittenberg's opinion: “(Bureaucracies) are far too often, about themselves and expanding the power and influence of the people who head them.”
Tom commented, “Most governmental bureaucracy is the result of crossed purposes: multiple groups who disagree on the desirability of certain results ….” Kamal Gupta, citing his experience with corporate bureaucrats, said, “We have a word for it; we call these people ‘zombie managers.’ They keep on pushing papers round and round, and then the actual decision goes to a guy who does not understand the subject at all.”
“We have a word for it; we call these people ‘zombie managers.’ They keep on pushing papers round and round, and then the actual decision goes to a guy who does not understand the subject at all”
Several respondents, some of whom have served in government agencies, defended the role of bureaucracy. These views assume that bureaucracies do have decision-making responsibilities.
Dean Dastvar put it this way: “Bureaucracy, in some form, is not necessarily an evil but rather a tool which can be refined generation after generation… There is a need for reform so that decision makers within government can have greater autonomy to make key decisions with the agility of System 1 (using Kahneman’s terminology) while within a larger System 2-developed strategic framework.”
Chiding other respondents for not shedding more light on the role that bureaucracies can perform, Eric W. Taylor, Jr. commented, “What I have detected in various comments on this web page is desperation when it comes to government. It seems like many Americans are just starting to give up, which is the absolute wrong approach.” Citing the Glass-Steagall Act in banking as well as actions establishing other social programs during the New Deal, Taylor concluded that, “Bureaucracy in those examples was very effective.”
Among the few suggestions for improving the functioning of bureaucracies was this from Guy: “If you want to have an efficient and effective bureaucracy, then you need to control the demands placed on the bureaucracy and the size of it … (overtasking its members in a way) that forces prioritization.”
In the context of other comments, it suggested the question: Are bureaucracies worth improving? What do you think?
Original column
The process leading up to a transfer of leadership in the United States, just as in other countries, always seems to be accompanied by several similar themes. One theme is change. For some reason, change has an appeal to voters, pretty much regardless of the performance of the incumbent, at least at the level of the presidency. Another common theme is the promise to trim organizations and fight bureaucracy.
Both themes have a certain attraction in the business boardroom as well.
In business today, effective processes for decision making are associated with words like speed, agility, and ambidexterity--characterized by fewer filters through which decisions have to be processed and fewer people who have veto power over ideas, good or bad. Authority is delegated along with responsibility. Everyone acts in the best interests of the organization, assuming knowledge of the objectives and acceptable ways of achieving them. Permission doesn’t have to be granted. Rather, people act now and inform later, or else explain and examine what they did after the fact if things didn’t go well.
The way of the bureaucrat
That is in contrast to a bureaucracy, which is, according to my American Heritage Dictionary, “an administrative system in which the need or inclination to follow rigid or complex procedures impedes effective action.”
Wars on bureaucracy are waged and often thought to be won in non-governmental organizations. But there's a perception that the war is rarely waged or won in governments--particularly in democracies.
This helps explain the periodic attraction of voters to business leaders, such as Donald Trump, who presumably have beaten bureaucracy in their own organizations.What happens, though, at least according to US history, is that leaders who only have experience in business often are frustrated when they come up against the bureaucratic processes of government. Meetings are longer, more frequent, and involve more people. Everyone seems to want a voice in a decision. And when the leader finally decides, it is only at the end of a long time delay to accommodate rules, “due process,” imposed by citizens and their representatives in Congress.
When bureaucracy works
Bureaucracy doesn’t seem to have many advocates. But if we can extrapolate from the work of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and others on individual human behavior, we may obtain insights into situations in which bureaucratic processes are beneficial.
Kahneman concludes that each of us reaches decisions using various combinations of “automatic” System 1 and “effortful” System 2 thinking. System 1 is characterized by informed intuition, speed, and decisiveness. It’s also subject to bias and what Kahneman calls “cognitive illusions.” System 2 is more deliberative and slower. It is especially appropriate when addressing complex problems we have not encountered before. But both Systems 1 and 2 can lead to poor decisions both in terms of content and timing.
Can we roughly equate bureaucracy to System 2 thinking? Is it too big a leap of logic to apply Kahneman’s thinking about individuals to organizations? If you think so, you may want to stop reading here. If not, are there ways of capturing the deliberative advantages of bureaucratic decision processes without paying the price of so many meetings, delays, decision screens, and minority vetoes?
What, if anything, could be done to counter those three words, “impedes effective action,” in the dictionary definition of bureaucracy? Are there ways of creating an effective bureaucracy either in business or government? Should we call a truce in the “war on bureaucracy?" What do you think?
Reference:
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011)
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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.
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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.