Bureaucracy

Most of people do not think of bureaucracies in a positive light.

The answer to our simple questions is usually forwarded from desk to desk.

The term bureaucracy typically refers to the agencies of

government, but bureaucracy is also a form of organization found in both the public and private sectors.

Therefore it is an organization refers to assembling various elements of labor and expertise in a way that enables complex tasks to be accomplished.

There is no doubt that bureaucracies play a vital role in our lives.

They provide police protection, put out fires, regulate land use, educate children, maintain our highway system, propose new laws and ordinances, write budgets, and implement public policies.

Private corporations are also bureaucracies by definition, and they build automobiles and television sets, handle our personal banking, provide insurance for our homes and personal health, and provide air transportation, all of which make our lives in the modern world more pleasant.

Particularly in the US, public bureaucracies are often thought of as offices staffed with mindless bureaucrats, who are overpaid, unresponsive, inefficient, impersonal, and often arrogant.

They operate with little control from either elected officials or voters.

They have been insulated by civil service regulations, which were originally implemented to protect them from political forces under the belief that neutral competence was a worthy value.

The bureaucracy is often portrayed as the problem with government-the reason that government does not seem to be able to accomplish much.

The bureaucracy sometimes does very absurd things like issuing visas for 2 of the highjackers about 6 months after they died in the World Trade Center crashes in 2001.

Similarly, a Chicago cancer patient applied for Medicare and she received a letter saying that she was not eligible since she had died more than a year earlier.

A crazy example happened in state of Virginia, in USA.

A citizen received a legal notice about his overdue taxes.

The notice stated that if the bill were not paid promptly, Prince William Country would take legal action.

The amount due was one cent only!

Government decisions do not make a lot of sense always.

During the mid-1980s, the state of Pennsylvania was paying around $500,000 each year to the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, which was used for about 250 passengers each day.

At this price, the state could have bought each rider a new car every three years.

The federal government continues to operate Amtrak despite the fact that it loses more than one billion dollars each year.

Wasteful policies tarnish the image of government in the eyes of citizens. Tales of agencies paying $600 for toilet seats or more than $7000 for coffee makers do little to help the image of government or public bureaucracies regardless of how the cost are justified.

Is bureaucracy unnecessary then?

The same wasteful government also fights wars, provides national defense, helps to eradicate diseases, assists in managing the economy, provides the infrastructure needed for a modern society that is constantly changing.

We should keep in mind that all modern societies are administered societies.

Large organizations dominate the social landscape, and to function effectively in modern society, we must deal with these organizations as a customer, citizen, client, or a member.

Max Weber was the first to articulate and define the nature of bureaucracies in the early part of the 20th century.

He believed that bureaucracies were rational and necessary to organize modern societies because of the complexity of society itself.

Weber believed that bureaucracies tend to have certain characteristics such as hierarchical structure, a chain of command, division of labor and specialization of labor, routine behavior that follows standardized procedures, promotion based on demonstrated performance, a goal orientation that emphasizes the efficient and effective attainment of the organization’s goals and productivity.

Hierarchical structure is the formal organizational structure illustrated in organizational charts.

It simply means that there is a top and a bottom to the organization, with some type of executive leadership at the top overseeing various specialized departments.

In his view, the organization should be shaped like a pyramid.

However, organizations can be “tall” or “flat”.

Tall organizations have a lot of departments and supervisors between the top and the lower levels of the organization.

Flat structures have fewer supervisors and middle managements between the executives and rank-and-file areas of the organization.

Tall organizations tend to centralize power, whereas flat organizations decentralize authority as much as possible.

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith believed that the modern corporation is not managed by a powerful individual, but by a committee.

The committee is comprised of high-level managers, and specialists such as lawyers, accountants, and engineers form the technostructure.

A chain of command refers to the fact that everyone has a boss or a supervisor.

Division of labor and specialization of labor means that a bureaucracy divides labor into specialized units.

For instance, universities typically break their work into a lot of divisions, such as administration, various colleges and schools that have broad areas of expert knowledge and then into academic departments.

Within the academic departments, even professors have specialized areas of expertise.

Routine behavior that follows standardized procedures: Bureaucracies assemble expertise by definition, but they carry out their duties following established, routine procedures.

Promotion based on demonstrated performance: Promotion

should be based on individual performance rather than on the whims of a supervisor.

People who perform their jobs well should not be discriminated against, since the purpose of the organization is to perform a variety of complex tasks.

Merit system should be based on some standards that measure performance under equal conditions for everybody.

A goal orientation that emphasizes the efficient and effective attainment of an organization’s goals.

Organizations exist for a purpose, whether it is managing the parks and recreation resources of a city, collecting taxes for the government or manufacturing and selling automobiles.

Productivity, whereby all work and actions are evaluated according to established rules, and control of employees according to specific rules and procedures that are supposed to be applied impersonally to everyone.

In bureaucracies, everyone is supposed to be treated in accordance with established, standard operating procedures.

This helps build stability and continuity for the organization and its workers, and it enhances productivity.

Take a Closer Look at Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is often thought of as an organizational chart with someone at the top, departments scattered through the middle, and other departments at the bottom.

Most organizations have an organizational chart to illustrate their chain of command.

The power of a bureaucracy comes from its ability to organize itself in such a way that very complex tasks can be performed.

For instance, all the rules and regulations that govern a university are made using bureaucratic procedures.

But, is there any other way to organize a university?

Is there any other way to organize a corporation?

To date, we know of no method by which to organize large institutions other than the bureaucratic system.

The alternatives to bureaucracy that do exist are inadequate in a modern complex society.

Bureaucracies are often criticized for growing and growing.

Tasks that once could be performed by only a few people eventually require much larger staffs, more directors, more money, and additional resources.

The resources that public bureaucracies rely on do not mainly come from selling goods and services to the public.

Funding is secured through the budgetary process.

Critics argue that in the private sector, businesses can only grow if they generate enough sales in the marketplace to pay for the growth.

When it comes to the public sector, critics claim that government is overproducing services to advance agencies’ powers and build empires.

Thus, some argue that government grows unnecessarily because there is no connection between the sources of the funds that pay for government to operate and the work that an agency performs.

In the private sector, the link is the price charged for goods or services, and customers choose whether to buy whatever a firm has to offer.

This link is missing in government because the revenues come from taxes, and not from sales that must be generated in the marketplace.

So, government is criticized for creating a large, cumbersome, inefficient bureaucracy that continues to grow, overproduce services, and not looking after the public’s interest.

There are two types of philosophy in bureaucracy in the world: one is the notion that bureaucrats know everything better than those elected officials and they should tell them how to do the things and implement the policies.

The other one is that elected officials should appoint their bureaucrats on the corners of the bureaucracy so that they are able to implement the policies that they promised people during election campaigns.

The first one represents the British way of bureaucracy, while the American way of bureaucracy tends to follow the second path.

Turkey, for a long time, followed the British example and elected officials such as prime minister and ministers have not been capable of changing much in bureaucracy.

Inside Bureaucracy

What types of officials administer public bureaucracies?

According to Anthony Downs, who published an insightful book titled Inside Bureaucracy in 1966; those who run public bureaucracies fall into five “ideal-types” of bureaucrats.

These are labeled as climbers, advocates, zealots, statesmen, and conservers.

The basic classification that separates these people is their motives.

Climbers and conservers are considered self-interested officials.

Climbers are bureaucrats motivated solely by the desire to maximize their own personal power, income, and status.

They tend to be the rising stars who will take whatever action is needed to advance their own goals.

Once they have reached the highest point they can achieve in a bureau, they tend to jump ship to another bureau to continue to advance their careers and self-interest.

Promotion and success is what drives their motivation.

Climbers are found at the lowest levels of the organization partly because new recruits tend to have greater ambitions since their careers are just beginning.

Conservers regard convenience and security as paramount to their self-interest.

In contrast to climbers, conservers seek merely to retain the amount of power, income, and prestige that they already have.

They tend to protect the status quo and resist change.

They also tend to be very rule-oriented because they use rules and regulations to resist change.

In organizations, climbers can become conservers when they no longer believe that they can advance their careers further.

Conservers are more prominent in the middle levels of bureaus.

Those who have reached the peaks of their careers and middle-aged people who have lost their youthful energy are more likely to be conservers.

Zealots, advocates and statesmen are mixed-motive officials.

Zealots are loyal to relatively narrow policies or concepts, such as the development of certain military arms, like missile defense systems and nuclear submarines.

They seek power both for its own sake and to advance the policies to which they are fanatically loyal-so called sacred policies.

They are very optimistic, energetic, and aggressive.

They are found in newer agencies and often are the reason that new agencies are created.

Zealots are highly focused on a narrow cause, which tends to make them poor general administrators.

Advocates are loyal to a broader set of functions or to a broader organization than zealots.

They also seek power because they want to have significant influence on policies and actions concerning those functions or organizations.

Advocates tend to promote the ideals of an agency, such as law enforcement or environmental protection, but in a much broader way than zealots.

Advocates are found in all levels of organizations, but are very prone to be involved with newer organizations.

They are optimistic and energetic, but they are far more directed than zealots.

Thus, they are more likely to listen to their supervisors, peers and subordinates.

Advocates at higher levels of organization espouse to broader policy goals than those at lower levels.

They are the largest single group of the five ideal-types and tend to make good general administrators.

Statesmen are different from any of the other types.

They are loyal to society as a whole, and they have a desire to attain the power necessary to have a significant influence on national policies.

They are altruistic to a large degree because they are loyal to the “general welfare” and committed to serving the public interest.

Thus, they are seen as ideal bureaucrat often by some because they sincerely do seek to serve a greater public good.

Statesmen vary in energy from being lazy to hyper-active.

Lazy statesmen promote very broad view but take little action; good critics but poor achievers.

Statesmen are inclined to be philosophical and academic because their broad views often conflict with their narrow areas of functional responsibility in the organization.

They tend to be found at the highest and lower levels of organizations since they are usually loyal to society as a whole.

One can see that whichever ideal-type controls an organization would likely affect how the organization behaved.

Is there a life cycle for bureaucracies-agencies?

Are bureaus closed down after a while?