Chapter 13: Bureaucracy and Post-bureaucracy

Chapter aims

• Explain bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy

• Explain the problems of each from mainstream perspectives

• Identify critical approaches to each model

• Explain the strengths and weaknesses of the critical approaches

Overview

• Bureaucracy– Based on rules, hierarchy, impersonality and a division of labour– Dominant form of organization for more than a century– Mainstream critique: Has problems of poor motivation, producer

focus and inertia– Critical critique: Preoccupation with efficiency, dehumanizing

• Post-bureaucracy– Based on trust, empowerment, personal treatment and shared

responsibility– Mainstream critique: Has problems of loss of control, risk and

unfairness– Critical critique: Preoccupation with efficiency, an extension of

control

Weber on bureaucracy

• Weber the founding father of bureaucracy• Observed that society held together by authority• 3 types of authority

– Charismatic: personal authority of individuals– Traditional: established authority of institutions– Rational-legal: system of rules devised for rational

reasons

• Weber argues society increasingly based on rational-legal authority

Weber’s principles of bureaucracy

• Functional specialization

• Hierarchy of authority

• System of rules

• Impersonality

From bureaucracy to post-bureaucracy

• Alleged shift from ‘industrial’ to ‘post-industrial’ society since 1970s– Shift from mass production of standard

products to niche products– Employee demand for flexibility and autonomy

• Alleged development of a new organizational form– The ‘post-bureaucracy’

Hecksher on post-bureaucracy

• The ideal-type:– Rules are replaced with consensus and

dialogue based on personal influence– Responsibilities are assigned on merit rather

than hierarchy– People are treated as individuals rather than

impersonally– The boundaries of the organization are

opened

Key problems

• Bureaucracy– Motivation: excessive

rule-following– Customer service: due

to poor motivation– Resistance to

innovation and change

• Post-bureaucracy– Control: relies on

normative control– Risk: of bad decisions

if people have greater discretion

– Fairness: possibility of treatment based on prejudices

Dysfunctions of bureaucracy

• Are bureaucracies as rational as they appear?– 2 arguments:

• Over-attachment to rules can be inefficient– Goal-displacement (Merton, 1940)– Work to rule (Blau, 1955)

• Rules can be ignored, leading to inefficiency– Prejudices (Crozier, 1964)– Mock-bureaucracy (Gouldner, 1954)

The end of bureaucracy?

• ‘Death’ of bureaucracy predicted for 40 years– Shift to ‘flexible specialization’– Rise of the ‘network society’

• Sceptics argue bureaucracy very much alive– No evidence of a global decline in manufacturing– Talk of trust and empowerment more rhetoric than

reality

Mainstream approach: Limitations

• One-sided and restricted focus on efficiency– Does not ask the question ‘efficient for

whom’?– Concerned with ‘how?’ but not ‘why?’

Critical approaches to bureaucracy

• Based on an alternative reading of Weber– Argues that Weber never saw the ideal-type

bureaucracy as desirable– Distinction between:

• instrumental rationality: ‘doing the thing right’• substantive rationality: ‘doing the right thing’

– Argues that Weber saw bureaucracy as substantively irrational

• ‘iron cage of rationality’

– Critical approaches concerned about substantive rationality

In defence of bureaucracy

• Du Gay (2000) responds to criticisms that bureaucracy lacks a concern for morality– Ethic of impersonality and fairness prevents

treatment based on prejudice– Post-bureaucracy has no such safeguard

Critical approaches to post-bureaucracy

• Not reassured by rhetoric of trust and empowerment– Interpreted as another top-down form of control– Some argue it is a more intense form of control since

it controls beliefs as well as behaviour• Normative control

• Post-bureaucracy weakens job security and intensifies time pressures– Greater stress for employees

Critical approach: Contributions

• Shift away from narrow focus on efficiency

• Greater recognition of political and ethical values

• Shows that post-bureaucracy also involves an instrumental rationality

• Highlights the increase in insecurity and anxiety of post-bureaucratic work

Critical approach: Limitations

• Oversimplification– Seeing bureaucracy as ‘bad’ and any

alternative as ‘good’

• Determinism– E.g. seeing bureaucracy as inevitably

replacing other forms of organization

• Offers utopian solutions– How realistic is the critique?