Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Bureaucracy
“Bureaucracy”: the term was coined in 18th-century
France
Literally means: “power of the desk”
Power of the person behind the desk –
“bureaucrat”
An administrator
3 meanings of the word:
A form of social organization
A social class
Resistance to change
Official statistics
St.Johns Evening Telegraph, 1973 (from Albert Mills and Tony Simmons,
Reading Organizational Theory, Garamond Press, 1999, p.41-42
Even in a non-corrupt state (or a well-organized, efficient private
corporation), bureaucracy tends to develop these characteristics*:
Rigidity
needed to enable a bureaucracy to process large numbers of cases
under standardized procedures
Goal displacement
preservation of the organization itself trumps the goal for which it
exists
Impersonality
Empire-building and self-perpetuation. Parkinson’s Law:
Resistance to change
undermines efficiency
Secrecy
control of information as a source of power
Anti-democratic behaviour
---------------------------------------
*Mills and Simmons, pp.54-60
Robert Michels, 1912, based on a study of the
politics of the German Social Democratic Party:
political opposition
Independent courts
Ombudsmen (pioneered in Sweden), Auditor
General
Decentralization of government functions
Citizen participation (requires access to information)
2. INFORMAL:
Public opinion
Independent media
Constituencies
Professional standards
Bureaucracy in the post-industrial age
Expansion of the practices of networking and
mutual adjustment, as opposed to hierarchy and
command
The dominance of markets over states