I have a job in my company that is essentially bureaucratic. Fellow employees ask me why they can’t do do something, and I give them the reason behind the law, and they just argue with me. I’ve learned to tell them, “Because it’s against the law.” That settles it. Big problems happen when you break the law. That’s my job, keeping fellow employees from breaking the law.
Humans are the most invasive species on earth. I don’t hear too many humans complaining about that.
Bureaucracy in theory and practice was founded to grant maximum efficiency, not to make things as inefficient as possible, and probably our modern bureaucracies break every one of the five laws by which bureaucracy is really supposed to work.
I think not, Johanan. Bureaucracy is founded in the cynical belief that people, on average, are fairly stupid, thoughtlessly impulsive, and no more honest than they have to be. Those in charge therefore have no reason at all to trust that the individuals under them, left on their own, would do the right thing — whatever that might be thought to be. So the bureaucratic solution to the management problem was to create a rigid, hierarchical structure in which the lines of authority and responsibility are clearly defined, every possible individual action is covered by a policy and a regulation, and everything is either mandatory or prohibited.
If you define “efficiency” in terms of not making mistakes in achieving goals imposed downward from the top, using only procedures imposed downward from the top, then yes, you could call bureaucracy efficient.
Over the last generation, a better management model has emerged — even in government agencies — in which members of an organization are not so much bosses and underlings as teammates, each given as much initiative and freedom to do their job as possible within the overall goals of the organization.
There’s still enough of the bad, old model around, of course, to keep Dilbert (for example) going for years to come. :)
And just where did you get those ideas, SCATTY_423? Not from the founder of the concept, and not from those who have actualy made it work to the benefit of all.
Sir, I live and work every day of my life in a bureaucracy that is the exact opposite of everything you say bureaucracy is. Every form of human government can have those kind of cynical assumptions imposed on it, and sooner or later, typically does. But there’s a reason why the system worked so well under Moses as advised by Jethro, and why it works so well under those who follow their example. The people made the difference between what you describe and what the system actually can and should be.
Ask yourself whether you’re projecting your own darkness onto the situation. Then, be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
I, too, have spent my entire adult life working in a bureaucratic setting — a good one, as it happens.
The Wikipedia article on bureaucracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy) is informative. It notes the benefits that bureaucracy brings to human affairs, but it also quotes Max Weber (who I imagine is the person you cited as its founder) about its dangers:
While recognizing bureaucracy as the most efficient form of organization, and even indispensable for the modern state, Weber also saw it as a threat to individual freedoms, and the ongoing bureaucratization as leading to a “polar night of icy darkness”, in which increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in the aforementioned “iron cage” of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control.
In any case, I was not discussing an idealized version of bureaucracy — anything reduced to its ideals sounds unimpeachable — but rather the deficiencies of human nature that make some form of authoritarian organization necessary, and the real-world (not idealized) implementation of bureaucracy by the same human nature. In that light, I think that nothing that I said was incorrect.
TheDOCTOR about 13 years ago
I just got the Flag joke : RED TAPE
Hugh B. Hayve about 13 years ago
What about a license for my pet half-a-bee, he had sort of an accident……
GESWho about 13 years ago
Hugh, is your pet half-a-bee named Eric?
“Fiddlee-dum, fiddle-e-dee, Bisected ac-ci-dent-al-lee, one summer’s after-noon by me, It’s Eric the Half-a-bee.”
John Cleese of Monty Python
JP Steve Premium Member about 13 years ago
That would half to bee it, GES Who!
Xane_T about 13 years ago
Hmmm, hith lithp hath mytheriouthly dithappeared!
mntim about 13 years ago
I have a job in my company that is essentially bureaucratic. Fellow employees ask me why they can’t do do something, and I give them the reason behind the law, and they just argue with me. I’ve learned to tell them, “Because it’s against the law.” That settles it. Big problems happen when you break the law. That’s my job, keeping fellow employees from breaking the law.
prrdh about 13 years ago
All that work to restore an invasive species to the Western Hemisphere?
bmonk about 13 years ago
Aren’t most domesticated animals invasive? Cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, honeybees, dogs, horses, donkeys, chickens, pigeons, peacocks, geese, ducks, cats…
(and plants too, but my fingers are already tired…)
Rakkav about 13 years ago
Humans are the most invasive species on earth. I don’t hear too many humans complaining about that.
Bureaucracy in theory and practice was founded to grant maximum efficiency, not to make things as inefficient as possible, and probably our modern bureaucracies break every one of the five laws by which bureaucracy is really supposed to work.
peter0423 about 13 years ago
I think not, Johanan. Bureaucracy is founded in the cynical belief that people, on average, are fairly stupid, thoughtlessly impulsive, and no more honest than they have to be. Those in charge therefore have no reason at all to trust that the individuals under them, left on their own, would do the right thing — whatever that might be thought to be. So the bureaucratic solution to the management problem was to create a rigid, hierarchical structure in which the lines of authority and responsibility are clearly defined, every possible individual action is covered by a policy and a regulation, and everything is either mandatory or prohibited.
If you define “efficiency” in terms of not making mistakes in achieving goals imposed downward from the top, using only procedures imposed downward from the top, then yes, you could call bureaucracy efficient.
Over the last generation, a better management model has emerged — even in government agencies — in which members of an organization are not so much bosses and underlings as teammates, each given as much initiative and freedom to do their job as possible within the overall goals of the organization.
There’s still enough of the bad, old model around, of course, to keep Dilbert (for example) going for years to come. :)
Rakkav about 13 years ago
And just where did you get those ideas, SCATTY_423? Not from the founder of the concept, and not from those who have actualy made it work to the benefit of all.
Sir, I live and work every day of my life in a bureaucracy that is the exact opposite of everything you say bureaucracy is. Every form of human government can have those kind of cynical assumptions imposed on it, and sooner or later, typically does. But there’s a reason why the system worked so well under Moses as advised by Jethro, and why it works so well under those who follow their example. The people made the difference between what you describe and what the system actually can and should be.
Ask yourself whether you’re projecting your own darkness onto the situation. Then, be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Rakkav about 13 years ago
Here is another perspective on bureaucracy as it was meant to be…
peter0423 about 13 years ago
I, too, have spent my entire adult life working in a bureaucratic setting — a good one, as it happens.
The Wikipedia article on bureaucracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy) is informative. It notes the benefits that bureaucracy brings to human affairs, but it also quotes Max Weber (who I imagine is the person you cited as its founder) about its dangers:
While recognizing bureaucracy as the most efficient form of organization, and even indispensable for the modern state, Weber also saw it as a threat to individual freedoms, and the ongoing bureaucratization as leading to a “polar night of icy darkness”, in which increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in the aforementioned “iron cage” of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control.
In any case, I was not discussing an idealized version of bureaucracy — anything reduced to its ideals sounds unimpeachable — but rather the deficiencies of human nature that make some form of authoritarian organization necessary, and the real-world (not idealized) implementation of bureaucracy by the same human nature. In that light, I think that nothing that I said was incorrect.