Since being coined, the word bureaucracy has developed negative connotations for some. Some bureaucracies have been criticized as being inefficient, convoluted, or too inflexible to individuals. The dehumanizing effects of excessive bureaucracy became a major theme in the work of German-language writer Franz Kafka (1883–1924) and are central to his novels The Trial and The Castle. The 1985 dystopian film Brazil by Terry Gilliam portrays a farcical macabre world in which small, otherwise insignificant errors in the bureaucratic processes of government develop into maddening and tragic consequences. The elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy is a key concept in modern managerial theory and has been an issue in some political campaigns.
Some commentators have noted the necessity of bureaucracies in modern society. The German sociologist Max Weber argued that bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which human activity can be organized and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies are necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency, and eliminate favoritism. On the other hand, Weber also saw unfettered bureaucracy as a threat to individual freedom, with the potential of trapping individuals in an impersonal "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control.
Etymology and usage
The term "bureaucracy" is French in origin and combines the French word bureau – desk or office – with the Greek word κράτος (Kratos) – rule or political power. It was coined in the mid-18th century by the French economist Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay. Gournay never wrote the term down but was later quoted at length in a letter from a contemporary:
The late M. de Gournay... sometimes used to say: "We have an illness in France which bids fair to play havoc with us; this illness is called bureaumania." Sometimes he used to invent a fourth or fifth form of government under the heading of "bureaucracy."
The first known English-language use dates to 1818 with Irish novelist Lady Morgan
referring to the apparatus used by the British to subjugate its colony
as "the Bureaucratie, or office tyranny, by which Ireland has so long
been governed."
By the mid-19th century, the word was being used in a more neutral
sense, referring to a system of public administration in which offices
were held by unelected career officials. In this sense "bureaucracy" was
seen as a distinct form of management, often subservient to a monarchy. In the 1920s, the definition was expanded by the German sociologist Max Weber to include any system of administration conducted by trained professionals according to fixed rules. Weber saw the bureaucracy as a relatively positive development; however, by 1944 the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises opined in the context of his experience in the Nazi regime that the term bureaucracy was "always applied with an opprobrious connotation," and by 1957 the American sociologist Robert Merton suggested that the term "bureaucrat" had become an epithet in some circumstances.
The word "bureaucracy" is also used in politics & government with a
disapproving notion to mention about official rules that make it
difficult to do things. In workplaces, the word is used very often to
mention about complicated rules, processes, and written work that make
it hard to get something done.
History
Ancient
Students competed in imperial examinations to receive a position in the bureaucracy of Imperial China.
Although the term "bureaucracy" first originated in the mid-18th
century, organized and consistent administrative systems existed much
earlier. The development of writing (c. 3500 BC) and the use of documents was critical to the administration of this system, and the first definitive emergence of bureaucracy occurred in ancient Sumer, where an emergent class of scribes used clay tablets to administer the harvest and to allocate its spoils. Ancient Egypt also had a hereditary class of scribes that administered the civil-service bureaucracy.
A hierarchy of regional proconsuls and their deputies administered the Roman Empire. The reforms of Diocletian
(Emperor from 284 to 305) doubled the number of administrative
districts and led to a large-scale expansion of Roman bureaucracy. The early Christian author Lactantius (c. 250 – c.
325) claimed that Diocletian's reforms led to widespread economic
stagnation, since "the provinces were divided into minute portions, and
many presidents and a multitude of inferior officers lay heavy on each
territory." After the Empire split, the Byzantine Empire developed a notoriously complicated administrative hierarchy, and in the 20th century the term "Byzantine" came to refer to any complex bureaucratic structure.
In China, the Han dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) established a complicated bureaucracy based on the teachings of Confucius, who emphasized the importance of ritual in a family, in relationships, and in politics. With each subsequent dynasty, the bureaucracy evolved. During the Song dynasty (960–1279) the bureaucracy became meritocratic. Following the Song reforms, competitive examinations took place to determine which candidates qualified to hold given positions.
The imperial examination system lasted until 1905, six years before the Qing dynasty collapsed, marking the end of China's traditional bureaucratic system.
Modern
The United Kingdom
The 18th century Department of Excise developed a sophisticated bureaucracy. Pictured, the Custom House, London.
Instead of the inefficient and often corrupt system of tax farming that prevailed in absolutist states such as France, the Exchequer was able to exert control over the entire system of tax revenue and government expenditure.
By the late 18th century, the ratio of fiscal bureaucracy to population
in Britain was approximately 1 in 1300, almost four times larger than
the second most heavily bureaucratized nation, France. Thomas Taylor Meadows, Britain's consul in Guangzhou, argued in his Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China
(1847) that "the long duration of the Chinese empire is solely and
altogether owing to the good government which consists in the
advancement of men of talent and merit only," and that the British must
reform their civil service by making the institution meritocratic. Influenced by the ancient Chinese imperial examination, the Northcote–Trevelyan Report
of 1854 recommended that recruitment should be on the basis of merit
determined through competitive examination, candidates should have a
solid general education to enable inter-departmental transfers, and
promotion should be through achievement rather than "preferment,
patronage, or purchase". This led to implementation of Her Majesty's Civil Service as a systematic, meritocratic civil service bureaucracy.
France
Like the British, the development of French bureaucracy was influenced by the Chinese system. Under Louis XIV of France,
the old nobility had neither power nor political influence, their only
privilege being exemption from taxes. The dissatisfied noblemen
complained about this "unnatural" state of affairs, and discovered
similarities between absolute monarchy and bureaucratic despotism. With the translation of Confucian texts during the Enlightenment, the concept of a meritocracy reached intellectuals in the West, who saw it as an alternative to the traditional ancien regime of Europe.
Western perception of China even in the 18th century admired the
Chinese bureaucratic system as favourable over European governments for
its seeming meritocracy; Voltaire claimed that the Chinese had "perfected moral science" and François Quesnay advocated an economic and political system modeled after that of the Chinese.
The governments of China, Egypt, Peru and Empress Catherine II were regarded as models of Enlightened Despotism, admired by such figures as Diderot, D'Alembert and Voltaire.
Napoleonic France adopted this meritocracy system and soon saw a rapid and dramatic expansion of government, accompanied
by the rise of the French civil service and its complex systems of
bureaucracy. This phenomenon became known as "bureaumania". In the early
19th century, Napoleon attempted to reform the bureaucracies of France and other territories under his control by the imposition of the standardized Napoleonic Code. But paradoxically, that led to even further growth of the bureaucracy.
Other industrialized nations
By
the mid-19th century, bureaucratic forms of administration were firmly
in place across the industrialized world. Thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx began to theorize about the economic functions and power-structures of bureaucracy in contemporary life. Max Weber
was the first to endorse bureaucracy as a necessary feature of
modernity, and by the late 19th century bureaucratic forms had begun
their spread from government to other large-scale institutions.
The trend toward increased bureaucratization continued in the
20th century, with the public sector employing over 5% of the workforce
in many Western countries. Within capitalist systems, informal bureaucratic structures began to appear in the form of corporate power hierarchies, as detailed in mid-century works like The Organization Man and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc nations, a powerful class of bureaucratic administrators termed nomenklatura governed nearly all aspects of public life.
The 1980s brought a backlash against perceptions of "big government" and the associated bureaucracy. Politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan
gained power by promising to eliminate government regulatory
bureaucracies, which they saw as overbearing, and return economic
production to a more purely capitalistic mode, which they saw as more
efficient. In the business world, managers like Jack Welch gained fortune and renown by eliminating bureaucratic structures inside corporations.
Still, in the modern world, most organized institutions rely on
bureaucratic systems to manage information, process records, and
administer complex systems, although the decline of paperwork and the
widespread use of electronic databases is transforming the way
bureaucracies function.
Theories
Karl Marx
Karl Marx theorized about the role and function of bureaucracy in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, published in 1843. In Philosophy of Right, Hegel had supported the role of specialized officials in public administration, although he never used the term "bureaucracy" himself. Marx, by contrast, was opposed to bureaucracy. Marx posited that while corporate
and government bureaucracy seem to operate in opposition, in actuality
they mutually rely on one another to exist. He wrote that "The
Corporation is civil society's attempt to become state; but the
bureaucracy is the state which has really made itself into civil
society."
John Stuart Mill
Writing in the early 1860s, political scientist John Stuart Mill theorized that successful monarchies were essentially bureaucracies, and found evidence of their existence in Imperial China, the Russian Empire, and the regimes of Europe.
Mill referred to bureaucracy as a distinct form of government, separate
from representative democracy. He believed bureaucracies had certain
advantages, most importantly the accumulation of experience in those who
actually conduct the affairs. Nevertheless, he believed this form of
governance compared poorly to representative government, as it relied on
appointment rather than direct election. Mill wrote that ultimately the
bureaucracy stifles the mind, and that "a bureaucracy always tends to
become a pedantocracy."
Max Weber
The fully developed bureaucratic apparatus compares with other organisations exactly as does the machine with the non-mechanical modes of production. –Max Weber
The German sociologist Max Weber was the first to formally study bureaucracy and his works led to the popularization of this term. In his 1922 essay Bureaucracy, published in his magnum opus Economy and Society, Weber described many ideal-typical forms of public administration, government, and business. His ideal-typical bureaucracy, whether public or private, is characterized by:
- hierarchical organization
- formal lines of authority (chain of command)
- a fixed area of activity
- rigid division of labor
- regular and continuous execution of assigned tasks
- all decisions and powers specified and restricted by regulations
- officials with expert training in their fields
- career advancement dependent on technical qualifications
- qualifications evaluated by organizational rules, not individuals
Weber listed several preconditions for the emergence
of bureaucracy, including an increase in the amount of space and
population being administered, an increase in the complexity of the
administrative tasks being carried out, and the existence of a monetary economy requiring a more efficient administrative system. Development of communication and transportation technologies make more efficient administration possible, and democratization and rationalization of culture results in demands for equal treatment.
Although he was not necessarily an admirer of bureaucracy, Weber
saw bureaucratization as the most efficient and rational way of
organizing human activity and therefore as the key to rational-legal authority, indispensable to the modern world. Furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing rationalization of Western society.
Weber also saw bureaucracy, however, 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 a soulless "iron cage" of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control. Weber's critical study of the bureaucratization of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work. Many aspects of modern public administration are based on his work, and a classic, hierarchically organized civil service of the Continental type is called "Weberian civil service".
Woodrow Wilson
Writing as an academic while a professor at Bryn Mawr College, Woodrow Wilson's essay The Study of Administration
argued for bureaucracy as a professional cadre, devoid of allegiance to
fleeting politics. Wilson advocated a bureaucracy that "is a part of
political life only as the methods of the counting house are a part of
the life of society; only as machinery is part of the manufactured
product. But it is, at the same time, raised very far above the dull
level of mere technical detail by the fact that through its greater
principles it is directly connected with the lasting maxims of political
wisdom, the permanent truths of political progress."
Wilson did not advocate a replacement of rule by the governed, he
simply advised that, "Administrative questions are not political
questions. Although politics sets the tasks for administration, it
should not be suffered to manipulate its offices". This essay became a
foundation for the study of public administration in America.
Ludwig von Mises
In his 1944 work Bureaucracy, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises
compared bureaucratic management to profit management. Profit
management, he argued, is the most effective method of organization when
the services rendered may be checked by economic calculation of profit
and loss. When, however, the service in question can not be subjected to
economic calculation, bureaucratic management is necessary. He did not
oppose universally bureaucratic management; on the contrary, he argued
that bureaucracy is an indispensable method for social organization, for
it is the only method by which the law can be made supreme, and is the
protector of the individual against despotic arbitrariness. Using the
example of the Catholic Church, he pointed out that bureaucracy is only
appropriate for an organization whose code of conduct is not subject to
change. He then went on to argue that complaints about bureaucratization
usually refer not to the criticism of the bureaucratic methods
themselves, but to "the intrusion of bureaucracy into all spheres of
human life." Mises saw bureaucratic processes at work in both the
private and public spheres; however, he believed that bureaucratization
in the private sphere could only occur as a consequence of government
interference. According to him, "What must be realized is only that the
strait jacket of bureaucratic organization paralyzes the individual's
initiative, while within the capitalist market society an innovator
still has a chance to succeed. The former makes for stagnation and
preservation of inveterate methods, the latter makes for progress and
improvement."
Robert K. Merton
American sociologist Robert K. Merton expanded on Weber's theories of bureaucracy in his work Social Theory and Social Structure,
published in 1957. While Merton agreed with certain aspects of Weber's
analysis, he also noted the dysfunctional aspects of bureaucracy, which
he attributed to a "trained incapacity" resulting from "over
conformity". He believed that bureaucrats are more likely to defend
their own entrenched interests than to act to benefit the organization
as a whole but that pride in their craft makes them resistant to changes
in established routines. Merton stated that bureaucrats emphasize
formality over interpersonal relationships, and have been trained to
ignore the special circumstances of particular cases, causing them to
come across as "arrogant" and "haughty".
Elliott Jaques
In his book “A General Theory of Bureaucracy”, first published in 1976, Dr. Elliott Jaques
describes the discovery of a universal and uniform underlying structure
of managerial or work levels in the bureaucratic hierarchy for any type
of employment systems.
Elliott Jaques
argues and presents evidence that for the bureaucracy to provide a
valuable contribution to the open society some of the following
conditions must be met:
- Number of levels in a bureaucracy hierarchy must match the complexity level of the employment system for which the bureaucratic hierarchy is created (Elliott Jaques identified maximum 8 levels of complexity for bureaucratic hierarchies).
- Roles within a bureaucratic hierarchy differ in the level of work complexity.
- The level of work complexity in the roles must be matched with the level of human capability of the role holders (Elliott Jaques identified maximum 8 Levels of human capability).
- The level of work complexity in any managerial role within a bureaucratic hierarchy must be one level higher than the level of work complexity of the subordinate roles.
- Any managerial role in a bureaucratic hierarchy must have full managerial accountabilities and authorities (veto selection to the team, decide task types and specific task assignments, decide personal effectiveness and recognition, decide initiation of removal from the team within due process).
- Lateral working accountabilities and authorities must be defined for all the roles in the hierarchy (7 types of lateral working accountabilities and authorities: collateral, advisory, service-getting and -giving, coordinative, monitoring, auditing, prescribing).
The definition of effective bureaucratic hierarchy by Elliott Jaques
is of importance not only to sociology but to social psychology, social
anthropology, economics, politics, and social philosophy. They also
have a practical application in business and administrative studies.
