Bureaucracy

A Key Idea for Business and Society

Tom Vine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781351055246
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Bureaucracy is a curse – it seems we can't live with it, we can't live without it. It is without doubt one of the fundamental ideas which underpin the business world and society at large. In this book, Tom Vine observes, analyses and critiques the concept, placing it at the heart of our understanding of organisation.

The author unveils bureaucracy as an endlessly emergent phenomenon which defies binary debate – in analysing organisation, we are all bureaucrats. In building an experiential perspective, the book develops more effective ways to interact with bureaucracy in theory and practice. Empirical material take centre stage, whilst the book employs ethnographic and auto-ethnographic methods to illuminate the existential function of bureaucracy.

Taking examples from art, history and culture, this book provides an entertaining alternative academic analysis of bureaucracy as a key idea in business and society which will be essential reading for students and scholars of work and organisation

1
(RE-)INTRODUCING BUREAUCRACY

Bureaucracy is generally considered undesirable. This view pervades party politics, civic governance, commercial organization, and—more generally—the public psyche. This book represents an attempt not so much to defend bureaucracy but to facilitate an understanding of the concept through fresh eyes. Despite reams of scholarly coverage, there remain important under-addressed questions: Does it make any sense to speak of organization without bureaucracy? To what degree is bureaucracy—like organization more generally—an emergent logic that ‘patterns’ our institutional existence irrespective of whether or not it is willed? Is bureaucracy self-replicating? Is bureaucracy self-sustaining? What exactly constructs our fear of bureaucracy and to what extent is it warranted? Is bureaucracy a proto management methodology and, if so, what marks it out as distinct from the plethora of commercially-available methodologies that are deployed—at great effort and expense—throughout organizations today? And what can be said of the relationship between bureaucracy and institutionalisation? Is institutionalisation necessarily undesirable? To what extent is the proverbial ‘jobsworth’ a ramification of bureaucracy and why has the jobsworth been all but ignored by the academy? There are broader macrosociological questions too: Has the rhetoric of post-bureaucracy (I’m thinking here of concepts such as ‘adhocracy’ and ‘projectification’) had its time? Will bureaucracy now experience a resurgence in reputation? Is there any sense in distinguishing ‘good’ bureaucracy from ‘bad,’ or should we seek out completely new ways to engage with the concept?

Who is this book aimed at?

Historically, commentary on bureaucracy has either been directed at practitioners (and tends to be damning in its assessment of the topic), or at scholars (where its assessment is more variable). While the materials trained at practitioners typically fails to acknowledge the nuance and social context of the concept, those trained at scholars have lacked traction. This book therefore deliberately sets in its sights a broad church: it has practitioners, scholars, and students in mind. But this represents a formidable challenge: the argumentation presented must reflect the complexity of the topic, while at the same time remain accessible and (relatively!) free of jargon. I am an organization theorist and so inevitably my approach to bureaucracy prioritises its manifestation in respect of work, organization, business and management. But this should not deter scholars, students, and practitioners of other disciplines from reading it. Indeed, my analysis of bureaucracy is considerably wider in scope than my native disciplinary credentials should suggest. To this end, I very much hope that the book will also appeal to those from cultural anthropology, economics, government studies, philosophy, political sciences, social psychology, and sociology.

What’s the problem?

Most people berate bureaucracy. I believe they are misguided. Indeed, the empirics suggest that efforts to ameliorate bureaucracy have failed to improve organizational life or performance; on the contrary, it seems that the only empirically-validated outcome of these efforts is greater job insecurity (as chapters 2 and 3 go on to explore). Furthermore, these efforts have rarely—if at all—displaced bureaucratic measures, but rather created new forms of the same. There is, however, a small cohort of researchers determined to defend bureaucracy. Regrettably, though typically erudite, their work has failed to make waves beyond the proverbial hallowed halls of academia. Moreover, these scholars often overlook the fact that there is only so much to be gained from distinguishing rhetoric (the ‘bullshit’) from the empirical (the ‘reality’). The point here is that it is often the bullshit that matters most. We’ll come back to this.

On to Wagner. Who? The composer. For Wagner, as Magee (2000: 181) notes, ‘words fail.’ Contrary to what you might imagine, words rarely do a good job of conveying complex ideas. Where for Wagner music—specifically opera – did the talking, in this book ethnography, autoethnography, and storytelling takes on this mantle. Of course, all three methods involve words but as I go on to demonstrate there is much more to these methods than the more conventional—and abstract—argumentation scholars are noted for. Perceptions, as I have argued elsewhere (see Vine, 2020a: 480) are paradoxically more important than reality. (I told you we’d come back to it.) Conscious of this, I urge the curious reader to endeavour to understand why perceptions of bureaucracy remain so negative; and to determine to what degree and how exactly these negative perceptions can be addressed.

Bureaucracy: a working definition

In some respects there is limited value to defining bureaucracy. Every word uttered—scholarly or otherwise—‘both enhances our understanding of a phenomenon and creates further bias.’ (Vine, 2018b: 289; original emphasis). Nonetheless, definitions are customary and help marshal the reader. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) imparts two brief definitions of bureaucracy: (a) ‘government by bureaux; usually officialism’; and (b) ‘government officials collectively.’ Regrettably, neither provides much assistance in pursuit of the more nuanced approach to the concept for which I am championing in this book. Etymologically, it is generally accepted that the word originated in the French language combining the French word bureau—desk or office—with the Greek word κράτος (kratos)—rule or political power. The economist Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay is normally credited with coining the term in the mid-18th century (Riggs, 1979), but clearly bureaucracy long predated the word’s creation and formal adoption into the linguistic canon.

Now, while I have no desire to instil a rigid definition of bureaucracy in my readership, I do wish to promote a more sophisticated understanding of the concept. To this end, an interpretive epistemology is invoked; one which regards the world as co-constructed through social interaction, rather than existing ‘out there.’ This approach reveals interesting tensions. So, for example, while Deutscher (1969: 12) suggests that ‘the roots of bureaucracy are indeed as old as our civilization,’ for Kallinikos (2006: 612) ‘there have never been Chinese or Egyptian bureaucracies as is sometimes claimed.’ Neither position is correct. Neither is incorrect. What is clear, and as Willmott (2011: 257) has noted: ‘there is uncertainty and disagreement about what “bureaucracy” is, and what it is becoming.’ Ultimately, as with so many complex concepts, answers to questions such as these are contingent on our specific designation of bureaucracy. I thus develop a working definition of bureaucracy here not to impose a sense of order to the field (social concepts should, I my mind, remain contested), but to provide readers with a frame of reference.

How might we go about developing such a definition? I deliberately avoid overly exclusive or restrictive designations. Of these, there are many. Garston (1993b: 5), for example, suggests that ‘[a] bureaucracy is a particular form of organization comprised of bureaus or agencies, such that the overall bureaucracy is a system of consciously coordinated activities which has been explicitly created to achieve specific ends.’

I take issue with this definition for several reasons: First, all organizations are bureaucracies, as I go on to argue in this book; second, I do not share the ontological conviction that bureaucracies are ‘consciously coordinated’; and finally, contrary to received wisdom, I’m not convinced that all bureaucracies are geared towards specific ends. So where do we go from here? I present an expansive definition of bureaucracy in its place, one that is sensitive to its historical precedent, mindful of its institutional logic and appreciative of the fact that it ‘patterns’ (as a verb) social and organizational configuration. To this end, bureaucracy is here presented as immanent and emergent.

I also stress at this early stage that this book focuses less on bureaucracy as a legal-administrative concern and more on the concept as existential and anthropological. Bureaucracy is thus regarded as acutely relevant in respect of organizational participation and realising a sense of organizational belonging. We coalesce around organizational units. Moreover, bureaucracy facilitates what has become known as ‘reflexive practice,’ something I go on to explore in respect of pro formas and paperwork more generally later in the book. As such, I understand bureaucracy as socially-embedded. Following Casey (2004: 59), I wish to prioritise an ‘analytic, interpretive exploration [which] draws bureaucratic organization back into society and social analysis.’ I am also conscious of the fact that bureaucracy has long been considered a Schimpfort (term of abuse). Merton observed this as long as 1940, and it is implicit in political science dating back to at least to future US President Woodrow Wilson’s academic work in the late 1800s (Merton, 1940). Since this time the evolving semantics associated with bureaucracy, at least in the English language, have perpetually reinforced this negative appraisal: red tape, sterility, inflexibility, and so on. It will henceforth take a Herculean effort to address this, including as I later argue, measures to counteract the predominant ‘bureaucracy-as-dystopia’ attitude found in both literature and cinema.

Beyond this, and echoing what noted scholar of bureaucracy Paul du Gay (2004: 37) has already stressed, bureaucracy is used imprecisely. It is. No question. It has become the whipping boy for most—perhaps all—things undesirable in organizations. You can pretty much justify any criticism of anything in the world of work, provided it evokes the damning of bureaucracy. But really what we’re doing when we damn bureaucracy is identifying areas of the organization or its processes or its people that we dislike.

I also wish to stress bureaucracy’s mystifying complexity. For Wilson (2000: 10), bureaucracy is both varied and complex; it is much more than a simple social category or political epithet. Of this complexity, Styhre (2007: ix) has argued, that it is bureaucracy’s content rather than its form that determines its outcome and effects. The question is: when we criticise bureaucracy, are we criticising its form or its particular content? My suspicion is that we are almost always doing the latter. Bureaucracy’s inherent complexity is noted by others, too. For Albrow (1970: 14, cited in Styhre, 2007: 11–12), for example:

The student coming to the field can be excused bewilderment. Sometimes bureaucracy seems to mean administrative efficiency, at other times the opposite. It may appear as simply as a synonym for civil service, or it may be as complex as an idea summing up the specific features of modern organizational structure. It may refer to a body of officials, or to the routines of office administration.

Finally—and invariably—definitions are as much about what they are not. To this end, recent decades have seen a veritable explosion of scholarly coverage in respect of bureaucracy vis-à-vis post-bureaucracy. And this deserves serious comment. Clegg (2011: 223), for example, notes that ‘[b]ureaucracy is both being superseded by post-bureaucracy and not being superseded by post-bureaucracy.’ Willmott (2011: 257) makes a similar observation. By this, of course, it is meant that bureaucracy is protean. I’ll resist invoking Heraclitus; suffice it to say, change is an existential inevitability. The point is, I think, that bureaucracy is characterised—defined even—by an extraordinary resilience to change. This is what makes it so remarkable.

In sum, bureaucracy is here defined as immanent, emergent, existential, anthropological, and socially-embedded. We also have noted that it is used imprecisely and frequently as term of abuse. Finally we have acknowledged that it is characterised by a bewildering complexity and resilience to change.

Having presented this multifaceted definition of bureaucracy, we could do likewise in respect of bureaucrats. However, I remain to be convinced that there is much to be gained from such an endeavour. Perhaps even more so than bureaucracy the word bureaucrat is loaded with negative connotations. Once again, Gartson (1993b: 18–19) presents a restrictive definition:

[A] bureaucrat [is] identified as someone who refers any decision either to an interpretation of a rule (policy determination) or a precedent—a past decision/interpretation accepted by policymakers and, therefore, carrying their authority. This aspect is one of the things which helps distinguish between a bureaucrat and one who may function within an organization, but who should not be classified in that fashion.

This sort of definition is overly functionalist. It ignores the cultural essence of bureaucracy. More pertinently, it is problematic to distinguish ‘bureaucrat’ from ‘non bureaucrat’ in industrial society. Whether we are prepared to admit it or not, this is because we all ‘do bureaucracy.’ We all invoke bureaucratic rules when they suit us, and discredit them when they do not. Earlier in his book Garston (ibid. 3) poses the following: If you ask the public what their opinion of bureaucracy is, they are likely to put it high on the list of what is wrong with the world, so much is the fault of the ‘damn bureaucrats.’ Most academic studies of bureaucracy endeavour to ‘rise above’ the populist damnation of bureaucracy. But does this miss a trick? Are we perhaps better off asking what is it that the public dislikes about bureaucracy and why it is that this dislike is so pervasive? Is there something more fundamental going on here—a sort of masochistic self-hatred? After all, and as this book goes on to demonstrate, the vast majority of us seek out existential refuge in bureaucracies of one type or another. We are all bureaucrats.

Why have I written a book on bureaucracy?

As should be clear by now, I am intrigued by the inordinate amount of time we collectively spend berating bureaucracy. We are haters. In fact, we seem to garner a perverse pleasure from hating. Bureaucracy is somehow representative of an institutional Other. Bureaucracy-bashing represents easy points in both political and organizational arenas. Consider current affairs. As we inch forward into a world of uncertainty plagued by the Covid-19 pandemic, anti-bureaucratic sentiment is churned out on a daily basis by journalists charged with evaluating official responses: ‘Britain’s coronavirus testing is bogged down by bureaucracy’ declares The Spectator’s Matt Ridley (2020), while City Journal’s John Tierney (2020) voices comparable frustrations in respect of the United States: ‘Absurd bureaucratic strictures are hindering efforts to fight Covid-19’. And things were no different in the pre-pandemic world. Take the UK’s referendum in 2016 on European Union membership. A key aspect of the controversial Leave Campaign was focussed on absolving the nation of Brussel’s Bureaucrats, a convenient alliterative device deployed by the British conservative media for years. Trump, too. As part of his campaign for the presidential election that would take place the following year, in 2015 he tweeted that ‘Bureaucratic red tape and overregulation are discouraging the American dream. It’s time for a bold new direction!’

A comparable sense of bureaucracy-bashing is routinely touted in the world of business and management. In December 2018, Harvard Business Review led with the following cover story: ‘The End of Bureaucracy: How to Free Your Company to Innovate.’ This, I think, illustrates more so than anything else why it is that I wrote this book. Despite reams of coverage over the past century or so, we are still churning out the same sort of sensationalised garbage. The message lacks nuance. It lacks sophistication. The narrative the authors present in the Harvard Business Review article is an all-too-familiar one (although presented as if it were ground-breaking): ‘from monolithic businesses to microenterprises’ (p53); ‘from incremental goals to leading targets’ (ibid.); ‘from internal monopolies to internal contracting’ (p54); ‘from top-down coordination to voluntary collaboration’ (p55); ‘from rigid boundaries to open innovation’ (p56); ‘from innovation phobia to entrepreneurship at scale’ (p57)… You get the idea.

As an undergraduate management student, we were cautioned about populist coverage of management, such as that presented in Harvard Business Review. One of my professors described it as ‘Heathrow Airport Management Theory’; the sort of crap you’d find for sale in an airport bookstore. The point he was making was that if it sounds sensationalist it is most probably codswallop. What astounds me most about this—and, frankly, much of the research published in Harvard Business Review—is that it blissfully ignores a generation of research to the contrary.

At this point, I should stress that I am not writing this book to defend bureaucracy per se, as some other scholars have done. Candidly, I regard both the critique and defence of bureaucracy as fruitless enterprises. As I will argue in this book, bureaucracy just is. Instead, we need to develop an understanding of how and why bureaucracy has developed such a negative press, and then figure out how best to work with bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy is a peculiar beast. And this is another reason I wanted to write a book about it. I have a long held a scholarly interest in contradiction and paradox and, to some degree, bureaucracy embodies both. Everyone loves to hate bureaucracy and yet—concurrently—bureaucracy contains us, psychologically and existentially. Moreover, bureaucracy appears to transcend Left and Right political ideologies (historically, it is the Left that has been criticised for bureaucratic expansion; and yet at the same time bureaucracy is, by definition, a fiercely conservative phenomenon).

Finally, I saw this book as an opportunity to share and reflect on my own experiences of bureaucracy, and encourage others to do likewise. Each of us has our own experiences of how bureaucracy is susceptible to being run over by ideolo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Titlepage
• Series
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• 1 (Re-)introducing bureaucracy
• PART I Bureaucracy: Rave, Rant, Repeat
• 2 Bureaucracy, post-bureaucracy and identity crisis
• 3 Beyond post-bureaucracy: A brave new organizational geography?
• PART II Understanding Bureau-phobia
• 4 Understanding Bureau-phobia part I: Pathological bureaucracy
• 5 Understanding Bureau-phobia part II: Dystopian bureaucracy
• PART III Towards a New Education in Bureaucracy
• 6 A bureaucratic biography
• 7 Working with bureaucracy
• 8 Concluding thoughts
• References
• Index