¶ … Bureaucracy
Today's organizations, regardless of their business focus, possess qualities of a bureaucratic nature, including excessive paperwork, red tape, and other challenging bottlenecks that can hinder productivity and performance. Consequently, organizations are often limited in their activities and the potential to produce quality results in a timely fashion. The following references from professional journals will discuss this dilemma in detail, both within governmental bodies and within the public sector. It will be demonstrated that modern bureaucracies can serve as both a blessing and a nightmare, depending on the situation.
An article by Chang and Turnbull (2002) entitled "Bureaucratic behavior in the local public sector: a revealed preference approach" provides an analysis of the popular opinion that bureaucracies are largely influenced by public spending, and although this concept deserves attention, other theories have been developed that contrast this model. According to the authors, "In the U.S. And other countries with strong democratic institutions, however, local government decisions reflect not only bureaucratic preferences, but also the possibly countervailing effects of the voters in the public decision making process" (192). As a result, it should be noted that strongly democratic nations such as the United States are subject to bureaucratic decisions largely based upon voting preferences and opinions. However, regardless of voter preferences, some bureaucracies still function independently of the citizen vote and objections to the consequences of red tape and excessive paperwork. This viewpoint is only one of many that will be presented in the remainder of this discussion.
Research conducted by Kaufman in the article entitled "Major players: bureaucracies in American Government" discusses the ultimate bureaucratic web: the federal government. This article indicates that bureaucracies are not necessarily the enemy in many cases; rather, they are important in shaping public policy in significant ways. According to the author, "Public bureaucracies are well-equipped, energetic participants in the governmental process. If you overlook them, or even if...
The Catholic Church, in other words, exists for many members on both a primary and secondary mode of membership and association. "Primary groups tend to be informal in nature and dominate the structures of traditional societies. Often organized around kinship ties, these groups regulate the activities of their members through informal norms and folkways of the culture. Secondary organizations are much more formal in structure and are usually coordinated through
An empowered employee may disobey rules and procedures to help a customer and in turn the organization itself. For further analysis of delegation and empowerment, we need to understand the concept of power itself. In bureaucracies, work is simply done by following preset procedures. Leadership doesn't usually have to impose power, in fact power is granted to employees to choose the best available choice (decision-making) cohering with the rules and
Such resources will include proper funding for facilities, personnel, technological and communicational resources and other such elements required for an administrative capacity congruent with the needs of the public which it is designed to serve. It is thus that the bulk of Meier's book concerns the actual structure of a government based on the principle of bureaucracy. Here, he explores in detail the relationship between a variant of agencies and
Ethics In viewing the basic definition of bureaucracy and in noting some of the country's most recent examples of success and failure in the bureaucratic business world, one can see that the issue is clearly two-sided and will likely remain so for many years to come. However, despite the split in opinion, the question of ethics and bureaucracy can be delved into in rational manner that, in the end, finds in
In other words, there is no ability, under Kant's guidelines, for one to exclude themselves from the duties that human beings under this standard are all held to. The belief that looking the other way in terms of ethical standards cannot hurt the greater good of a company is a completely naive notion. Much like the adage, "one bad apple spoils the bunch," so too can a mere instance of
The use of scientific management is critical to allow employees to measure their contributions. Giving employees and associates the opportunity to measure their contributions over time is one of the most powerful motivators there are. The synthesis of scientific management and informal organizations can serve as the catalyst for lasting change and high performance within organizations over time. Bureaucracy and its implied top-down control over activities needs to be
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