How Bureaucracy Can Be Defended - Essay Example

How bureaucracy can be defended How bureaucracy can be defended The word bureaucracy has formed negative connotations for some people since it was coined. Bureaucracies always face criticism especially when they appear to be inefficient, too complex or inflexible. The removal of unwanted bureaucracy is a major concept in current managerial theory and it has been a key issue in major political campaigns. Some have always defended the need for bureaucracy; Max Weber, a German sociologist reasons out that bureaucracy founds the most rational and efficient way in which organization of human activity can be achieved, and that organized hierarchies and systematic processes were vital in order to maximize efficiency, maintain order and eliminate favoritism. But at some point Max Weber figures unfettered bureaucracy as a major threat to personal freedom, whereby a slight increase in bureaucratization of anybody’s life may trap people in an iron made cage of statute centered rational mechanism (Rubery, Marchington, Grimshaw & Willmott 2004). This discourse will focus much on the needs of bureaucracy and necessary benefits of its existence. What is bureaucracy? A bureaucracy is a mode of administratively consolidating large group of individuals who need to work together. Most organizations in both private and public sectors, not leaving out governments and universities, greatly depend on bureaucracies for them to operate. Bureaucracy can literally mean “rule by desks or offices” a definition often points out impersonal character of bureaucracies (Loebel 2005). Although bureaucracy may seem wasteful or inefficient, forming bureaucracy ensures that large mass of people work together in companionable ways by outlining everybody’s role with a hierarchy. The term “bureaucracy” originated from French and joins the French word bureau; meaning office or desk, with kratos which is a Greek word meaning political power or rule. It was devised sometimes in mid 1700s by Jacques Claude Marie who was a French economist and it was a sardonic derogatory from the start. Jacques never minded writing down the term, but it was quoted later at length in a contemporary letter. The well-known English term use was in the year 1818. The definition of 19th century referred to a governance system whereby offices were managed by unelected career officials; with this sense, bureaucracy was considered a separate form of government, usually subservient to monarchy. Around 1920s, the definition was altered by Max Weber to incorporate any administrative system carried out by experts according to set rules. Max considered bureaucracy to be a relatively positive development; although by 1944, Austrian economist; Ludwig Mises realized that the word bureaucracy was continuously used with an opprobrious inference. By 1957, American sociologist Robert Merton found out the term bureaucrat to have turned to be epithet. Ancient Bureaucracy In as much as the bureaucracy had not been coined until mid-17th century, the idea of consistent and organized administrative hierarchy is much older. The use of documents and development of writing was necessary to the administration unit of this system. The first definitive advent of bureaucracy is found in ancient Sumer, whereby a class of scribes emerged and they made use of clay tablets to administer and allocate harvest spoils. A hereditary class of scribes also existed in ancient Egypt that oversaw bureaucracy the civil service (Fischer, Lago, & Liu 2013). Much of whatever is currently well known of these cultures originates from scribes writing. A hierarchy of local proconsuls and with their respective deputies administered ancient Rome. The restructurings of Diocletian doubled over the total number of administrative units that led to wide expansion in the Roman bureaucracy. Lactantius, an early Christian author, argued that Diocletian’s restructurings ended up in widespread economic stagnation, due to the fact the provinces were portioned in mall units, and most presidents and a large number of inferior officers ruled heavily on each territory within their jurisdiction. After the split of the empire, the Byzantine Empire came up with a notoriously complex administrative hierarchy and with time the word “byzantine” came to mean any complex bureaucratic structure. Confucius, who was a scholar in ancient China, founded an intricate structure of rigorous processes governing relationships in religion, family and politics. Confucius’ main aim was to develop an organized state that free from corruption (Conser, Paynich & Gingerich 2013). Bureaucracy was regulated by a specific chief Counselor in the Imperial China. Within the bureaucracy, positions were reserved for graded civil service and very competitive examinations were carried out to determine who held which position. Nine grades were held in the upper ranks of the structure and the officials put on distinctive clothing to differentiate them from others. A set of principles maintained by officials were codified by Confucian Classics. Modern bureaucracy Evolution of modern form of bureaucracy took place in the escalating Excise department in United Kingdom; this was during the 18th century. Professionalism and relative efficiency in this state ruled authority gave the government opportunity to impose massive tax load on the population and collected large amount of money used in the war. According to Niall Ferguson, bureaucracy was grounded on recruitment by training, examination, regular salaries and pensions, standardized procedures and promotion on merit. The scheme was subject to stern hierarchy and a lot of emphasis was applied on efficient and technical tax collection methods. In place of often corrupt and inefficient tax farming system that triumphed in absolutist federations like France, use of Exchequer was able to place control over the whole system of government expenditure and tax revenue. By late 18th century, it is said that bureaucracy to population ratio in the United Kingdom was estimated to be 1 in 1300, nearly four times higher than the 2nd most greatly bureaucratized France (Przybylski 1990). The enactment Civil Service of Her Majesty as a meritocratic, systematic civil service bureaucracy trailed Report of the year 1854 from Northcote Trevelyan; it commended that enlistment should be carried out on grounds of merit and that promotion should come through achievement. Bureaucracy of China and the imperial examinations influenced this system as result of recommendation of report from Northcote Trevelyan outcome. France as well experienced dramatic and rapid government expansion in the 18th century, convoyed by French civil service rise; a phenomenon that came to be known as “bureaumania” whereby complicated systems of bureaucracy materialized. At some point in early 19th century, Napoleon tried reforming bureaucracies of other territories that were under his control by imposing consistent Napoleonic Code; paradoxically, it even led to further growth of bureaucracy. By mid of 19th century, bureaucratic ways of administration were very stable across industrialized world. Some thinkers like Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill started theorizing about power structures and economic functions of bureaucracy in current life. Among the first thinkers to endorse bureaucracy was Max Weber who endorsed it as an indispensable feature of modernity. Bureaucratic forms started spreading from the government to other large institutions by late 19th century. This trend towards accelerated bureaucratization continued rapidly in the 20th century; at this time the public sector managed to employ over 5% of workers in most western countries. Informal bureaucratic structures started to emerge within capitalist systems in nature of corporate power ladders. In the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union, a very powerful group of bureaucratic administrators referred to as nomenklatura governed nearly all traits of public life (Thakur, Burton & Srivastava 1997Around 1980s, there was a setback in bureaucratic form of ruling. Prominent politicians like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher obtained power by promising to do away with regulatory bureaucracies of the government, which people considered a burden and return back economic productivity to a much capitalistic pure mode which people termed to be more efficient. Managers like Jack Welch in the business world got fortune and renown through eliminating bureaucratic forms inside the corporations themselves. In the modern world, all institutions that are organized depend on bureaucratic structures to manage records, process records and process information. These institutions as well administer compound structures and interrelated bodies in an ever increasing globalized world, although the decrease of paperwork and the vast use of electronic databases are changing the way bureaucracy function. Bureaucracy is always considered the sovereign factor in public administration. In other terms it may be referred to as labor welfare management, manpower management, personnel management and so on. It is one of the most important and ultimate civil servants’ function. They execute policies and laws to achieve the aims of welfare economic development, social equity among others. Bureaucracy help civil servant formulate policies (Weber & Weeghel 2011). They advise and help ministers in various executive structures to formulate policies. Being that political executives are armatures, they depend on expert advice from professional civil servants who understand the technical complexities involved in policy making. Advantages of Bureaucracy creates control and a command cycle for business leadership. It means that the process of decision making takes less time since fewer individuals get involved in the process for the case of bureaucracy. In most occasions, best practices and standards are pin pointed during the process of decision making. In essence, bureaucratic control aids decision making to become more efficient. The lines of authorities should clearly be outlined and should commence from top to bottom of any organization: this is a principle known as the scalar principle and the line of authority regarded as chain of command. Major decisions are made while policies are formulated at the level of top management and they filter downward through various management levels and finally to the workers. Authority line should clearly be defined such that each person in this command chain get to know his or her authority and its respective boundaries. In an organization, each person should only report to one boss: this is referred to as the principle of command unity and in this process each individual knows whom to report to and every boss knows who is supposed to report to him or her. This procedure eliminates confusion and ambiguity that may result when a person is designated to report to more than one superior. Bureaucracy ensures that organizational strategy verdicts are managed by top level managers and this brings about streamlining the entire process. Nevertheless, since less people are involved, time wastage is limited. Bureaucracy exerts tight control. It tends to function like a machine of several gears and cogs, each part serving the whole. That may seem dystopian, handling an organization as a machine enables management to concentrate in the coordination of efforts and resources. This type of automated business approach works well in predictable environment, automatically humming along, and bureaucratic organization’s order interlaces well with stability giving a company room to move inexorably toward its set goals. Economies of scale; assembling jobs by function rears certain economies, and sharing of resources by departments are efficient. On the other hand, the bureaucratic systems required specialization in a specific job results to economies of scale as employees strive repetitively and with ever increasing productivity, efficiency and proficiency. The very bureaucracy of tall systems prevents organizations from maneuvering quickly. Any procedural change must go through a command chain for it to be approved then it travels back down the command chain for it to be adopted (Roe 2013). In a more stable set up, such rigidity is not a big issue. In situations that are volatile; though inability to quickly change may pose challenges, a lumbering company would find it very rough to dodge sudden threats as a result of competition. Bureaucracy ensures that top managers are responsible for the acts of their subordinates. It is not easy for a manager or a given supervisor to dissociate himself or herself from the acts of his or her subordinates, at the end of the day he or she must be accountable for his or her subordinate’s acts. In as much as bureaucracy has been in existent, some thinkers point out that it necessary to have a system that goes against it, this makes one to think about de-bureaucratization. De-bureaucratization is a system of decentralization whereby the powers and functions handover from the current government to nongovernment organizations (NGO’s) and people’s organization (PO’s), comprising of the private sector, of which all are occasionally referred to jointly as the “civil society”. In the past few decades, the idea has been expanded to accommodate coupling of various organizations’ activities in the voluntary subdivision. This notion recognizes that progressive development should not be left to the government only. One can distinguish De-bureaucratization from other models of decentralization: De-concentration which includes transfer of functions and powers to lower caliber of administrative segments appointed by a central office an agency or national office. Devolution; it comprises handover of functions and powers to administrative units at lower levels in government or political divisions. The notion is therefore political in a way, and is closely related to the perception of local autonomy. It is therefore administratively large in nature and occurs within a workplace or government agency. Decentralization can lead to the challenge of co-ordination at an enterprise level as the authority responsible for decision making is not centralized or concentrated at one point. This may result in time wastage in an organization (Jarrett 2000). It may as well lead to inconsistencies to mean lack of uniformity at the level of organization. For instance, uniform procedures or policies ought not to be followed for the same kind of work in different units. Decentralization is very costly since it rises administrative spending on the basis of requirement of well trained personnel to admit authority at lower levels. The services of the highly paid personnel may not be fully utilized more especially in small organizations. Initiating decentralization may pose to be unrealistic in the case of small concerns especially where product lines are not that broad for creation of separate segments for the purpose of administration. Decentralization brews special challenges particularly when the organization is hit by a number of uncertainties or emergency occurrence. The decision making procedure gets delayed and even precise decisions as per the shifting situations may not be practical. This leaves the enterprise to fumble even to an extent of losing direction from the top management. A lot of organizations are always cautious about decentralization whenever they figure out such a scenario. These problems suggest possible difficulties relating to decentralization. Measures should be in place to address these challenges. It is somehow not desirable to maintain centralization instead of decentralization only due to some limitations. However, critiques argue that to what extent an enterprise should be decentralized remains a delicate issue. In this case, some factors such as size of the enterprise and the capabilities of lower level managers need careful attention. It is therefore advisable to seek extensive consultation before thinking about decentralization or de-bureaucratization in an organization. At some point, whenever top brass have decided to go the decentralized way, one major thing consultants will always leave them with is that they do a pilot survey before fully implementing a decentralized structure. Decentralization provides new challenges in the fight against corruption. While there is a common perception that decentralization increases corruption, the evidence is quite mixed. The solution is not re-centralization but rather developing effective instruments to check on the use of resources locally and to promote local accountability. In this, the lack of capacity and systems at both central and local levels can be serious obstacles. The power of local elite interests is another major obstacle. It is therefore important, in promoting decentralization, to understand the nature of the power relationships and informal networks of patronage at the local level that can undermine local accountability. It is also important to design sufficiently robust systems of central monitoring and dissemination of information that are capable of effective implementation in fragile situations. In a hierarchical organization, the layout being followed is that of a pyramid. Each employee in the organization, except only one, normally the chief executive officers is a subordinate to a different person within the same organization (Mays & Winfree 2009). The structure always consists of multiple entities that re-root into the base of staff level worker, who normally rest at the bottom of the pyramid. This mode of structure usually poses some challenges; communication across different units appears to be less effective as compared to flat organizations. In some situations, departmental rivalry may spark as each department reach to an agreement that benefits its own interests instead of the whole organization. Increased bureaucracy usually hinders the speed of an organization geared towards change. More time may be needed to respond to clients in most occasions. High cost is always a major factor especially when it comes to managing multiple layers of the organization in terms of salaries and remunerations. In hierarchical structure the ladder ascends from bottom to top in the chain of authority. Within the structure are departments with managers who are highly skilled to manage a specific designated department. Whenever an organization opts to go out of this system, it may end up losing these managers and in return the output may be of poor quality since some managers may be merged into departments that they don’t have expertise. In addition authority may not be authentic since there is no specific person that can make decision at once. With hierarchical structure, it becomes simple for employees to know where to head to when it comes to promotion; they can distinctively point out the next step up the ladder. Shifting away from this structure may make employees not to understand a clear promotional pathway. They may be demoralized not to move to the next position since the managerial structure shall have been altered and some departments merged with some that may result into internal wrangling. Employees may as well fail to understand where the managerial structure begins from and where it ends. In hierarchical structure, departments usually work to fill a common gap from a camaraderie point of view. As the employees work towards fulfilling a specific goal, a strong bond tends to be formed among each other. Different departments have different jargon; the shared language in that specific department binds them together. Employees in the same department easily relate to one another since the challenges they face are similar and normally reflects a shared experience. For organizations that do not have hierarchical structure or departmental structure, their employees form bonds to achieve a common goal for the organization but at the same time they lack that bond that originates from working daily with other employees who share a thorough understanding of their specific roles. This may make the employees to practice departmental disloyalty. Conclusion In as much as bureaucratic organizational structure may appear to be less desirable than flat structures, sometimes it is necessary to settle on the latter. Some enterprises such as software development may reap from a more autonomous structure; meanwhile, other enterprises may count on tight controls and tall hierarchies of enterprises with bureaucratic controls. Government’s role in trailing participatory, decentralized and people centered progress has for several years changed from being the main actor to that of facilitator, enabler, regulator and partner. In order to achieve its positive assurance, some countries within Pacific Rim and afar should race towards development that can improve the quality of life in the current and future generations (Maccann 2000). The trending consensus points out that every sector in the society; the market, the citizen, the state and any other relevant institutions must fit in their designated positions in this unpredictable adventure. State’s role is very vital as it is being referred to provide a facilitating and an enabling set up for achievement of such developments. Bibliography Rubery, J., Marchington, M., Grimshaw, D., & Willmott, H. (2004, September). The employment relationship in the permeable organisation. In ESRC Second International Colloquium on the Future of Work, Leeds. LOEBEL, T. (2005). The letter and the spirit of nineteenth-century American literature: justice, politics, and theology. Montreal, McGill-Queens Univ. Press. FISCHER, B., LAGO, U., & LIU, F. 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