Characteristics Of Bureaucracy Research Articles

Theoretical Perspectives on Bureaucrats: A Quest for Democratic Agents

While the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy has gained attention in historical cycles, the literature on the roles of bureaucrats in relation to democracy has become increasingly fragmented. Drawing on comparisons among public administration theory and participatory, deliberative, and collaborative democracy, this article provides typologies that reflect the historical multiplication of the theoretically determined roles and characteristics of bureaucracy that contribute to democracy. This comparative analysis highlights a common democratic trend among the four schools in adding stresses on bureaucrats’ autonomy, morality, publicity, and direct connection to citizens, with a constant coexistence of rational and managerial elements.

Characteristics of Bureaucracy: Examining the Relations between Bureaucrats and Politicians in Lesotho

Bureaucracy represents an ideal form of public administration. Its robust structure facilitates the attainment of public goals. It introduces fairness, rationality, discipline and equity into the public administration. Regardless of its desirability, it is not conveying the expected outcomes in Lesotho. This paper is largely based on secondary data and content analysis to unearth the causes of the poor performance of bureaucracy in the country. It found out that the rent-seeking behaviour of elected public officials taints the merits of bureaucracy so that scholars are lured to believe that it is dysfunctional. The behaviour of the political office-holders in Lesotho demonstrates that they are determined to intimidate technocrats who hamper their interests. Such practices overshadow the desirability of bureaucracy. Top political office-bearers in the country prefer infiltrating the bureaucracy with unqualified civil servants for political gains. They have even coopted the judges so that they can manipulate the public administration with impunity. However, the government of Lesotho can correct these abnormalities by reinforcing the existing laws and strengthening the impartiality of the judiciary.

Life in Public Bureaucracy: The Case of the Blue Carpet

Intraorganizational decision making is a part of the complexity of life in public bureaucracy, yet neither theory nor practice always provide guidelines for how staff specialists should respond to fellow employees who are their clientele. This article suggests that characteristics of bureaucracy are both strengths and weaknesses. They can be a means of guiding intraorganizational decision making as well as a means of delivering public service.

Trust in Management under Post-bureaucratic Conditions: The Case of Finnish Civil Servants

The Finnish state administration has recently undergone a wave of reforms towards decentralized decision-making and increased flexibility in organizing work. Traditional bureaucracy, however, has its virtues. Based on a survey and qualitative interview material, the results presented in this paper indicate that many characteristics of bureaucracy, such as well-defined work roles and hierarchical control, facilitate trust among employees. In contrast, the current post-bureaucratic model of organizing work may increase insecurity and decrease trust.

New Organizational Forms of Contemporary Public Management: A Brief Analysis of Recent Experience of Mozambique

This theoretical essay is dedicated to present the constituent elements and characteristics of bureaucracy as a form of organization of public administration. In a second step discusses the criticism of the ideal typical bureaucratic dysfunctions related from the perspective that defends its lack of flexibility and efficiency in the process of functioning of organizations. We discuss also the contemporary current that underlie the new forms of administration, New Public Management and Interactive Governance and exposes some experiments related to the adoption of these new standards of public management in the context of the Mozambican public administration. Their preparation was based on the literature on the concepts of bureaucracy, the new public management approaches and experiences of the management of the Mozambican context. Concludes the existence of changes in the model and patterns of public management in the country, especially with the implementation of the public administration reform (2001-2011).

Characteristic of Weber Bureucracy and Its Relevance in Indonesia

Bureaucracy is a concept as well as an organization that connects between the government on one side and the other side. As the machine organization, functioning bureaucracy is not primarily reflect the interests of the government, but more than that the interests of society at large. In this connection, it is often experienced dissociative and associative fabric, depending on how much bureaucracy to play a role and ideally positioned existence. The problem is, if the characteristics of the bureaucracy to find relevance in the reality on the ground? Questions are answered by projecting the reality of bureaucracy in Indonesia. Characteristics of bureaucracy just might be applied in a way to adapt based on the needs and characteristics of bureaucracy wherever he touched, both central and local levels. In the positive and negative relevance not only can eliminate, but also in some organizations may also be retained, modified, replaced, even developed according to the needs of bureaucratic organizations. In the Indonesian context, the challenge of change in a particular characteristic of bureaucracy faced with socio-cultural issues, the high authority in the implementation of the autonomy and influence of globalization. All it requires a change in the characteristics of bureaucracy through changes in systems and resources that are designed in such a way that the bureaucracy seemed more dynamic, flexible and able to answer the challenge question.

Protecting the People?

The history and characteristics of bureaucracy are examined with a view to understanding the impact of the bureaucratic mindset on medicines’ regulation, the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare delivery with a focus on risk communication, pharmacovigilance and patient safety. Controversies and allegations relating to common, negative effects of bureaucratic regulatory and management systems are reviewed and examples of creative and effective practice provided. Strategic directions and specific actions for reform are proposed.

Managing clinical failure: a complex adaptive system perspective

The purpose of this article is to explore the knowledge capture process at the clinical level. It aims to identify factors that enable or constrain learning. The study applies complex adaptive system thinking principles to reconcile learning within the NHS. The paper uses a qualitative exploratory study with an interpretative methodological stance set in a secondary care NHS Trust. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with healthcare practitioners and managers involved at both strategic and operational risk management processes. A network structure is revealed that exhibits the communication and interdependent working practices to support knowledge capture and adaptive learning. Collaborative multidisciplinary communities, whose values reflect local priorities and promote open dialogue and reflection, are featured. The main concern is that the characteristics of bureaucracy; rational-legal authority, a rule-based culture, hierarchical lines of communication and a centralised governance focus, are hindering clinical learning by generating barriers. Locally emergent collaborative processes are a key strategic resource to capture knowledge, potentially fostering an environment that could learn from failure and translate lessons between contexts. What must be addressed is that reporting mechanisms serve not only the governance objectives, but also supplement learning by highlighting the potential lessons in context. Managers must nurture a collaborative infrastructure using networks in a co-evolutionary manner. Their role is not to direct and design processes but to influence, support and create effective knowledge capture. Although the study only investigated one site the findings and conclusions may well translate to other trusts--such as the risk of not enabling a learning environment at clinical levels.

プロ野球私設応援団の下位文化研究

Mass audiences can now commonly congregate in stadiums due to factors such as advanced transport, increased leisure time, and the growth of the mass media, which has improved spectator sports to create a vibrant and exciting atmosphere produced by the cheering of large numbers of fans who wish to watch players performing. Cheering is a critical component of spectator sports culture. In Japanese professional baseball there are private fan clubs that are central for the generation of cheering within the stadium during the game. The present study focused on the subculture of professional baseball fan clubs that are organized voluntarily by mass sports fans. This paper not only deals with the pattern of action and the value standards peculiar to such fan clubs, but also clarifies the dominant/parent culture that is central to the subculture, and how the subculture is created by adopting the dominant/parent culture through negotiation or conflict between members or groups based on the power resource of the subculture typical to their own. The data were collected through participant observation of private fan clubs of the Hiroshima Carp. It is inferred from descriptions about conflict and power relationships among the members or groups that the social resources are demo-commitment in the stadium and closeness with the baseball team and players, and that “flag-waving” and “leading”, which are the typical forms of cheering behavior in stadiums, serve a ritualistic function of symbolizing the social power of the fan clubs. Furthermore, bureaucracy and yakuza's quasi-family institution are adopted into these distinctive patterns of action and value standards. The former is a dominant culture taken from the mainstream of modern society, and the latter is a parent culture located at a lower level of society. Multiple strata are evident in the subculture of fan clubs. This does not simply mean that the fan clubs have the characteristics of bureaucracy and yakuza's quasi-family institution, but illustrates that the subculture of private fan clubs is created by domesticating bureaucracy and the quasi-family institution to their own values standard and pattern of act about cheering.

Toward a theory of bureaucracy for social development and its relation to thermodynamics

Abstract Essential to social development is emplacement of administrative machinery called bureaucracy. The behavior of bureaucracy may be characterized by a set of eight tenets. Examples are cited to illustrate the use of these tenets to describe the characteristics of bureaucracy and explain why bureaucracy behaves the way it does. When assembled, these tenets constitute the theory of bureaucracy. It is surmised that there is a connection between the theory of bureaucracy and the second law of thermodynamics or the entropy increase law.

The origins of bureaucracy: an anthropological perspective

Many decades have passed since the first appearance of Max Weber's seminal study, in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft , of the origins and characteristics of bureaucracy. His analysis was, naturally, dependent on the existing knowledge of his day; but the growth and maturity of archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines have shed much new light on the historical and social contexts in which bureaucratic organizations emerged. This article, using Sumerian civilization as a case in point, summarizes much of what we now know about the conditions under which bureaucracy first originated and flourished. In so doing, it identifies several major human developmental and social transformations—the hominid revolution, the agrarian revolution, and the urban revolution—which played vital roles in the evolution and expansion of the bureaucratic form of organization.

The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations

International Relations scholars have vigorous theories to explain why international organizations (IOs) are created, but they have paid little attention to IO behavior and whether IOs actually do what their creators intend. This blind spot flows logically from the economic theories of organization that have dominated the study of international institutions and regimes. To recover the agency and autonomy of IOs, we offer a constructivist approach. Building on Max Weber's well-known analysis of bureaucracy, we argue that IOs are much more powerful than even neoliberals have argued, and that the same characteristics of bureaucracy that make IOs powerful can also make them prone to dysfunctional behavior. IOs are powerful because, like all bureaucracies, they make rules, and, in so doing, they create social knowledge. IOs deploy this knowledge in ways that define shared international tasks, create new categories of actors, form new interests for actors, and transfer new models of political organization around the world. However, the same normative valuation on impersonal rules that defines bureaucracies and makes them powerful in modern life can also make them unresponsive to their environments, obsessed with their own rules at the expense of primary missions, and ultimately produce inefficient and self-defeating behavior. Sociological and constructivist approaches thus allow us to expand the research agenda beyond IO creation and to ask important questions about the consequences of global bureaucratization and the effects of IOs in world politics.

Bureaucracy in prehistory: case evidence from mammoth bone dwellers on the Russian steppes

Archaeologists record and interpret the circumstances in which objects are found. They examine and describe archeological finds. Descriptions of the finds by archaeologists help scholars build a picture of the culture that produced the objects. This case study builds a picture of the rudiments of bureaucracy from a series of prehistoric finds near present day Kiev in the in the Ukrainian Republic. The case study uses Max Weber's characteristics of bureaucracy as a model for analyzing the evidence. The authors conclude that the rudiments of bureaucracy, as an organizing principle, likely existed at least 12,000-19,000 years ago in this area of the world. Rudiments of bureaucracy could have existed earlier and at different geographic locations. However, the sites examined in this case study represent the earliest documented evidence of the rudiments of bureaucracy in human social development.

The bureaucratic characteristics of late 19th century railroad organization

The principal purpose of the research reported here was to assess the extent to which the organizations created by 19th I century railroad managers possessed the structural, procedural, and personnel characteristics of bureaucracy. Historical evidence I indicates that the structural and procedural characteristics were quite prominent, but biographical data about the managers suggests that the personnel characteristics were less so, particularly with respect to the key factor of managerial career development. The managers who created these bureaucratic organizations did not have organizational models or principles available to them, but rather employed a contmgency approach to their organizing decisions. The biographical data suggests that few of them had relevant experiences on foreign railroads or in the Civil War army to guide their organizing decisions. Finally, the biographical data suggests that late 19th century railroad managers were not only a clearly defined occupational group, but were also dist...

Keeping it secret: the costs and benefits of nursing's hidden work in discharging patients

Workload analysts and nursing theorists alike continue their attempts to capture the hidden work of nursing, with varying degrees of success. An interpretative study of the process of discharging patients from hospital to care at home led to a new understanding of the context-related work which nurses do. Three components of context-related work were identified: working with the characteristics of bureaucracy; compensating for bureaucracy on behalf of the health care team; and providing leadership which ensured effective care from others. All constituted invaluable yet obscured and unrecognized components of nursing's indirect contribution to patient care. The costs to keeping this work 'secret' were readily apparent. The understanding derived from this research affords new insights into why nursing has kept this hidden work secret. These insights, in turn, help identify potential solutions for consideration by all concerned about nursing's professional role, status and identity.

Bureaucratization of non‐governmental organizations: An analysis of employees' perceptions and attitudes

AbstractThe key concern of the following article is to measure empirically the extent to which nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are bureaucratized. The perceptions of the employees of the NGOs were elicited about the characteristics of bureaucracy. Interval scale data on respondent perceptions were analysed through step‐wide regression. The statistical analysis does not reveal any specific directionality. Instead, it shows a complicated set of relationships between each of eight characteristics of bureaucracy (dependent variables) on the one hand and the multitude of independent variables on the other. It can be inferred from the data and regression results that the bureaucratic characteristics of NGOs have not crystallized, as in the case of many governmental organizations. Only some postulates of bureaucratic theory, as propounded by Max Weber, are prevalent in the NGOs.

Bureaucracy and crime

Bureaucracy, often assigned the task of reducing crime, actually contributes to the crime problem in a variety of ways. Several characteristics of bureaucracy are identified as having a criminogenic effect. Some of these characteristics are associated with bureaucracy at its worst, involving outright violations of the law. But others are associated with normal bureaucracy, such as its drive survival, and even with bureaucracy at its best, such as its rationality.

The Bureaucrat

America's dim view of the bureaucrat needs reassessment because professional standards review organizations (PSROs) and national health insurance will increase the amount of contact between physician and bureaucrat. Inevitable conflict between The Organization and the physician is aggravated by the government-business adversary relationship based on constitutionalism. With more public funds, the budget-based health institution may acquire more of the characteristics of bureaucracy. For better understanding, the bureaucrat is described, and his main types and natural history outlined. Contrasts between business and government as revealed by interchange of executives are reported. Remedies for better interaction are suggested, including liaison groups and use of the apolitical, career bureaucrat. Rules for dealing with bureaucracies are listed, including The Constituent's Letter.

The Social Characteristics of the Early Nineteenth-Century Russian Bureaucracy

Serious scholarly study of the imperial Russian civil service is almost entirely the product of the past decade, and although several important works have appeared, virtually no quantitative material on the social characteristics of the bureaucracy is available. The imperial government did not publish and probably did not compile statistics on such matters as the social origin, wealth, religion, or education of its civil employees, but the raw data for a partial compilation are available in personnel records (formuliarnie spiski) of individual officials, which are preserved in the Central State Historical Archive in Leningrad.