Bureaucratic Organization Research Articles

From performance to morality: How politicians frame bureaucracy, its organizations, and public sector employees

AbstractPoliticians frequently voice criticisms vis‐à‐vis bureaucracy, its organizations, and its employees. Previous studies point at the negative impact of this “bureaucratic bashing” on public sector morale, recruitment, retention, and citizen perceptions. Yet, systematic evidence on bashing remains sparse, with even less known about its counterpart: bureaucratic praising. This article aims to fill this gap by conceptualizing both phenomena as forms of framing, by distinguishing macro‐, meso‐, and micro‐levels, and by innovatively using organizational reputation theory to develop a multidimensional framework for the systematic analysis of bureaucratic framing. Empirically, we apply this framework to a novel dataset of 70,853 hand‐coded tweets posted by 33 Dutch politicians, covering a wide range of ideological viewpoints. We find that politicians do not so much frame the civil service performatively, in terms of being lazy (or hard working), but rather bash or praise bureaucratic organizations for their (im)morality, whereby four moral subdimensions can be identified.

Combating corruption on the frontlines: analyzing penalties for street-level bureaucrats in China

Penalties for corrupt acts are a vital component of integrity management systems within bureaucratic organizations, yet systematic inquiry into specific interventions is lacking. Drawing from the principal–supervisor–agent model, this article explores the criteria for imposing penalties on corrupt bureaucrats at the street level. We examine the impact of various factors on the severity of penalties for corruption, highlighting the influence of top-down anticorruption reform and local enforcement capacity. Utilizing text mining techniques, we build a comprehensive dataset containing 4025 cases of punishing corruption among grassroots officials in China from 2015 to 2023 and use multilevel analysis to explore these dynamics. Findings suggest that anticorruption reform directly led to an increase in the severity of penalties, but with substantial variation across practices. In particular, the analysis reveals a positive correlation between enforcement capacity and the severity of penalties. Moreover, while the relationship between harm and penalty severity represents a generalizable observation, significant disparities exist in the penalties imposed across various types of corruption. This study contributes to understanding the dynamics of multiple punitive measures and the factors leading to penalties imposed on corrupt street-level bureaucrats.

Reading the Creative Industries With Deleuze: How Creative Are the Creative Industries?

This article develops a definition of creativity that is informed by the work of Gilles Deleuze, Dan Harris, Susan Luckman, and others. We explore its application in the context of the creative industries in Australia. Through our empirical interviews conducted as part of an Australian Research Council–funded project called Vital Arts, we delve into the multifaceted nature of creativity, which we argue is not always accounted for in the bureaucratic organization, categorization, and funding of the creative industries. We outline the measurements used by key governmental, nongovernmental, and policymaking bodies in Australia to categorize and fund the creative industries. These metrics reveal blind spots in how the creative industries are institutionally organized and treated when considering the Deleuzian ontology of creativity that actually motors creative work. We argue that many creative jobs and industries exist outside traditional bureaucratic definitions and categories, and through the concepts of affect, becoming, the major and the minor, as well as fabulation, from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, we explore these dynamics further.

Understanding Chinese Bureaucracy: A Systematic Literature Review

An in-depth study of Chinese bureaucracy and its characteristics is an inseparable research topic in the field of social science in contemporary China. The historical lineage of Chinese bureaucracy shows a development from monarchical bureaucracy to cadre system. The Chinese bureaucratic organization is regarded as a cadre system with Chinese characteristics, characterized by hierarchy, centralization, political loyalty, meritocracy, and personification; the pressure system, administrative contract system, and project system are its operation mechanisms. China's bureaucracy has been transformed from a revolutionary group to a modern bureaucracy, and has now entered a period of adjustment and improvement. Chinese officials pay attention to moral cultivation and character building, and their selection and appointment emphasizes the principles of both virtue and talent, and puts virtue first. The structure of Chinese officials represents a hierarchical pyramid structure, and relationship is the core concept in understanding the interpersonal network of Chinese officials. The emphasis on informatization, transparency, specialization, and innovation is the focus and trend of future research on Chinese bureaucracy.

Stuck in the playground: a (failed) organizational entrepreneuring process

ABSTRACT Collaborative spaces such as fab labs, incubators, and coworking spaces have become a worldwide phenomenon based on their promise of fostering creativity and entrepreneurship. Mature, large organizations have also tried to benefit from this by creating such spaces in-house. This paper studies a failed attempt to create one such space in a large bureaucratic organization. Our study shows that succeeding in actualizing a space for play, creativity, and entrepreneurship in the place of the office requires attention to organizational ‘common sense’. With our process perspective and its upgrading of the role of affect, our study’s contributions highlight (1) The potential for research in organizational entrepreneurship of an affect-based conceptualization of common sense, which also emphasizes the political, in understanding the failure of entrepreneuring, and (2) The importance of ‘spacing’ and the space-place dynamics for entrepreneuring in organizations.

‘Modern talking’: Narratives of agile by German public sector employees

Despite growing interest, we lack a clear understanding of how the arguably ambiguous phenomenon of agile is perceived in government practice. This study aims to alleviate this puzzle by investigating how managers and employees in German public sector organisations make sense of agile as a spreading management fashion in the form of narratives. This is important because narratives function as innovation carriers that ultimately influence the manifestations of the concept in organisations. Based on a multi-case study of 31 interviews and 24 responses to a qualitative online survey conducted in 2021 and 2022, we provide insights into what public sector managers, employees and consultants understand (and, more importantly, do not understand) as agile and how they weave it into their existing reality of bureaucratic organisations. We uncover three meta-narratives of agile government, which we label ‘renew’, ‘complement’ and ‘integrate’. In particular, the meta-narratives differ in their positioning of how agile interacts with the characteristics of bureaucratic organisations. Importantly, we also show that agile as a management fad serves as a projection surface for what actors want from a modern and digital organisation. Thus, the vocabulary of agile government within the narratives is inherently linked to other diffusing phenomena such as new work or digitalisation.

How Do Toothless Tigers Bite? Extra-institutional Governance and Internet Censorship by Local Governments in China

Abstract China has constructed a rigorous state apparatus to control its online social content. To date, research has largely focused on the central government's cyber control, but the less studied local cyberspace administrative forces are also important. Our fieldwork and interviews at a county-level cyberspace administration office (CAO) in east China reveal that the local CAO had been rendered a “toothless tiger” with insufficient technology, power and labour. However, it has made up for these deficiencies by utilizing systems such as outsourced surveillance, organized mass reporting and personnel secondment. We contend that these practices, which we label “extra-institutional governance” (EIG), emerge when bureaucracies with limited resources face external pressures. The findings shed light on how censorship machines operate in local governments in China and reveal the general dynamics of how bureaucratic organizations adapt to environmental pressures.

Gendered Harm and Social Abandonment: Stories of the Dooars Women Tea Garden Workers

The Tea Tribes of the Dooars in West Bengal are of the numerically preponderant culturally and socially dispossessed Adivasi population of Chota Nagpur and make up 80% of the tea plantation labour force. These tribes especially its women who form around 60% of the labour pool in the Dooars, serve as crucial social capital for the sustenance and burgeoning of the plantation industry. The tribes exhibit localised and hybridised social customs that have historically been in a dialectic relationship with the culture of commerce that predominates a capitalist bureaucratic organisation. This acculturation and an unfortunate reign of neglect have given birth to distinctive social arrangements, with the article examining the curious social currents of lone motherhood and abandonment of women shaping the household and thereby the social reproduction cycle of the tea industry. By invoking a feminist methodology, qualitative in-depth interpretive interviews of lone mothers and deserted women have been conducted to understand their renditions of gendered neglect and subliminal violence, while attempting to discover their position in the communitas of the tea industry. The study was conducted in the district of Jalpaiguri, with a heavy concentration of the Scheduled Tribe (62%) of the Adivasi subgroup found in its 89 registered tea gardens. The ‘thick’ descriptions of women’s narratives reveal nuanced notions of gender and intimate partner abuse, that shine light on violence characterised by its distinctive low intensity and its latent and subliminal nature evinced in the breach of a social compact. The nature of mistreatment and abuse that they describe opens up conceptual chinks in existing feminist literature on violence while providing further avenues to deliberate upon them. Imperfect, yet partial access to education, social media and government outreach as tools of modernity are however stoking aspirations for social justice, ineffectively handled by poorly trained and gender unresponsive socio-legal and bureaucratic agents.

Closing the Innovation Performance Gap: Open Innovation in Military Bureaucracies

This article explores the effects of open innovation on innovation performance in military bureaucracies. While the understanding of how bureaucratic organizations can benefit from open innovation is still limited, this study discovered that open innovation can have a negative effect on innovation performance. However, leveraging an innovative culture can lead to improved innovation performance in organizations characterized by high levels of structure and hierarchy, especially those where secrecy and security are of vital importance.

Bureaucratic structure of management of the organization in today’s conditions of uncertainty

Aim. To prove the facts of inefficiency of application of bureaucratic type of organizational structure of management, lack of its influence on economic growth in the conditions of growing global economic uncertainty. Objectives. To systematize the negative features of the bureaucratic model of management, reflected in the works of researchers of the XX century (among them - E. Downs, M. Crozier, B. Guy Peters, D. Flemming, V. Wriston, L. O’Tol), in particular, the lack of flexibility to external uncertain conditions, slow reengineering of business processes under the current realities of economic reality, the lack of motivation to develop the innovative potential of the subject; to study the impact of strong bureaucratic management on economic growth in the works of scientists of the late XX century. (P. Evans, D. Rauch); to reveal the contradiction in the XX century studies and prove that the bureaucratic organizational structure of management has a fading, sometimes stagnating influence on economic growth in the conditions of increasing economic uncertainty.Results. The paper investigated and found that the theory of the influence of the bureaucratic model on economic growth is confirmed on the example of 1960-2000. However, since the 2000s, which is proved in the research process, the bureaucratic organizational structure of management has a waning, sometimes stagnant effect on economic growth under conditions of increasing economic uncertainty. Consequently, bureaucratization of processes and bureaucratic organization is unable to respond to uncertainty. This is because the transition to the new century is marked by the introduction of the antipatterns of bureaucracy: digital technologies, artificial intelligence economy, flexible methods focused on situational management.Conclusions. The results revealed in this study prove the necessity of choosing a different type of organizational structure, not based on the bureaucratic model, in the conditions of permanent crisis and increasing uncertainty in the economy

학교교육과정 운영에 대한 질적 사례연구

Purpose: This study analyzed the case of a school curriculum implementation from the theoretical perspective of communities of practice. A community of practice is a group of people who share the same interests, set of problems, and passion for a particular topic and expand their knowledge and expertise in a field through continuous interaction. This study analyzed the case of a unit school as a community of practice and suggested policy measures to enhance the practice.
 Methods: For this purpose, an interpretive case study was conducted to analyze the curriculum management of a school that is a typical example of a community of practice that has formed over a decade. Various materials such as literature, interviews, photos, and videos were analyzed and validated through triangulation and member checks.
 Results: The study found that, first, the teachers had a shared educational vision of students' happy lives and sought to create a school for joyful growth; second, the school members were engaged in collaborative practices in all aspects of curriculum management; and third, the school was creating a democratic management system to overcome the constraints of the bureaucratic organization and its own curriculum document style.
 Conclusion: Policy suggestions for improving the effectiveness of unit schools as an educational community include improving school administration so that teachers can immerse themselves in curriculum management, establishing a customized educational support system for unit schools, allocating differential support personnel and an educational budget based on the educational needs of unit schools.

Unifying Education as Problem Solving

Public education in the United States is breaking down on two dimensions: its bureaucratic organization and its conceptualization of the learning process. These breakdowns result from attempts to deliver public education using business models and have failed to support the needs of both students and teachers. This breakdown has been further exacerbated by an old misconception about intelligence based on inherent, immutable aspects of biology. This view medicalizes learning problems, enabling schools to categorize already marginalized students producing a stigmatization that negatively impacts their development. To address these problems it is proposed that public education be reframed as a developmental specialization of problem-solving skills. This reframing would ground the conceptualization of learning in the most natural human learning process: problem-solving. Such an approach could directly support students in addressing problems that undermine their individual performance. This problem-solving-centered approach could form both a supportive and successful core educational routine that would model and support stronger collaborative structures between students, teachers, and administrators, building stronger institutions.

Improving the response to disasters by enhancing the incident command system

Climate change is having a significant effect on disasters worldwide. In response, societies have attempted to mitigate the consequences by developing standardised arrangements, known as incident command systems. Many of these systems have a military heritage using hierarchical command-and-control principles that are authoritative by nature and fit well within bureaucratic organisations. While emergency services agencies have embraced these incident command systems, other agencies have not, thereby making the multi-agency response to disasters challenging. This research investigated current incident command systems to develop an improved framework that includes all agencies and improves the multi-agency response to emergencies and disasters. A multi-modal qualitative research approach was undertaken using a literature review, semi-structured interviews with informants and a policy analysis of recent disaster reviews and inquires. This combined data informed the development of 4 options for improvements to the multi-agency response and consolidated the issues into 5 domains. These domains and options for improvement were presented to a panel of experts at the strategic level of emergency and disaster management by way of a 2-round modified Delphi study. This paper reports on the final phase of the research; the policy analysis and modified Delphi study. The most significant outcome of this research was a new level of understanding of strengths and weakness of the incident command system. This contributed to the development of a new conceptual framework based on modifications to the incident command system principles.

BUREAUCRATIC CORRUPTION AND LIBERAL SOLUTIONS

There is a common belief that social systems are sensitive to any disruptions due to the fit of the individual elements of the social mechanism. That is why bureaucracy was created, as an organizational step towards rationality and efficiency on a large scale. The conditions for getting rich were created by capitalism, but there was a need to structure and establish rules for the functioning of society coupled with the free market. Bureaucratic organizations develop mainly where there is social differentiation, and appropriate resources are mobilized to solve problems, reaching various groups and spheres of life. It might seem that it is impossible to fight bureaucracy, but after joining the European Union, it began to develop and grow. The so-called statistical taxpayer does not understand that he is the main payer of taxes and contributions for bureaucratic extravagances. However, bureaucracy, contrary to widespread criticism about its inadequacy in the face of complex reality, is changing under the influence of modern concepts of public management. The aim of this article is to show the connections between bureaucracy and corruption, and the thoughts of libertarians on this administrative phenomenon.

Pembuatan E-Catalog berbasis QR-Code mendukung digitalisasi Desa Krampon, Torjun Sampang

Information Communication Technology (ICT) for changes in life and economic growth in every region. Villages are a very important part in determining the success of development and are in direct contact with the community, especially in public services. The problems that arise and are faced are the low level of skill of village officials with the demands of a more dynamic society and the records management system which is still conventional which triggers high risks. In line with the reform agenda of the Ministry of State Apparatus Empowerment and Bureaucratic Reform, every individual and organization is required to develop themselves in order to improve community services. Conventional administrative and archive management must be changed to system-based and digital. Apart from that, the village also needs to publicize all its potential so that it becomes easier for the public to get information about the village, in addition to the need to carry out public transparency. Therefore, we are present at the Torjun Thematic KKN 2023 community service program, especially in Krampon village, Sampang, to provide a solution to resolve this problem by providing assistance in developing a village website and an information system to manage data in the village using QR-Code as well as training in using QR-Code. Code with society. Apart from that, this activity was carried out in order to increase the abilities and skills of village officials by providing workshops and outreach. The aim of implementing this program is to provide a medium to publicize all the potential that the village has, orderly digital-based administrative management and increase the capabilities and skills of the village apparatus. As a result of the program, there is an increase in the quality of services to the community and publications.

Rebel with a cause: The effects of leadership encouragement and psychological safety on professionals' prosocial rulebreaking behavior

AbstractA core idea of bureaucratic organizations is that rule‐following is a necessary precondition to pursue the public interest. However, rules may sometimes become dysfunctional, burdensome, and even interfere with public value delivery. In those situations, professionals sometimes engage in prosocial rule‐breaking (PSRB), rather than rule‐following, with the aim to deliver meaningful public services. This article examines leadership encouragement and psychological safety as antecedents of PSRB behavior. Data from two waves of a multi‐source dataset consisting of professionals' self‐reported PSRB behavior and psychological safety (n = 837 and 965 respondents) and their supervisor‐reported encouragement for PSRB behavior (n = 58 and 64 respondents) is used. Findings point to a positive relationship between psychological safety and PSRB. Moreover, the study partly supports the hypothesis that leadership encouragement is associated with higher levels of PSRB, but only under conditions of high psychological safety.

Policy labs on the fringes: boundary-spanning strategies for enhancing innovation uptake

Governments around the world are increasingly launching policy labs to break the alleged inertia of public bureaucracies. Operating on the fringes of their parent organizations, however, public policy labs often live a secluded life with little or no subsequent organizational adoption of lab-designed policies. This research examines how lab managers enhance policy innovation uptake through boundary-spanning strategies and practices connecting public policy labs to their bureaucratic parent organizations. Based on a qualitative study of three Danish public policy labs, it coins and conceptualizes three boundary-spanning strategies for enhancing policy innovation uptake: agenda linking, arena linking, and actor linking. Analyzing how the lab managers carry out each of these strategies in practice, the study shows their respective strengths and weaknesses in building political-administrative support for lab-designed policies on multiple levels of the public bureaucracy. The study findings suggest that lab managers must strike the right balance between under- and over-integration of policy labs in the public bureaucracy in order to enhance innovation uptake, connecting the lab to bureaucratic agendas, arenas, and actors, without compromising the integrity of the lab as a creative space for the experimental co-design of public policies. Conceptualizing managerial strategies and practices for bridging the gap between policy labs and public bureaucracies, the study contributes not only to policy lab theory and practice, but also to the mounting collaborative governance, management and leadership literatures on the tensions and dilemmas arising at the interface between hierarchical government and interactive governance.

Birokrasi dan Struktur Kekuasaan dalam Organisasi Pendidikan Modern: dengan Pendekatan Max Weber

This research examines the role of bureaucracy and power structure in modern educational organizations using the Max Weber's theoretical approach. The primary objective of this study is to understand how Weber's concepts related to bureaucracy and power can be applied in the context of contemporary educational institutions. The research methodology employed in this study is a literature review, involving a comprehensive examination of literature from various sources, including books, scholarly journals, and conference papers, relevant to Max Weber's theory, bureaucracy, and power structure in modern educational organizations. The collected data were qualitatively analyzed to support the research findings. The research findings indicate that Weber's bureaucratic principles, such as division of labor, hierarchy, and rational rules, still hold relevance in modern educational organizations. However, their impact may differ in an educational context, where aspects such as flexibility, innovation, and participation also hold significance. Furthermore, the power structure in modern educational organizations can be understood through Weber's concepts of authority and control. This study provides in-depth insights into how Weber's theory can help us comprehend the dynamics of bureaucracy and power in educational institutions, which, in turn, can support improvements and developments in modern education systems.

Implementasi Kebijakan Pemerintah Tentang Pengurangan Penggunaan Kantong Plastik Pada Bisnis Retail Di Kabupaten Jepara

The purpose of this study was to investigate the execution of measures aimed at lowering the utilization of plastic bags within the retail market of Jepara Regency. The research employs a qualitative methodology, utilizing descriptive analytic techniques. The data-gathering process involved conducting an interview with the Head of Hygiene and Waste Management at the Jepara Regency Environment Office, who served as a key informant. In order to gather comprehensive data, interviews were conducted with both sellers and buyers at retail stores in Welahan, Mayong, and Pecangaan sub-districts. The findings of the study indicate that the implementation of the policy is facilitated by socializing activities, particularly in the context of communication and transmission. The Jepara regency government has conducted socialization efforts throughout nearly all marketplaces, demonstrating a clear and consistent approach. The implementation of policies involves the participation of human resources, namely the Environment Office, as the responsible entity. The necessary financial resources for policy implementation are also obtained through the Regional Revenue and Expenditure Budget. Regarding disposition, policy implementers have a preexisting commitment to effectively executing their responsibilities and exhibit a democratic mindset. In relation to bureaucratic organization, the execution of government policies is already directed by the established Standard Operating Procedure. However, there are still challenges for the government in terms of public response and low understanding of the dangers of using plastic bags.

From Iron Cage to Glass House: Repurposing of bureaucratic management and the turn to openness

Although many contemporary organizations face institutional pressures to embrace open organizing principles, some defer or decline the call. We examine how existing bureaucratic practices shape organizations’ initial steps towards openness to explain variation in substantive openness in the practice of management. Scrutinizing the assumption that bureaucratic organizations operate behind closed doors, we study the turn to openness in a single metropolitan area with heterogeneous management practices and shared calls for greater transparency and inclusion. Econometric analyses paired with in-depth interviews reveal that more bureaucratic organizations first encountered such ideals of openness because they were quicker to use digital communication tools. How open organizations are managed results from the repurposing of existing practices in pursuit of openness. The turn to openness can be understood as a transformation of existing bureaucratic management instead of de-novo adoption of new practices. Our study illuminates how bureaucratic management counterintuitively enables some organizations to become more open, and offers support for repurposing as a mechanism of change in the transformation of an organizational field.