Theory Of Bureaucracy Research Articles

Lifting the Mantle of Protection from Weber’s Presuppositions in His Theory of Bureaucracy

Early reactions to the publication of Harold Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology, which have persisted over the passing decades, was that ethnomethodology could not address what sociology deemed to be socially significant matters such as ‘power’ and ‘the state’. This, however, is not the case. How such matters enter into the practical everyday affairs of members is of equal interest to ethnomethodology when compared to how any matter enters into members’ everyday life, and how they display that. It just does not have more importance. Egon Bittner spelt this out with regard to Weber’s interest in bureaucracy when he reminds sociology that when Weber talked about efficiency he was not referring to an objective standard but as something that is attuned to practical interests as they emerge in the context of everyday life. This paper examines some of the actions and interactions that were encountered in a Governmental Department in one of the European countries. It makes visible how characterisations of bureaucracy such as ‘rational’, and ‘efficient’ are achieved in the actions and interactions of Department employees, and some of the practices involved in that achievement. Garfinkel, and ethnomethodology in general, are not, in principle, to be found wanting where matters of overarching, primordial interest to sociology are concerned.

Does Gender Matter? The Effect of Gender Representation of Public Bureaucracy on Governmental Performance

This article investigates gender representation in the public bureaucracy in the context of South Korea and its substantial effects on governmental performance. The past decades have seen a growing body of research on the theory of representative bureaucracy, yet the conceptual linkages remains unclear. This study, first, identifies three missing links existing in the theory of the representative bureaucracy. Second, we investigate whether the presence of women in the bureaucracy affects on the consequences of governmental activities. Using an unbalanced time-series data set for 25 years with gaps including 1978, 1983, 1986 to 2008, the investigation is conducted in terms of the media attention on women’s issues, social welfare budget, and the legislative success of the executive branch measured by the number of passed bills submitted to the National Assembly. The result of the autoregressive integrated moving average time series analysis (ARIMA) suggests that a representative bureaucracy influences substantive consequences on governmental performance.

Race, Gender and Government Contracting: Different Explanations or New Prospects for Theory?

The U.S. Congress created the small disadvantaged business (SDB) and women-owned small business (WOSB) programs to promote fairness in government contracting. In this study, we examine whether increases in racial and gender representation in federal agencies correlates with the proportion of contracting dollars awarded to women- and minority-owned firms. Using the theory of representative bureaucracy as a starting point, we find evidence that increases in passive minority representation result in a larger proportion of contracting dollars awarded to minority-owned firms, which comports with previous empirical research. We find no evidence, however, that female representation leads directly or indirectly to substantive benefits for women-owned small businesses. Given that our findings for women do not support representative bureaucracy, we provide potential alternative explanations. Specifically, we consider whether gender biases, social identity and the queen-bee phenomenon as possible explanations for why women are less inclined to advocate for other women.

Coercion or empowerment? Moderation of content in Wikipedia as ‘essentially contested’ bureaucratic rules

In communities of user-generated content, systems for the management of content and/or their contributors are usually accepted without much protest. Not so, however, in the case of Wikipedia, in which the proposal to introduce a system of review for new edits (in order to counter vandalism) led to heated discussions. This debate is analysed, and arguments of both supporters and opponents (of English, German and French tongue) are extracted from Wikipedian archives. In order to better understand this division of the minds, an analogy is drawn with theories of bureaucracy as developed for real-life organizations. From these it transpires that bureaucratic rules may be perceived as springing from either a control logic or an enabling logic. In Wikipedia, then, both perceptions were at work, depending on the underlying views of participants. Wikipedians either rejected the proposed scheme (because it is antithetical to their conception of Wikipedia as a community) or endorsed it (because it is consonant with their conception of Wikipedia as an organization with clearly defined boundaries). Are other open-content communities susceptible to the same kind of ‘essential contestation’?

Delegation, Control, and the Study of Public Bureaucracy

The theory of public bureaucracy has made dramatic progress over the last few decades. From the pioneering work of Downs, Tullock, and Niskanen to the more recent theories of political control and delegation, the field has put together a sophisticated analytic base for understanding how politics—and the strategies and policy goals of the legislative, executive, and judicial players who exercise political authority—determine how public bureaucracy is organized and ultimately how it performs. My aim in this paper is to review this literature and offer perspective on its content and direction. Along the way I argue that, as this literature has developed and matured, technical issues have come to dominate scholarly attention, and that the normal science now governing the theory—a standardization that testifies to its very success—has been limiting and even misleading in important respects, to the point that fundamental aspects of bureaucracy and its politics are being pushed aside. All told, the progress from the early days has been astonishing. But some rethinking is in order.

Towards a Bureaucracy Theory of the Interaction between Competition Law and State Action

Towards a Bureaucracy Theory of the Interaction between Competition Law and State Action

The Glass Ceiling Revisited

Gender continues to shape organizational life in profound ways. Theorizing about gender in public institutions has been scarce. This article is an attempt to reinsert gender in our research agenda. First, macro-level theories of gender in organizations are discussed; then, the literature in public administration is surveyed. The author contends that the theory of representative bureaucracy provides a tremendous theoretical platform for understanding gender’s sociocultural forces as well as normative avenues and prospects for change. Such an approach will move us beyond description (i.e., lack of representation) to a better understanding of how gender is deployed and acquires signification in organizational life.

Assessing the long-term effects of officer race on police attitudes towards the community: a case for representative bureaucracy theory

This study examines longitudinal changes in police officer attitudes towards the community within the theoretical context of representative bureaucracy theory. The sample consists of 405 male Caucasian, African-American and Latino/Hispanic patrol officers who began employment with the LAPD from 1985 to 1991 under affirmative action hiring. The same officers comprising the panel study were surveyed at two points in time, 1992 (Wave 1) and 2007 (Wave 2). Results indicated that, over the study’s 15 year time frame, African-American and Latino officers significantly increased their desire to engage in active representation or ‘partnerships’ with the community. Also discovered was a similar time effect among Caucasian officers, who at Wave 1 of the study held significantly lower desires for community interaction than the minority officer sample. Overall, the study findings lend support to representative bureaucracy theory’s general assumption that establishing racial parity between police and citizens may increase the willingness of officers to represent the interests of others with similar demographic backgrounds.

The Dynamic Rent-Seeking Theory: A Response to Critics

Why is rent-seeking highly relevant for recent economic theory? In this paper, I argue that the common criticism of rent seeking theory is not new and relevant. First, I explain the basis of rent seeking and the main contributions to this theory including the theory of bureaucracy. Then, I explain the criticism of this approach, which attacks the static grounds of this theory stemming from the perfect competition equilibrium model and the normative concretizing of rent-seeking actions. I argue that the rent-seeking theory had already abandoned the static perfect competition model in the 1980s and that arguments using dynamic rent-seeking theory remain normative until they explain the institutional causes of economic development, which has been the centre of the economic profession for centuries.

The Ineffectiveness of High School Graduation Credit Requirement Reforms

Graduation credit requirement reforms were expected to have a significant impact on the American educational landscape, but scholars have concluded that these reforms have exhibited less impact than expected on a wide range of educational outcomes. Drawing on Lipsky’s theory of street-level bureaucracy, we hypothesize that graduation requirement reforms have been relatively ineffective because of inconsistent implementation and enforcement at the local level. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) and the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), we assess the viability of this hypothesized explanation. On the whole, the findings are consistent with our contention that inconsistent implementation and enforcement of graduation credit requirement policies contributes to the relative ineffectiveness of these policy reforms.

Agency Performance and Executive Pay in Government: An Empirical Test

Public management reform has drawn inspiration from principal agent theory and private management, and a favored reform strategy has been civil service reform that strongly recommends pay-for-performance. The hypothesis tested in this paper is that the incentive effect will improve public sector management. The basis is the performance management system introduced in Danish central government where access to both performance and pay data provides us with unique behavioral data. The system combines performance contracts with executive contracts for agency heads, who in this way can earn a bonus based on agency performance. We find no support for the hypothesis and discuss the result against principal agent theory, private sector experience, and bureaucratic theory. Reforma en la gerencia pública ha extraído tanto de la Teoría Agente-Principal como de la gerencia privada y una de las estrategias favorecidas ha sido la reforma del servicio civil la cual recomienda fuertemente remuneración según el desempeño. La hipótesis analizada en este artículo es que el efecto del incentivo mejorara la gerencia en el sector público. La base del estudio es el sistema de gerencia de desempeño introducido en el gobierno central Danés el cual nos proporcionó acceso a datos de desempeño y remuneraciones junto con datos únicos de comportamiento. El sistema combina contratos de desempeño con contratos gerenciales de los directores de entidades quienes devengan un bono dependido del desempeño de la entidad. No encontramos respaldo para la hipótesis y discutimos los resultados en contra de la Teoría Agente-Principal, experiencia en el sector privado y la teoría burocrática. Translations by Claudia N. Avellaneda, University of North Carolina Charlotte and Nicolai Petrovsky, University of Kentucky

The Iron Cage of the Profession: A Critique on Closure in the Australian Accounting Profession

This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on the process of closure that occurs within the constructs of professions. The discussion in this paper focuses on the professional accounting bodies in Australia and how they have devolved a form of bureaucratic control over the education process through the credentialing of membership and accreditation of accounting degrees. Weber's theory of bureaucracy in conjunction with Closure theory provide the framework upon which this critique is drawn. Implicit in the regulatory role of the accounting bodies is the justification of the practice of accounting and the status of the members of the professional bodies. Once those within the professional associations accept the right of the professional bodies to determine the educational requirements for membership along with the practice of accreditation of curriculum forms the iron cage. The practice of accreditation and credentialing exists in other disciplines such as medicine, engineering and law so that there exists parallels for claiming a legitimate basis for the intervention of the professional accounting bodies.

EDUCAÇÃO TRANSDISCIPLINAR: PROMOVENDO MAIS SENSIBILIDADE ÀS NOSSAS EXPERIÊNCIAS E ÀS EXPERIÊNCIAS DOS NOSSOS EDUCANDOS

This essay aims to contribute to the emergency of a pedagogical praxis that makes viable the construction of an education for the entireness – transdisciplinary education. We recognize that it is necessary to overcome bureaucratic theories and knowledge technicists that split the cognitive from the affective and from the political. Transdisciplinary education is comprehended here as an offer of freeing education that makes evident its role in the construction of a new historical project. In this conception of education the process of teaching-learning overcomes the logical process and the intellectual one; it becomes a dynamic process, coherent, constitutive of the human being, deeply affective and social. The transdisciplinarity concept is the guide theme of innovative educative practices, capable to help at the overcoming of teaching that reduces the real just at the level of material reality, that reduces the human being to the rational individual, egocentric or economic. The transdisciplinary education seems to us like an inspiring source of solutions for the current educational problems, mostly from the presented in the field of teachers’ formation. It is an educational offer from and to the freedom, because it objectives the consciousness of the individuals by promoting a living that permits and stimulates the reconnection of people, of events, and of people to events; that recognizes the submission to the dynamics that comes out from interaction with reality, and of the power over her, the power of searching sustainability for the lives and for the life on the planet on a compromised and ethical way.

Max Weber and the parliamentary bureaucracy of his time

By means of ideal-types, Weber depicts the most significant features characterizing single sociological phenomena and structures. This article analyses the general procedure concerning their formation and meaning, and then focuses on the theory of bureaucracy. In this case, there is a close relationship between theoretical construct and historical reality, since German bureaucracy between 1871 and 1918 developed into a highly-specialized, rational, and efficient organization. Nevertheless, the bureaucracy of Weber's time overrode administrative competence and took on functions pertaining to the Legislature. By taking the ideal-typical connotations into account, Weber defines the criteria constraining bureaucratic competences and propounds political reforms strengthening the role of Parliament. His proposals had a considerable resonance in Germany and contributed notably to enhancing the role of political representation.

Lincoln’s Wartime Incumbency Network: Vertical Trust, Informal Payments, and the U.S. Presidential Election of 1864

Public choice interpretations of historical events represent a growing literature in economics. This particular study follows in, and builds upon, this tradition by examining, through the public choice lens, events leading up to die U.S. presidential election of 1864. We posit that die modern theory of bureaucracy, as described in Breton and Wintrobe [ 1982], perhaps best explains die way in which Abraham Lincoln’s subordinates assisted, sometimes even manipulating the gears of die federal (Union) government in doing so, in his re-election effort. That bureaucracy, which we refer to herein as Lincoln's wartime incumbency network, was based on a system of «vertical trust», and included an incentive structure wherein subordinates provided Lincoln with «informal services» related to his re-election in 1864, and were provided in return with «informal payments», which often consisted of ex ante/ex post promotions and/or nominations for other government positions.

Race, Respect, and Red Tape: Inside the Black Box of Racially Representative Bureaucracies

Racially representative bureaucracy theory suggests that black and Latino clients of street-level bureaucracies will uniformly experience the benefits of a racially diverse staff within these institutions and perceive it as working to their advantage. Conversely, street-level bureaucracy theory suggests that racial minorities working within these organizations are under massive constraints that significantly hamstring their efforts to exercise discretion in ways that might benefit minority clients. Using in-depth interviews of both recipients and providers of public cash benefits and food stamps, I find that the majority of black and Latina clients interviewed in a racially diverse welfare office do not view staff members who share their racial status as operating in ways that are distinctly informed by racial group commonality. A strong bureaucratic structure creates institutional boundaries that often restrict meaningful engagement between these groups despite social group commonality. In those instances in which black and Latina clients do have a racialized interpretation of their encounters with bureaucrats from their racial groups, they are not monolithically understood. Clients can read them as either pointed but welcomed interventions by racemates who offer wisdom on how to navigate the welfare system or heavy-handed maneuvers by more privileged members of their racial communities. Ultimately, this article argues that racial diversity among the workforces of street-level bureaucracies is important and can have positive effects on organizational dynamics as racially representative bureaucracy theory suggests, but organizational context and intragroup politics within minority communities greatly inform how race is mediated within these institutions.

"He Who is Unfit to Serve his Fellow Citizens Wants to Rule Them"--the Political Dimensions of Mises' Theory of Bureaucracy

An important literature exists on bureaucracy. It deals with economic and political consequences. Many scholars analysed these particular organizations and different schools of thought provided their own interpretation of bureaucratic phenomena. Mises’ theory of bureaucracy is known as being an important contribution from the Austrian economics school. However, the political dimension of his works on bureaucracy is less known. This article proposes an analysis of such a dimension.

The modern economic theory of bureaucracy as a precursor to new public management

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to suggest that the modern economic theory of bureaucracy developed by economists Breton and Wintrobe is a heretofore unrecognized precursor to the new public management (NPM) construct.Design/methodology/approachAfter presenting a comparison of the modern economic theory of bureaucracy to the basic principles of NPM, this paper offers a treatment of Breton and Wintrobe's modern economic theory of bureaucracy that uses the compelling episodic example of the 1944 attempt by the Nazi SS to deceive, through the now infamous Theresienstadt “Embellishment,” the International Red Cross and world communities about the existence of the Nazi Holocaust bureaucracy.FindingsThe comparison of the conceptual elements of the two models and the integration of the historical episodic example support the view that the modern economic theory of bureaucracy is a precursor to NPM.Originality/valueThis is the first study to date to present the modern economic theory of bureaucracy as a precursor to the principles of NPM. As such, future research in either area that recognizes the connection made in the present study is potentially enhanced.

Bureaucracy and Democracy: A Theoretical Analysis

This article addresses the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy, bureaucratic politics and democratic politics. Bureaucratic theories and politics are discussed, democratic theories and politics are analyzed, and the argument in favor of reconciling bureaucracy and democracy is analyzed with implications for democratic theory and public administration. Persistence of bureaucracy is stressed, deficiencies in democratic theory and practice are noted, and the importance of a functionally balanced and professionally competent bureaucracy is reminded for administration of sound governance in both developed and developing societies. It is hypocrisy to speak of functioning democracy without a balanced professional bureaucracy.

Representative Bureaucracy: Assessing the Evidence on Active Representation

The theory of representative bureaucracy suggests that a public workforce representative of the people in terms of race, ethnicity, and sex will help ensure that the interests of all groups are considered in bureaucratic decision-making processes. The theory posits that the active representation of group interests occurs because individual bureaucrats reflect the views of those who share their demographic backgrounds. Research in the public administration literature, however, includes only a relatively small number of studies providing evidence consistent with active representation. In addition, that literature is, for the most part, composed of studies that are conducted at an organizational level, making it impossible for us to draw inferences about the behavior of individual bureaucrats without committing an ecological fallacy. Researchers in the field of criminal justice studies, on the other hand, have long tested the relationship between workforce demography and government outcomes and have done so at the individual level and in contexts that allow confidence that the outcomes observed are indeed the product of action by minority or female public servants. Those studies are reviewed, and their findings provide the first definitive evidence of a connection between the presence of diversity in the public workforce and the representation of minority interests.