Weberian Bureaucracy Research Articles

Bureaucracy and Policy Implementation in Democratic Governance: A Focus on Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

ABSTRACT The study investigated the roles of bureaucracy in Nigeria and its inadequacies in adhering to the Weberian model of policy implementation in the Nigeria democratic governance. The study adopted a survey research design and utilized primary data obtained through the administration of questionnaires to a purposively selected 220 respondents comprising senior bureaucrats and CSOs, and conduct of the in-depth interview. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis with the aid of SPSS. The study revealed that even though, bureaucrats are not necessarily the primary makers of the policy. They play an active role in policy implementation in Nigeria. However, factors such as political pressure, inadequate budgetary allocation, over politicization of the appointment into governmental offices leading to inadequate professionalism, and environmental variables hinder the effective implementation of policy in Nigeria. It was equally established that as ideal as the Weberian model of bureaucracy is, there are inevitable lacuna and inadequacies in its application to Nigeria, due to factors such as socio-cultural forces, collectivism as against individualism, and absolute formalism. The study concluded that, although Weberian bureaucracy could be ideal and applicable to large-scale economy, its model is inadequate in addressing all the needs and circumstances of Nigeria. Hence, the need to restructure or readjust the bureaucracy to adapt to new and complex problems becomes apparent.

Super-bureaucracy in climate adaptation governance in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT State bureaucratic settings and associated governance patterns have an enormous impact on the planning and implementation of a country's climate development policy. Contextually, a typical superior bureaucratic framework with its decision-making power centred on climate adaptation projects funding prevails in Bangladesh. This paper deploys the concepts of Weberian bureaucracy and super-bureaucracy and its governance pattern to explore the power attributes of climate bureaus and associated bureaucratic practices and decision-making behaviour regarding adaptation funding in climate adaptation governance. The study employs all climate adaptation development projects (n = 573) financing in Bangladesh. The analysis finds that the general administration cadre employees rather than technical professionals are involved in multiple decision-making processes, including appraisal and approval and monitoring and evaluating projects holding powerful pivotal positions both centrally and locally. These super bureaus also expand their power resources in climate adaptation policy by governing big adaptation projects, keeping the project director position, and approving the said position. The power capabilities and interests of the super-bureaus accrue by creating new climate institutions too. The decision-making behaviour and governance pattern underpin a state of super-bureaucracy, which are not supportive enough of innovative policy-making through inclusive participation and collective decision-making for governing dynamic climate adaptation policy.

Encouraging bureaucrats to report corruption: human resource management and whistleblowing

ABSTRACT Although notoriously hierarchical, rigid and impersonal, bureaucracy has recently become the unsung hero in the fight against corruption. Recent studies suggest that countries whose public service reflects characteristics of a Weberian bureaucracy – particularly, permanent careers and merit recruitment – exhibit lower levels of corruption. Uncertainty exists, however, over which qualities are most important, as well as how these lower corruption. This article advances research by examining the relationship that various human resource management practices have with a central mechanism of thwarting corruption: whistleblowing. Using survey data from Australia, the results from various regression models show that bureaucrats’ belief that recruitment within their agency prioritises merit as well as their belief in opportunities for promotion have a positive relationship with whistleblowing. Meanwhile, reporting corruption does not seem to be affected by bureaucrats’ belief in the permanency of their job, satisfaction with remuneration, turnover intention or organisational commitment. The external validity of the findings is considered by comparing the nature of bureaucracy in Australia with some Asia Pacific and Anglo-American countries.

Biurokratyczne załatwianie spraw

The article presents the issue of a bureaucratic disposal of matters by public administration authorities. The letter of dissatisfaction was introduced into Polish law as early as 1950. It was an expression of a negative attitude towards red tape. The prohibition of a bureaucratic disposal of matters is a guideline for the entire public sector. Bureaucracy is the negative behavior of officials: learned helplessness, routine, prejudices against applicants, assurance, conformism, and excessive formalism. The legislator’s pejorative assessment does not refer to bureaucracy itself, but to red tape as a dysfunction of bureaucracy. Red tape is the result of organizational culture. The article presents the model of Weberian bureaucracy and a critique of it. The provisions obliging officials to act in an fair, impartial, reasonable and proper manner are discussed, and the example is given of proper, open, efficient and independent European Union administration. The tool that determines bureaucracy is the document. The creation of excessive amounts of documents, as a manifestation of bureaucracy (red tape), is closely related to the development of office techniques. However, the development of information technology and the dissemination of electronic communication channels have changed the face of bureaucracy. The direct contact between an official with an applicant is changing into screen-level bureaucracy, with the claimant’s application being handled by the IT system. The official’s discretionary power has Hus been significantly reduced. The development of e-administration eliminates inappropriate actions of officials. However, a new type of bureaucracy is emerging by IT experts. Art. 227 of the Code of Administrative Proceedings can become a protective measure against theformalism of e-government.

“A little bit of everything?” Conceptualising performance measurement in hybrid public sector organisations through a literature review

PurposeNumerous of today's public sector organisations (PSOs) can be characterised as hybrids. Hybridity is caused by different (at times conflicting) demands that stem from the institutional environment, which is likely to affect performance measurement in these organisations. This paper focuses on the relationship between hybridity and organisational performance, which has so far not been studied in detail.Design/methodology/approachBased on a literature review (final sample of 56 articles), the authors systematise performance dimensions alongside the pillars “economy”, “efficiency”, “effectiveness” and “(social) equity”. The article summarises results in a framework for measuring performance in hybrid PSOs. The authors outline strategies as to how public managers can tailor frameworks to the requirements and idiosyncrasies of organisations.FindingsSince hybrid PSOs combine logics from different administrative models (Weberian bureaucracy, market-capitalism and democracy), so need their organisational performance measurement systems. Potential synergies from and frictions between the different performance dimensions related to the four pillars are discussed.Originality/valueThis is the first literature review on performance dimensions and their application in hybrid PSOs. The distilled “hybrid performance measurement framework” can be scrutinised and further refined in future research.

Democracy and bureaucracy in newly industrialized countries: A systematic comparison between Latin America and East Asia

AbstractThis article analyzes the political‐institutional determinants of bureaucracy quality among a group of newly industrialized countries in Latin America and East Asia democratized in the Third Wave. Four causal conditions are examined for the occurrence of higher levels of bureaucratic “weberianess” in the selected cases: historical sequence, political parties' institutionalization, electoral competition, and ethnic politics. The study employs the fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis to explore the expectation that each of these conditions' implications depends on other conditions' presence or absence. The findings disconfirm claims about the critical role of party system institutionalization for Weberian bureaucracies in new democracies. Besides, the analysis did not declare a professional public administration's prior existence before democratization as a necessary or sufficient condition for the outcome of interest. Finally, although the electoral competition was declared necessary for the outcome occurrence, it does not imply the same result if combined with ethnic politics.

Do the Advantages of the Weberian Bureaucracy Outweigh Its Disadvantages?

Bureaucracy is a highly misunderstood and infamous concept which has been taken in varied perspective by public at large. For a state, the rule of law is the most important prerequisite to its contributory existence and bureaucracy act as a tool to it. This essay attempts to bring out the good and bad part of Weberian model of bureaucracy and then analyzing them to find out whether the benefits outweigh the disadvantages or not. There are various schools of thoughts which are having different ways of looking at bureaucracy and finding its pros and cons as per their interpretations and convenience. People of a society enjoy the benefits of the civilized system by virtue of the effective role of the bureaucracy, however they are always finding themselves comfortable in coming out with negative and positive criticism of the bureaucracy. This essay attempts at finding out both the sides of the arguments and leaves with the readers the scope of interpreting them as per their extent of understanding them.

Digital weberianism bureaucracy: Alertness and disaster risk reduction (DRR) related to the Sunda Strait volcanic tsunami

This article is an exploratory report study of the disaster risk reduction (DRR) of the 2018 Sunda Strait volcanic tsunami, using the Digital Weberianism Bureaucracy (DWB) concept introduced by Muellerleile and Robertson. The actors of DRR, including their contributions according to their role in disaster management immediately after the drastic calamity, were mapped by the measurements of Social Network Analysis (SNA) using the Gephi Software and Correspondence Analysis (CA) using SPSS. Field data were obtained from 150 individuals who were directly affected by the volcanic tsunami by using digital questionnaires designed at an Open Data Kit (ODK) platform as part of a partially mixed sequential dominant status design research method. Centrality measurement in SNA shows a number of dominant actors in DRR observed from the three aspects of DWB, namely intelligent efficiency, sizing-up objectivity, and remotely rationality. Qualitative data were collected to further explore the roles of each actor in DRR. This research illustrates the weak integration of early warning and rapid information system applications developed by national disaster agencies, resulting in the failure to achieve DRR. This study also provides a theoretical contribution by expanding and enriching the DWB concept as a reframing of Weberian bureaucracy in the digital era.

Red Tape, Organizational Performance, and Employee Outcomes: A Meta- Analysis

Due to the legacy of the Weberian bureaucracy, bureaucratic red tape (BRT) is omnipresent in public organizations. While the procedures underlying BRT might have been stipulated to ensure equal and fair treatment of citizens, too many procedures become counterproductive. Indeed, there is widespread consensus among public administration scholars that BRT carries negative consequences. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research synthesis on the topic. We conduct a meta- analysis of 90 correlations from 26 public administration articles and ask: What is the impact of BRT on organizational performance and employee outcomes, and which conditions moderate this impact? Our meta-analysis finds that BRT has a significant, negative and small- to-medium impact on organizational performance and employee outcomes. Meta-regression shows that BRT is less harmful to organizational performance in E.U. compared to U.S. samples and in public organizations compared to private organizations. Moreover, external BRT is less harmful to organizational performance than internal BRT.

Implementation of indigenous public policies and tensions to governance: evidences from the Chilean case

ABSTRACT The search for good governance has become a challenge for the Latin American States in response to the demands of representation of indigenous peoples that have emerged as political actors in the last decades. In contexts of Nation-State and Weberian bureaucracies, the analysis of the indigenous policy implementation process shows the tension to governance models and the relevance to incorporate concepts as power, hegemony, or exclusion. From the Chilean case, this article analyzes the tensions, values, and interests that arise in governance contexts, based on an analysis model that shows the difficulties in defining the rules of governance, the processes of adjustment and cultural mismatch, the political and economic influence on the implementation process, between others. The main information arises from in-depth interviews applied to 44 key actors who have played a role at different stages in the process of implementation, along with press analysis and official documents.

Access to drinking water in sub-Saharan Africa: does the developmental state doctrine matter?

Using data from 14 sub-Saharan African countries, this study investigates the relevance of the developmental state doctrine to enhancing access to improved drinking water sources and to reducing urban–rural inequalities in access to improved sources and piped-on premises. Although access to improved water sources and urban–rural inequality seems better in developmental states than in non-developmental states, we have not found sufficient support for the claim that the developmental state approach is the best alternative. The influence of corruption is, unexpectedly, higher in developmental states than in non-developmental states. Moreover, both developmental states and non-developmental states were not significantly investing in access to drinking water supply programs. We find that the total population growth rate is the strongest predictor, rather than regime type. Other factors that explain the variation between all samples of developmental states and non-developmental states are identified and discussed, and implications are outlined. Points for practitioners There is significant variation in access to improved drinking water sources and urban–rural inequalities in access to improved sources and piped-on premises between developmental states and non-developmental states. The relevance of the developmental state doctrine to improving access to drinking water, reducing socio-economic inequalities in access to drinking water, and realizing Sustainable Development Goal targets in sub-Saharan Africa is ambiguous. We advise strengthening a functional Weberian bureaucracy and promoting political decentralization.

Bureaucracy and Growth

We revisit the hypothesis that a Weberian bureaucracy enhances economic growth. Theoretically, we develop arguments for why such a bureaucracy may enhance growth and discuss plausible counterarguments. Empirically, we use new measures capturing various Weberian features in countries across the world, with some time series extending back to 1789. The evidence base from previous large- N studies is surprisingly thin, but our extensive data enable us to move beyond the problematic cross-country correlations used in previous studies. Hence, we conduct tests that control for country-specific characteristics while ensuring sufficient variation on the slow-moving bureaucracy variables to enable precise estimation. Our analysis suggests that previous cross-country regressions have vastly overstated the strength of the relationship. While this casts uncertainty on the proposition that there is an effect of Weberian bureaucracy on growth, our further analysis suggests that—if an effect exists—it may operate in the short term and be stronger in recent decades.

Mapping the black box of intraministerial organization: An analytical approach to explore structural diversity below the portfolio level

AbstractThis article explores the structural diversity of intraministerial organization over time. Based on organization theory, it proposes a generic typology for intraministerial units applicable to any hierarchically structured government organization. We empirically investigate the critical case of the German federal bureaucracy. By classifying its subunits, we analyze the longitudinal development of structural differentiation and its correspondence to denominational variety. The data stem from a novel international dataset, covering all ministries between 1980 and 2015. We find that intraministerial structure differentiates over time, across and within ministries. A stable core of traditional Weberian structure is complemented by structurally innovative intraministerial units. We conclude that the German federal bureaucracy is more diverse than suggested in previous literature. Our findings indicate that less Weberian bureaucracies are at least as structurally diverse and that more reform‐driven bureaucracies will have experienced at least as many changes in structural diversity.

What makes self-managing organizations novel? Comparing how Weberian bureaucracy, Mintzberg\u2019s adhocracy, and self-organizing solve six fundamental problems of organizing

The bureaucratic organizational structure has been recently challenged by a number of organizations that claim to offer employee emancipation and autonomy through self-management, self-organizing, or “holacracy.” To facilitate theorizing about such organizational-level self-management, I examine it as an ideal type of organizational form, comparing it to two more established organizational forms, Weberian bureaucracy and Mintzberg’s adhocracy. More particularly, building on the four universal problems every organization needs to solve—two of which I divide into two sub-problems—I utilize a framework of six fundamental problems of organizing—task division, task allocation, rewarding desired behavior, eliminating freeriding, providing direction, and ensuring coordination—to demonstrate how these three forms of organizing have found different solutions to them. The radically decentralized model of authority at the heart of self-managing organizations is shown to lead to solutions to these problems that are based on peer-based accountability and rewarding, transparency of key information, and bottom-up emergent processes where employees have the authority and responsibility to identify necessary tasks and ensure that they get done. It is concluded that the self-managing organization indeed is a novel form of organizing that can better explain certain real-life organizational outliers than the existing paradigms of organizing. It is argued to be especially viable in industries where interdependence between units is low, outputs are highly tailored, and employee expertise and motivation are high. Accordingly, research on such organizations can offer several new insights relevant to both the practice and theory of organization design.

Dealing with disgust: Street-level bureaucrats as agents of Kafkaesque bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is deeply implicated in the biopolitical regimes that create and render invisible social waste—individuals classified as abnormal, deviant, or useless—in contemporary societies. According to previous theorists, bureaucracy is able to carry out this critical task through moral distance and reliance on technical efficiency. By specifically focusing on street-level bureaucrats, a unique tier of bureaucracy which is often afforded neither moral distance nor clear directions, this article explains the microprocesses of classification, managing and recycling through which social waste management is carried out in contemporary society. In doing so, this article highlights that in addition to official policies, informal factors like social, organizational, and group norms are critical determinants of bureaucratic behavior in front-line organizations and problematize some of the key assumptions of Weberian bureaucracy. Unlike functional interpretations, we argue that, in some instances, the informal factors influencing street-level bureaucrats are more regressive than official public policies and help explain some of the dystopian features of contemporary bureaucracy and its impact on social inequity.

Bureaucratic structures and organizational commitment: findings from a comparative study of 20 European countries

ABSTRACTDo civil servants in some countries have higher organizational commitment? Is there any substantial cross-national variation in the form and degree of commitment? Good governance studies show a positive link between Weberian bureaucracy and favourable macro-level outcomes. However, previous comparative research is silent regarding cross-national differences of individual bureaucrats’ attitudes and their relationship with national bureaucratic structures. Employing social exchange theory, we argue that closed civil service systems produce higher commitment in senior public officials than open systems do. Using two large data sets in 20 European countries, we find closed systems are associated with continuance and normative commitment.

Algorithmic Bureaucracy: Managing Competence, Complexity, and Problem Solving in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

In recent years, local government is undergoing changes which are strongly influenced by the growing digitization of governmental operations. Key features of Digital Era Governance (DEG) appear to be displacing features of the New Public Management (NPM) and are also challenging some underlying aspects of Weberian bureaucracy in public administration. In this paper, we expand on the concepts in DEG and its successor, Essentially Digital Government (EDGE), by introducing the concept of Algorithmic Bureaucracy, which looks at the impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on rationalization and the socio-technical nature of public administration. We report on a mixed-method study, which focused on how the growth of data science is changing the ways that local government works in the UK. Special emphasis is put on how algorithms can build citizen and administrator competence and deal with complexity. Algorithmic bureaucracy, like traditional bureaucracy, is impartial in its application, but can be predictably sensitive to context. Society needs to determine the ends to which it is put and how to assign accountability in this context. We find that algorithmic bureaucracy is in its infancy in local government, so there is space to develop an appropriate ethical framework to harness the technology and enhance social problem solving.

From Weberian Bureaucracy to Networking Bureaucracy

Max Weber viewed organizational bureaucracy as one of the inevitable premises for genesis of capitalism, and his concept of bureaucracy has been the authoritative instrument in the analysis of organizations for many years. The Fordist Modern social organization cannot be imagined without bureaucratic organization. Up to recent times, bureau-cratic organization, existing as a general pattern of organizing social life, seemed to prove to be the ultimate efficiency as a means of organizing governmental bodies as well as big corporations. Today, Weberian bureaucracy as theory and practice come under criticism as rigid, obsolete, and ineffective. Under the conditions of late capitalism, modern or-ganization is claimed to be more flexible and more adaptive to changes. It is my belief that the phenomenon of bureau-cracy cannot be analyzed in isolation from other theories of social order. With its strict rules and regulations, Weberian bureaucracy is the embodiment of Foucauldian disciplinary power at the organizational level. Foucault’s diagrams expressing power through systematic relations between humans, objects, and spaces could be the perfect study of bu-reaucracy. Bureaucracy changes with the transition from disciplinary power relations to postmodern power relations. The traditional disciplinary instruments (rules, codes, and regulations) give space for more flexible and even (at first sight) democratic inter-organizational relations. However, this supposed freed without freedom has its priceк. Deregu-lation paradoxically leads to even more regulation, which now appears as self-control and self-surveillance. Being microscopic (mostly due to novel technological opportunities) and de-regulative at the same time, this new networking bureaucracy restructures power relations in organizations in a way that produces behavior leading to atomization and individualization without a freedom.

Dowody w postępowaniach szczególnych i konsensualnych – zarys problematyki

The paper examines the peculiarities of evidence in sc. “postepowania szczegolne” (special procedures) in Polish criminal process, as well as in the procedures containing the element of the mutual concessions (e.g. art. 335 of Polish Criminal Procedure Code). Some assumptions of the Weberian bureaucracy theory are applied here. Review of the specific evidentiary regulations in the procedures under scrutiny lead to some findings on the way the evidence influences particular procedures. Final conclusions are focused on the trends to be seen in last half of the century in Polish criminal procedure.

English

Bureaucracy in Buganda polity transcended the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial era. During each era, the principles which underpin the Weberian bureaucracy manifested variously. Pre-colonial bureaucracy manifested as a strong chain of command through the hierarchical kingdom structure; and centralized control by the King through the chiefs. During the colonial times, bureaucracy had duality in the chain of command and allegiance where chiefs served both the King and colonial administrators. Unlike the pre-colonial era, laws were written and some employees directly under the colonial administration were recruited due to their technical competences and served with impersonality. The post-colonial bureaucracy was an extension of the colonial bureaucracy albeit with more of the Weberian form. Buganda wanted to operate as a state within a state where the King held political and executive powers of Uganda as a state but at the same time retain the position of the head of the monarch (Buganda) within Uganda. Abolition of monarchies created a lull in the late 1960s to early 1980s. Coming into power of the NRM regime reinstated the monarch albeit with more cultural mandate than political and administrative clout. The bureaucratic machinery remained in the Kingdom administrative hierarchy without the powers it enjoyed during the pre-colonial and colonial era. This article provides historical development of Buganda monarch during the different eras. It chronological highlighted the growth; peaking and anticlimax of bureaucracy in the Buganda. Whether the bureaucracy in Buganda will regain its original form under the current government remains to be seen. Key words: Bureaucracy; polity; government, pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial.