Bureaucracy Untrained

Abstract

In any exporting company there must be two successful teams playing for the same side — the ‘away’ team operating out in the field and the ‘home’ team based at company headquarters. Both teams work closely together to achieve a common goal — new or continuing sales — and all that goes with this objective in the way of customer service and efficient back-up for the sales team. If something goes wrong, there is no question that management should concentrate all its forces on putting matters right. But when one applies this metaphor to the relationship between the British civil service and the country’s exporters, the partnership between the two sides appears to be fragile, with one side — the bureaucracy — lacking motivation, seemingly oblivious to the fact that its players in the field are often battling against the odds. There are, of course, mechanisms for supporting business, such as the British Overseas Trade Board’s export services programme, but these concern relatively few businesses for brief periods, not business as a whole; and they stand apart from, rather than amidst, what ought to be an actively pro-business civil service.