What is a Bureaucracy?

Abstract

To take an interest in bureaucracy is not to look back at the past, but towards the future. The central hypothesis of this book is that the end of bureaucracies, as they will be defined in a few moments, is the number one hell to face in the transformation of companies and organizations in coming years. It is no secret: there is not one management textbook or analysis of world trends that is not keenly interested in the end of bureaucracies, regardless of the author’s point of view: “Today in the realm of organizations we see and suffer from cumbersome bureaucracies which, more than ever, are signs of the poor management of meaning.”¹ To which Waterman adds a more precise definition: “The problem is as follows: the bureaucracy, our most traditional form of organization, was created to manage the day-to-day problems of organizations: the sales department sells, manufacturing manufactures, and so on. So long as economic activity does not change too quickly, bureaucracies get along fairly well. But things are changing quickly”² So why has this disjointed, compartmentalized mode of functioning taken the upper hand over other forms of organization? Robert Reich explains it as follows, based on the American situation:

American bureaucratic companies were organized around the model of military bureaucracies for the efficient deployment of plans developed well in advance. It is perhaps not by chance that war veterans who entered the major American companies in the 1950s very naturally re-created at the centre of these companies the military model of a bureaucracy. They were set up along the lines of a military hierarchy, with chains of command, control methods, rank, divisions with division leaders, and procedures outlining the decision-making process. If you have a question, check the manual!³