A Post-Bureaucratic Age?

Journal of Organizational Change …, 2006

Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2006

Page 1. 1 IS A POST-BUREAUCRATIC AGE POSSIBLE?1 Brendan McSweeney, School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London According to an extensive and growing literature we are in the twilight of bureaucracy. ...

2002

Once fully established, bureaucracy is among those social structures which are the hardest to destroy...As an instrument of rationally organizing authority relations, bureaucracy was and is a power instrument of the first order for one who controls the bureaucratic apparatus...Where administration has been completely bureaucratized, the resulting system of domination is practically indestructible" (Weber, 1978, p. 987).

Comparative Social Research, 2018

Despite criticism of inefficiencies and unlimited growth, bureaucracies still fill crucial positions in modern societies. This volume examines ‘varieties in bureaucracies’ across Europe, with a specific focus on the Nordic region.

Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2012

In this article AU :2 , we focus on the stabilizing functions of public bureaux and examine some of the consequences attendant upon attempts to make them less hierarchical and more 'flexible'. In so doing, we seek to evidence the ways in which what are represented as anachronistic practices in the machinery of government may actually provide political life with particular required 'constituting' qualities. While such practices have been negatively coded by reformers as 'conservative', we hope to show that their very conservatism may serve positive political purposes, not the least of which is in the constitution of what we call 'responsible' (as opposed to simply 'responsive') government. Through a critical interrogation of certain key tropes of contemporary programmes of modernization and reform, we indicate how these programmes are blind to the critical role of bureaucracy in setting the standards that enable governmental institutions to act in a flexible and responsible way.

Public Administration, 2012

Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2006

Purpose -Modern bureaucracies are under reconstruction, bureaucracy being no longer "modern"; they are becoming "post" bureaucratic. Defining the post-bureaucratic organization as a hybrid form provides insight into the intrinsic difficulties involved in the refurbishment of large complex organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine these difficulties empirically. Design/methodology/approach -The paper describes the case of an Australian public sector agency, subject to "corporatization" -a metamorphosis from a strictly public sector outlook to one that was imputedly more commercial. It focuses on the transition from personnel management to strategic HRM in the HR function. Findings -A series of difficulties affected these changes: difficulties in inventing a new identity; differences in perception of that identity; organizational philosophy towards strategic HRM; unsuitability of extent networks; and identity conflicts. Two factors emerge as the core explanation for the difficulties encountered: the "stickiness of identity" and the difficulties associated with network development. Originality/value -The paper outlines the difficulties experienced in the putative "refurbishment" of a large public sector agency as it made its way to "corporatization".

Organization, 2004

This article views the bureaucratic form of organization as both an agent and an expression of key modern social innovations that are most clearly manifested in the non-inclusive terms by which individuals are involved in organizations. Modern human involvement in organizations epitomizes and institutionally embeds the crucial yet often overlooked cultural orientation of modernity whereby humans undertake action along well-specified and delimited paths thanks to their capacity to isolate and suspend other personal or social considerations. The organizational involvement of humans qua role agents rather than qua persons helps unleash formal organizing from being tied to the indolence of the human body and the languish process of personal or psychological reorientation. Thanks to the loosening of these ties, the bureaucratic organization is rendered capable to address the shifting contingencies underlying modern life by reshuffling and reassembling the roles and role patterns by which it is made. The historically unique adaptive capacity of bureaucracy remains though hidden behind the ubiquitous presence of routines and standard operating procedures-requirements for the standardization of roles-that are mistakenly exchanged for the essence of the bureaucratic form. The reigning myth today is that the evils of society can all be understood as evils of impersonality, alienation, and coldness. The sum of these three is an ideology of intimacy…[that] transmutes political categories into psychological categories.

Economy and Society, 2006

This article explores the nature of public sector organisational values in the context of wider debates about the shift from bureaucracy to post-bureaucracy. Preference for post-bureaucracy is a characteristic of the discourse of new public management, which has been influential in the public sectors of advanced economies. The article focuses on organisational values, which are ingrained attitudes and beliefs that underlie organisational structures. It might be expected that public sector organisations would reflect post-bureaucratic values in response to changes in dominant management and organisational discourses as well as the external environment. The research reported here does not confirm initial expectations that public sector organisations have become post-bureaucratic. In this regard, the article discusses the possibility that public sector organisations have evolved from one form of bureaucracy based on political controls and values, to a form of bureaucracy associated with market controls and values.