Bureaucracy

ACCORDING TO Dias and Vaughn (2006): Max Weber argued that bureaucracy was a rational way life is organized, is how government operates, and "essential to social progress" (p. 543). According to Weber, there is a strong central hierarchy that distributes jobs throughout the management chain and ensures that management structure is known to employees. Frederick Taylor promoted the importance of good management and outlined that bureaucracies needed "efficient managers to analyze, predict, and control behavior of employees in complex organizations." In a hierarchy then, jobs become specialized for their levels,and standards are created at each level. Bureaucracy then ensures specific roles for employees and establishes a form of measurement that allows management to evaluate employees, ensures that the chain of command is intact, and makes sure communication flows through channels. The success of the agency depends on the efficiency of the parts (544). Organizations that are successful have "explicit rules that control the behavior of front-line personnel, a hierarchical system of authority resulting in a chain of command, a system for delegation of authority, coupled with a proper span of control to ensure that procedures are consistently and absolutely followed, maintenance of employee expertise through continual in-service training, and a system of communication that specifies organizational roles and enumerates tasks and duties" (544). Scholars have researched against bureaucracies, but this form of organization still exists. Dias and Vaugh continue, "Despite the negative characteristics of bureaucratic organizations, bureaucracy remains the rule rather than the exception within criminal justice organizations. According to Johnston (1993, p. xvi), “the bureaucratic organizing model is the most common organizing model for private and public sector organizations throughout the world” (544), but a bureaucracy only works if the right elements are in place. They continue, "Organizations are created for specific reasons, which are expressed within their mission, goals, and objectives.The broadest orientation of organizational purpose is contained within its mission" (545). Further, "Clear and concise goals minimize the unknown and clarify procedures to enable agency coherence and unity of direction (Gajduschek, 2003). Bureaucratic organizations without managerial disorganization employ unity of direction, serving to control employee behavior by reducing uncertainty, creating stability, and employing unity of purpose (Deflem, 2000). Dysfunctional bureaucratic tendencies to dehumanize, alienate, and resist change (Paparozzi, 1999). Effective managers militate against the desire to maintain the status quo rather than move into uncharted waters, competing opinions to the organizational mission, and a preference for living a cloistered organizational life (Wilson, 1989)" (p. 546).

According to Ericson and Haggerty (1997), bureaucracy is a form of surveillance because it is based on abstract knowledge and risk management used for the benefit of institutions (p. 94).

"...burden of proof and responsibility has been dropped by managers, as team leaders and unit commanders, on to the shoulders of individual performers or "contracted out," outsourced" or "hived off" laterally and judged according to a seller-buyer pattern rather than a boss-subordinate relationship, the aim is to harness the totality of the subaltern personality and their whole waking time to the company's purposes" (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p. 59).

Bauman and Lyon's (2013) experience economy is a new twist on old principles of management (p. 71).

References:

Bauman, Z. & Lyon, D. (2013). Liquid surveillance. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Dias, Clarissa Freitas, and Michael S. Vaughn. "Bureaucracy, Managerial Disorganization, and Administrative Breakdown in Criminal Justice Agencies." Journal of Criminal Justice 34.5 (2006): 543-55. Print.

Ericson, R. V., & Haggerty, K.D. (1997). The Risk Society. In R.V. Ericson & K.D. Haggerty (Eds.) Policing the risk society (pp. 81-130). U of Toronto: Toronto.