The Psychological Drivers of Bureaucracy: Protecting the Societal Goals of an Organization

Abstract

This chapter addresses the psychological enablers of bureaucracy and ways to protect bureaucrats and society from its adverse effects. All organizations benefit from formalization, but a bureaucracy is defined by the dominance of coercive formalization. Since bureaucrats are not bureaucratic among friends, one might ask what changes someone at work into a bureaucrat and why do bureaucrats and bureaucratic organizations exhibit their characteristic behaviors?

The pattern of behavior arises from fundamental psychology and in particular (1) our capacity for habitual behavior, (2) the difference between intelligence as manifestation of the coping mode of cognition and understanding as manifestation of the pervasive optimization mode, and (3) the phenomenon of authoritarianism as the need for external authority through a lack of understanding of one’s living environment. The combination of these phenomena leads to a formal definition, the “Bureaucratic Dynamic,” in which the prevalence of coercive formalization scales with “institutional ignorance” (as measure of how well workers understand the consequence of their own (in)actions, both within the organization as well on the wider society) and “worker cost of failure.”

Modern organizational theory has become progressively more aware of the inefficiencies and dangers of bureaucracy. The framework developed in this paper can be applied to protect society, organizations, and workers from the adverse effects of bureaucracy. Yet while non-bureaucratic organizations can produce excellence, they also rely on it and are therefore somewhat fragile. Improved protective measures can be developed using the framework developed in this chapter.

Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible—Javier Pascual Salcedo

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.—Aldous Huxley

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers’ enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.—Simone Weil

Appendix

Some core properties of the bureaucratic syndrome (authoritarian dominated) and the non-bureaucratic syndrome (libertarian dominated organizations).

Topic	Bureaucratic syndrome	Non-bureaucratic syndrome
Key properties
Organizational goals	Societal goals of the organization are only adhered in name, but neither understood nor clearly implemented	Development of a broadly shared vision about the societal reason d’être of the organization and the way to realize it
Overall strategy	Stimulating sameness and oneness through standardization and obedience	Continual skilled improvisation on the basis of a shared vision and well-chosen procedures
Competence	Ignoring, discouraging, and demoralizing competent “subordinates.” Deskilling	Relying on and fostering all proven and budding competencies in the organization
Autonomy	Subordinate autonomy is not an option. Obedience is more important than competence	Autonomy and competence development of subordinates expected.
Content	Complete disregard of content while favoring form	Content is leading, form a means
Organizational development	Structures and procedures adapt to the lowest competence level	Everyone is expected to learn and grow towards autonomous roles in organization
Main conflicts
Stability versus development	Stability and other forms of high predictability leading. This defines the organization	The workers in the organization are constantly developing their skills in order to improve all aspects of the societal role of the organization (i.e., quality and efficiency)
Form versus optimization	Obsessed with form and formalisms. Centralized optimization of standardized and narrowly defined responsibilities	Actively eliciting creative and decentralized optimization of organizational goals. Disregard of form when counter-productive
Standardization versus diversity	Obsession with standardization and curtailing diversity, at the cost of quality if quality entails diversity	Concerned with the overall optimization of all work processes in context, of which both standardization and increasing diversity are options
Error versus learning	Obsessed with preventing errors and mistakes. The organization redefines itself to produce what it can, not what it should; “race to the bottom”	Error and correction after error part of continual creative optimization of work processes
Short versus long term	Exclusively short-term (form) oriented, neither care for nor understanding of mid of long term goals. However, what is short- or mid-terms depends on the role in the organization	Optimization, by all workers. on all time-scales and all dimensions of success
Structural properties
Role of hierarchy	Hierarchy formalized and inflexible, based on assumed (but never fully checked) competence of superiors	Hierarchy task dependent, and therefore flexible and competence-based
Perception of authorities	Authorities never fundamentally questioned	Incompetent authorities not accepted, but coached or dismissed
Locus of control	Formation of stable authoritarian cliques, who take control over the institutional change processes to prevent further complexity	Loosely and varyingly linked libertarians at control positions.
Measures of success	Performance measures redefined to what is delivered	Performance measure based on what should be delivered (given reason d’être)
Accountability	Suppression of all forms of accountability at the higher levels and prevention of errors and retribution in case of error at the lower levels	Accountability part of normal institutional learning and competence building
Emotions
Overall role	Rationality and “objectivity” leading. Emotions treated as irrelevant source of variation, to be suppressed	Central role of positive emotions (compassion, enthusiasm, interest) as key motivators; prominent negative emotions indicative of organizational failure
Emotion of workers	Motivating emotion negative: activities guided by the fear of losing control or being shamed publically	Motivating emotion positive: activities aimed at realizing shared benefits including personal development
Emotions of coworkers	Utter disregard of the feelings and emotional wellbeing of coworkers	Strong focus on the creation of optimal working condition in which coworkers feel optimally motivated to give their best