Written on August 13, 2013, slightly revised here.
Bureaucracies create and sustain a moral perspective. “If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you, but the bureaucracy won’t,” quipped Admiral Hyman Rickover regarding the seeming senselessness of red tape.
Effective bureaucracies—vision-directed guidelines and processes, which should be the first purpose—are flywheels that reduce the vibration of an organization by tempering irregularity and providing consistency and rhythm. They are exceedingly rare. Unfortunately, bureaucracies diminish the focus on that first purpose and mission. Inevitably, they become twisted and live outside the watch like a wicked watchmaker. Any human organization aspiring to purpose and excellence via regularity of process alone cannot do so.
Max Weber, a German sociologist whose ideas flourished in the 1930s and ’40s, identified key principles of good government: 1) formal structure, 2) management by rules, 3) fixed division of labor, 4) equity-based treatment of employees and customers, 5) success determined by technical qualifications, 6) all knotted together by a propensity to enlarge. Number six, added by C. Northcott Parkinson as a criticism, became known as “Parkinson’s Law.” In a 1955 article in The Economist, Parkinson explains how contemporary bureaucracies in large organizations sustain and enhance themselves regardless of how they meet the first purpose, a challenging, gripping, thoughtful perspective worthy of reflection in the early 21st century. It could have been written yesterday.
Douglas J. Amy, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, argues that bureaucracy is government, further arguing that bureaucracy is good in a stunningly simplistic story called “Government Is Good.” He tries to break myths, such as bureaucracies are wasteful, government should be a business, bureaucracies cause government growth and bureaucracies provide poor service. Visit the Department of Motor Vehicles in New York or California to see how far Amy is out in left field. Although intricately woven, Amy and Weber’s “bureaucracies-are-good” or create “good” is still nonsense, whether caring for the sick, educating the young or selling nuts and bolts.
Robert Jackall’s “Moral Mazes: Bureaucracy and Managerial Work,” published in the Harvard Business Review in 1983, suggests managers create morality in an organization through day-to-day actions—habits. He said, “The bureaucratic ethic contrasts sharply with the original Protestant Ethic.” I do not think he meant Protestant as opposed to a Catholic work ethic, but rather the old-fashioned idea about the righteousness of hard work, the “morality” of it, and the personal responsibility in it as an exercise of free will. When ethics evaporate, organizations and individuals suffer immeasurably.
A friend of mine used to have a sign in his office which read, “Make order and cleanliness a habit.” The process becomes all, and arguing against fair processes is hard. However, a vital opportunity is a leadership driven by predictable behavior. If “Weber’s Web” takes over, rules govern, not people; a road to nowhere or possibly hell, paved with good intentions. A visionless path spawned by rationality and procedural perfection, guided by management processes rather than ideas and passion, is full of potholes.
The real work of any organization of two or more people, public or private, should be excellence through attaining a vision-guided mission. However, bureaucracies are sanitized from any guiding perspective, working under the assumption that because different moralities exist in pluralistic organizations, it is preferred that the organization have no perspective at all, moral or otherwise.
Teamwork and thoughtful mission-directed processes should not be confused with bureaucracy. Teamwork is essential, but bureaucracy is crippling. Fair processes are vital, but they do not choke fairness due to their seemingly autocratic tendencies. In National Review Online, Kevin Williamson argued that autocracy exists in bureaucracies upheld by rules established by committees. Worse yet, nobody, not even leadership, appears responsible, just good managers following democratically determined processes and rules. Maybe. Weber’s first law should be to make everyone accountable for nothing. Such organizations claim to embrace “Management Morality” as a means to equity and fairness, but it is not.
Managerial plebiscites are disingenuous and rudderless. Indeed, the best ideas frequently well up from the ground, not dribbling down from on-high. Bureaucracies bent on a rule-driven aversion to risk create listlessness. Organizational morality hates intelligence apart from the process. In reality, the morality of the bureaucracy is not wedded to the functional goal of excellence but to procedural machination elevated to a perverse art form of jots and tittles. The caprice of mindless obedience replaces initiative.
Willful compliance based on a commitment to cause beyond process is invaluable. Mindless conformity to anything is worthless and suffocating. Too many bureaucratic organizations operate by a morality that paralyzes human initiative rather than a commitment to high purpose and progress that provides for liberty and achievement.
Universities are too frequently bedeviled by the seemingly benevolent belief that procedural rationality creates quality. Sorry, it does not, will not. Bureaucracy birthed a moral (or maybe immoral) perspective, which should be checked at the front door because it devastates everything a university or any human organization should strive for.
Walter V. Wendler, President of West Texas A&M University. His weekly columns, with hyperlinks, are available at https://walterwendler.com/.
