BNET Business Dictionary
Business Definition for: Bureaucracy
- an organization structure with a rigid hierarchy of personnel, regulated by set rules and procedures. Max Weber believed that a bureaucracy was technically the most efficient form of organization, one structured around official functions that are bound by rules, each function having its own specified competence. The functions are structured into offices, which are organized into a hierarchy that follows technical rules and norms. Managers in a bureaucracy possess a rational-legal type of authority derived from the office they hold. Bureaucracies have been criticized for eradicating inspiration and creativity in favor of impersonality and the mundaneness and regularity of corporate life. This was best described in William H. Whyte's The Organization Man, published in 1956, in which the individual was taken over by the bureaucratic machine in the name of efficiency. A more recent and humorous interpretation of life in a bureaucracy has been depicted by Scott Adams in The Dilbert Principle (1996). The term bureaucracy has gradually become a pejorative synonym for excessive and time-consuming paperwork and administration. Bureaucracies fell subject to delayering and downsizing from the 1980s onward, as the flatter organization became the target structure to ensure swifter market response and organizational flexibility.
Wiktionary Definition for: Bureaucracy
- #Structure and regulations in place to control activity. Usually in large organizations and government operations. While attempting to control activities frequently adds cost with no improvement and is usually circumvented.
Additional Resources
- Despair Inc.â„¢: Battle Bureaucracy with Fake "Crises" and Caffeine
- Despair Inc.â„¢: Battle Bureaucracy with Fake "Crises" and CaffeineUnbelievable!Is this a joke!? Is this guy serious!? I feel like I just watched a spoof on uTube! The things that he says in this thing is outrageous. Yeah, let's just pump our slave workers with caffeine, force them to burn themselves...
- Discussion threads 2007-12-11
- Chrysler Buries PR in the Corporate Bureaucracy
- Chrysler Buries PR in the Corporate BureaucracyChrsyler Back To The Stone AgeIt's amazing that an American Company of the size of Chrysler would be making this kind of blunder. Thiis is definitely a throwback to the stone age for the Company. Of all functions, HR perhaps beaten only by Finance...
- Discussion threads 2007-12-14
- To: corporate managers, re: bureaucracy; don't send memos!
- To: Corporate Managers Re: Bureaucracy DON'T SEND MEMOS! Moaning about bureaucracy is a time-honored management prerogative. Now, however, bureaucracy is beyond moaning about; it is a block to survival. The campaign against bureaucracy must become a priority...
- Research articles 1987-11-01
- Pakistani bureaucracy: crisis of governance and prospects of reform
- This paper is divided into three parts. The first part provides an overview of literature on how the role and assessment of bureaucracy in the Third World in general and Pakistan in particular has undergone change. The second part examines the changing socioeconomic profile and corresponding attitudinal changes if any,...
- Research articles 1999-12-22
- Secretary Rumsfeld launches battle against bureaucracy.
- M2 PRESSWIRE-11 September 2001-US DOD: Secretary Rumsfeld launches battle against bureaucracy C1994-2001 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD RDATE:10092001 Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld launched a battle against Pentagon bureaucracy today in a speech opening the 2001 Acquisition and Logistics...
- Research articles 2001-09-11
- Whose bureaucracy is this, anyway? Congress, the President and public administration. (The 1993 John Gaus Lecture)
- The American Constitution states that executive power is vested in the president while it authorizes Congress to create and finance the executive agencies that the president needs. This two-fold approach creates an ambiguity as to who wields power over the bureaucracy. Over the years, presidents generally sought efficiency while Congress...
- Research articles 1993-12-01
- Environmental Protection Agency: Structuring Motivation in a Green Bureaucracy, The
- The Environmental Protection Agency: Structuring Motivation in a Green Bureaucracy. By Robert McMahon. Brighton, U.K., and Portland, Ore.: Sussex Academic Press, 2006. xiii + 219 pages. Bibliography, index. Cloth $69.50 In his book titled The Environmental Protection Agency: Structuring Motivation in a Green Bureaucracy, Robert McMahon explores the difference between...
- Research articles 2006-10-01
- Reagan's Terrible Swift Sword: An Insider's Story of Abuse and Reform Within the Federal Bureaucracy
- Appointed by Ronald Reagan to cut the federal payroll and to reform the federal bereaucracy, Donald Devine was successful enough to be called "Reagan's terrible swift sword"--hence the title of his book--in a Washington Post profile (Reagan's Terrible Swift Sword: An Insider's Story of Abuse and Reform withn the Federal...
- Research articles 1992-03-02
- Q: does IRS restructuring need a flat tax more than a consumption tax? Yes: a flat tax will close loopholes for the rich, reduce IRS bureaucracy and encourage savings
- Yes: A flat tax will close loopholes for the rich, reduce IRS bureaucracy and encourage savings. Any taxpayer who has struggled with tax returns or encountered the wrath of the IRS knows that the current tax code is complex and unfair, and it has given rise to a...
- Research articles 1997-11-03
- Chrysler Buries PR in the Corporate Bureaucracy
- Chrysler's top spokesperson resigned this week, and going forward, the PR department will report to the head of HR. Does this make sense to you? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Chrysler was recently acquired by Cerberus, a private equity firm...
- Blog posts 2007-12-13
- Reengineering the Bureaucracy: Issues and Problems
- Reorganizing the bureaucracy has been in the agenda of every administration since the 1940s. While it has been called by various names - streamlining, reorganization or reengineering, the overarching reason for the reform is to reduce the wage bill, which has crowded out resources for vital social services. However, data...
- White papers 2005-04-01
- Building a bigger bureaucracy: what the Department of Homeland Security won't do
- Since the announcement that a massive Department of Homeland Security DHS would be created by combining 22 agencies and 179,000 employees, one has to be dismayed by the lack of conversation on the most basic question, "Why do we feel that we need to create an enormous bureaucracy to meet...
- Research articles 2003-03-22
- New CEO of Ericsson to fight bureaucracy - report
- NORDIC BUSINESS REPORT-9 April 2003-New CEO of Ericsson to fight bureaucracy - reportC1994-2003 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com
- Research articles 2003-04-09
- Carrier Wades Through Politics, Bureaucracy In Tribal Quest.(Company Business and Marketing)
- WASHINGTON--Tribal lands in the United States are sovereign, but for one wireless carrier trying to expand further into the underserved regions, politics and a deep bureaucracy imbue the whole process. On the bureaucratic side, carrier Smith Bagley Inc. has been forced ...
- Research articles 2000-05-01
- Regulation/bureaucracy -- Brazil starring Monty Python
- BRAZIL Monty Python's Terry Gilliam meets 1984 in this relentless satire of government bureaucracy swamped by information overload. One man's attempt to correct a record-keeping mistake pits him against the government's "central services" agency. The cast--including Ian Holm, and Robert DeNiro as a renegade repair man--is forced to swim through...
- Research articles 1994-10-01
- Fed up with bureaucracy?
- Last spring, Representatives Buck McKeon of California and Patsy Mink of Hawaii announced an initiative aimed at something the higher education community considers long overdue-streamlining the bureaucracy that burdens postsecondary education. Called Upping the Effectiveness of Our Federal Student Aid Programs (Fed. Up), the project is designed to identify and...
- Research articles 2001-10-01
- Three weeks on, politics, bureaucracy and fatigue hit tsunami aid effort
- MEULABOH, Indonesia AFP — Three weeks after one of the worst natural disasters in memory, survivors of the Asian tsunamis grappled with bureaucracy and politicking as the world's attention turns elsewhere. Thousands more bloated corpses pulled from the rubble took the death toll from the December 26 catastrophe to...
- Research articles 2005-01-16
- Three weeks on, politics and bureaucracy hit tsunami aid effort
- MEULABOH, Indonesia AFP — Three weeks after one of the worst natural disasters in global memory, some survivors of the Asian tsunamis were still grappling with bureaucracy and politicking amid a flurry of high-level visits to the region. Touring tsunami-devastated areas of Sri Lanka, US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul...
- Research articles 2005-01-17
- Education bureaucracy needs radical changes
- THE top-to-bottom review of state government commissioned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took a shot at California's Byzantine education bureaucracy. But the recommendations the performance review panel gave the governor were far too timid. Rather than scrap a collection of entities and relationships that have been building on...
- Research articles 2004-08-19
- Persisting bird flu poses huge challenge for Vietnam's bureaucracy
- HANOI AFP — A persisting bird flu epidemic in Vietnam poses a scientific challenge but also tests the country's bureaucracy, which has so far proven incapable of dealing with the seriousness of the disease, analysts say. Apart from the need for research on vaccines and the surveillance mechanism necessary...
- Research articles 2005-04-03
