reinventing hierarchy and bureaucracy – from the bureau to ... · bureaucracy has had a chequered...
TRANSCRIPT
Reinventing Hierarchy and Bureaucracy – from theBureau to Network OrganizationsThe End of Bureaucracy?Stewart R. Clegg
Article information:To cite this document: Stewart R. Clegg. "The End of Bureaucracy?" In ReinventingHierarchy and Bureaucracy – from the Bureau to Network Organizations. Publishedonline: 10 Mar 2015; 59-84.Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X(2012)0000035005
Downloaded on: 17 July 2015, At: 07:43 (PT)References: this document contains references to 46 other documents.To copy this document: [email protected] fulltext of this document has been downloaded 1028 times since NaN*
Users who downloaded this article also downloaded:Rocky J. Dwyer, (2005),"Formal organizations in contemporary society: The relevanceof historical perspectives", Management Decision, Vol. 43 Iss 9 pp. 1232-1248 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00251740510626290Jeffery D. Houghton, (2010),"Does Max Weber's notion of authority still hold in thetwenty-first century?", Journal of Management History, Vol. 16 Iss 4 pp. 449-453 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17511341011073933Nell Tabor Hartley, (2006),"Management history: an umbrella model",Journal of Management History, Vol. 12 Iss 3 pp. 278-292 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17511340610670188
Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided byemerald-srm:520322 []
For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then pleaseuse our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose whichpublication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visitwww.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society.The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 booksand book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online productsand additional customer resources and services.
Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partnerof the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and theLOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
*Related content and download information correct attime of download.
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
THE END OF BUREAUCRACY?
Stewart R. Clegg
ABSTRACT
Bureaucracy is under attack and has been for some time, specially thesepast 30 years. This chapter will outline the specific qualities ofbureaucracy, the challenges to it that different critics have posed andthe possible futures of bureaucracy that are being imagined. In the1980s, as a key part of an extremely liberal and influential critique ofbureaucracy, new imaginings of how to organize corporations andpublic sector organizations began to emerge. By the late 1990s thesehad morphed into a view of the network or hybrid organization as theway of the future. The chapter will suggest that the global future ofbureaucracy is not as simple as some of these criticisms suggest whenthey see it left behind in the emergence of innovative new forms.Instead, it is suggested, there is a spatial disaggregation of organiza-tions occurring that heralds some unsettling new futures of organiza-tions emerging.
Keywords: Bureaucracy; Weber; Aston School; critics of bureaucracy;projects; networks
Reinventing Hierarchy and Bureaucracy – from the Bureau to Network Organizations
Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 35, 59–84
Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X(2012)0000035005
59
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
INTRODUCTION
Bureaucracy has had a chequered career in social science since its formu-lation as a concept by Max Weber in the early years of the twentieth centuryand the subsequent translation of his works in the post-war era. It has beendeveloped as a central plank of one of the most influential large-scaleempirically comparative research projects of modern social science, theAston studies; it has been subject to vitriolic attack by contemporary pro-ponents of the new public management and of entrepreneurial private sectormanagement; it has waxed and latterly waned as the central policy device ofmodern government, and it has been declared, if not dying, as fading beforethe onslaught of networks, digitalization, project management, outsourcingand supply chains. The chapter reviews the career of the concept andconsiders its future prognosis.
THE PAST OF BUREAUCRACY
Bureaucracy has long been seen as a cornerstone of the advanced industrialsocieties, and even as constitutive of modernity itself. Yet, one of the moststriking features of contemporary debate is that this hitherto dominantform has been dismissed as outmoded by commentators of virtually allpersuasions. This was not always the case.
Bureaucracy has a long and distinguished history, not least because of itscentral place in Max Weber’s understanding of modernity (Weber, 1978).The founding father of the sociology of organizations, Max Weber, whosework on organizations was translated into English from the late 1940s, withhis national and liberal concerns with the foundation of the German state,had naturally attended to the pivotal role that Prussian civil and militarybureaucracy had played in that state’s founding. For Weber, bureaucracywas neither a novel nor even a distinctively European phenomenon;nonetheless, Germany’s rapid development after 1871 owed much to itsmodern rational–legal form. For Weber it often seemed that the opposite ofbureaucracy was dilettantism. What characterized bureaucracy for Weberwas the social embeddedness of different value systems, and his account ofbureaucracy centred not just on formal rules but also on the idea that theethics of office implied a form of practical wisdom that, in Richard Sennett’s(2006) terms, functioned as a gift for organizing time.
Weber had a precise understanding of bureaucracy. Members of abureaucratic organization are expected to obey its rules as general principles
STEWART R. CLEGG60
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
that can be applied to particular cases and which apply to those exercisingauthority as much as those who must obey the rules. People do not obey therules because of traditional deference or submission to charismatic authority;they donot obey the person but the office holder.Members of the organization‘bracket’ the personal characteristics of the office holder and respond purelyto the demands of office.Whether you like the office holder or not is supposedto be unimportant. Police officers may be disagreeable personally, but theyhold an office that enables them to do what they do, within the letter of thelaw. The rule of law is the technical basis of their ability to take appropriateaction, in terms of the definitions laid down in law. Weber’s view ofbureaucracy to see it was as an instrument or tool of unrivalled technicalsuperiority. He wrote that ‘[p]recision, speed and unambiguity, knowledge ofthe files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction offriction, and of material and personal cost. These are raised to the optimumpoint in the strictly bureaucratic administration’ (Weber, 1948, p. 214).Weber(Clegg, 1990) defined bureaucracy as having 15 key dimensions:
1. Power belongs to an office and is not a function of the office holder.2. Power relations within the organization structure have a distinct authority
configuration, specified by the rules of the organization.3. Because powers are exercised in terms of the rules of office rather than
the person, organizational action is impersonal.4. Disciplinary systems of knowledge, either professionally or organization-
ally formulated, rather than idiosyncratic beliefs, frame organizationalaction.
5. The rules tend to be formally codified.6. These rules are contained in files of written documents that, based
on precedent and abstract rule, serve as standards for organizationalaction.
7. These rules specify tasks that are specific, distinct, and done by differentformal categories of personnel who specialize in these tasks and not inothers. These official tasks would be organized on a continuous regulatedbasis in order to ensure the smooth flow of work between the discon-tinuous elements in its organization. Thus, there is a tendency towardsspecialization.
8. There is a sharp boundary between bureaucratic action and particular-istic action by personnel, defining the limits of legitimacy.
9. The functional separation of tasks means that personnel must haveauthority and sanction commensurate with their duties. Thus, organiza-tions exhibit an authority structure.
The End of Bureaucracy? 61
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
10. Because tasks are functionally separated, and because the personnelcharged with each function have precisely delegated powers, there is atendency towards hierarchy.
11. The delegation of powers is expressed in terms of duties, rights,obligations and responsibilities. Thus, organizational relationships tendto have a precise contract basis.
12. Qualities required for organization positions are increasingly measuredin terms of formal credentials.
13. Because different positions in the hierarchy of offices require differentcredentials for admission, there is a career structure in which promotionis possible either by seniority or by merit of service by individuals withsimilar credentials.
14. Different positions in the hierarchy are differentially paid and otherwisestratified.
15. Communication, coordination and control are centralized in theorganization.
Weber’s work proved decisive for organization analysis. Characteristicsabstracted from Weber and other writers were subsequently taken to beconstitutive categorically shared features that bestowed family resemblanceson all organizations. By the 1950s, when scholars in the United Statesstarted to think about the nature of organizations, Weber was one of severalwidely used sources. At this time, when organizations first began to bestudied systematically, the world of organizations and the word of bureau-cracy were seen as largely coterminous; for instance, the first widely usedcourse text for students of organizations dating from 1952 and still thestandard reader when I entered university in the mid-1960s was RobertMerton and colleagues (1952) Reader in Bureaucracy. In the early 1960s theidea of organizations as bureaucracy was developed and focused on a large-scale comparative analysis of organizations by the researchers of the AstonSchool, who narrowed Weber’s sophisticated account of bureaucracy to astructural and essentialist theory of organizations (Pugh & Hickson, 1976).The empirical world that confronted the Aston School was one in which, in arather empiricist manner, they saw only bureaucracy and its variants asprevalent. All organizations were seen as variants on a theme: organization-ally, their research suggested that there could be more or less bureaucracy, theextent of which was seen to depend on one key contingency: the size ofthe organization. As organizations grew in size they became inescapablymore centralized, formalized, routinized, standardized, configured as bureau-cracies. Size was the independent variable while the dependent variable wasthe configuration of the organization, with the relation between the two being
STEWART R. CLEGG62
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
conceived in essentially contingent terms. The increasing size of anorganization, they hypothesized, was a social fact that could be dealt withonly in one way – by increasing bureaucratization. Indeed, this was, the AstonSchool suggested, a law that held universally.
In the work of the Aston School (Pugh & Hickson, 1976) the ideal typeelements abstracted by Weber with respect to German nineteenth centurybureaucracy become the definitive features of a functionalist conception oforganization structure as an essential form, determined in its particularpatterns by specific local contingencies, such as size or technology. Concep-tualized as a set of stable structural arrangements emerging from a com-posite of variables that denote bureaucratization, the essence of bureaucracybecame frozen as organization structure.
If all efficient bureaucracies were alike, every inefficient bureaucracywould be inefficient in its own way, one might say. The measure of size thatthe Aston School used was a personnel measure, the number of employmentcontracts issued. The Aston School’s insistence on the fundamental socialfact that bureaucracy was the necessary mode of organizing any kind oflarge-scale formal organization, irrespective of whether it was a public or aprivate sector organization, was an empirical finding of the 1960s that cameto be increasingly challenged as the century unfolded.
The accuracy of the Aston School’s projection of bureaucracy in relation toBritish industry is, implies Ackroyd (2010), questionable. One of their sampleorganizations was the Austin motor works in Birmingham. Empirically,fragmentation and disaggregation were long-standing and endemic featuresof British industrial organizations such as Austin. Austin was later allied withMorris, Rover and a number of other firms in British Leyland, which,although doubtless a large-scale industrial organization, lacked the centra-lized direction and unitary structures suggested by classic models ofbureaucracy. Similar to many other UK firms, Leyland appeared to be largewhen considered in aggregate but such firms were frequently comprised ofrelatively small subsidiary companies governed through a very substantialdegree of operating autonomy on the part of local management. Theinstitutional landscape of British firms was based on radically ‘disaggregated’structures, derived not from functional requirements but from the values,policies and strategic objectives of UK managerial elites (Ackroyd, 2010). Inassuming the universality of variants of bureaucracy, Pugh and Hickson(1976) and their colleagues assumed a great deal about the sample frame thatwas empirically questionable.
The conception of bureaucracy that solidified in organization theory wasin some respects quite dissimilar to the central ideas of Weber. It was alsosignificantly different from the idea of bureaucracy that came to dominate
The End of Bureaucracy? 63
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
political discourse in the post-war era. In the post-war era bureaucracyprovided a novel way of orchestrating the individual–organization relation-ship through an organization form premised on the ethical values ofuniversalism and meritocracy (Kallinikos, 2006, p. 135), a conception thatfound its utmost expression in the articulation of Beveridge’s (1944) ideas ofa welfare state. In all these early formulations, in Weber (1978), in Aston(Pugh & Hickson, 1976), and in Beveridge (1944), the idea of bureaucracywas both an aspiration concerning how the world should be conceived asbeing organized as well as a model of concrete practice. Bureaucracy wassoon to shift from an aspiration to a term of abuse.
CHALLENGES TO BUREAUCRACY
While Weber (1978) provided a strongly liberal and positive account ofbureaucracy as a guardian of liberal rights, as a frame that ensured thetreatment of each case on its merits according to rational–legal rule ratherthan the prejudices of officialdom, outside the realms of scholarship thispositive view of bureaucracy was contested. Northcote Parkinson (1955), aBritish civil servant, published a short and humorous essay in The Economist,in which he stated Parkinson’s Law: that in a bureaucracy ‘Work expands soas to fill the time available for its completion’. For many people who were notscholars, this small essay framed a large part of their judgments aboutbureaucracy. While Parkinson’s essay was very much of its class and time,other more radical critiques of bureaucracy began to circulate in the later1960s from Beijing to Paris; perhaps more surprisingly, by the 1980s, critiqueof bureaucracy had become a dominant trope of right-wing thought.
Unlikely resonances occur as ideas travel (Czarniawska-Joerges & Sevon,2005). The Cultural Revolution, as an idea, began in Beijing and travelledwidely through China, but it did not end there. It had resonances inEuropean universities in the 1960s. Surprisingly, it also had resonances inAmerican and other business schools from the 1980s onwards. The last placeone might expect to find enthusiasm for Cultural Revolution is manage-ment. However, there are many echoes. Contemporary organizations andthe lives of many people in them have been drastically changed as a result ofthe revolutionary rhetoric of management consultants such as Tom Petersand Gary Hamel. I shall concentrate on Peters here.
Tom Peters’ (Peters & Waterman, 1982) revolutionary rhetoric emergedfrom his experience as a consultant forMcKinsey, based in the San Franciscooffice and at Stanford University. In order to give shape to the struggle
STEWART R. CLEGG64
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
against bureaucracy, Peters identifies it with a specific reactionary figure andethos. The figure is Robert McNamara and the ethos is that of the HarvardBusiness School. Peters is on frequent record as saying that his whole lifehas been a struggle against the legacy of Robert McNamara, which he sawas having become the essential de facto wisdom of the Harvard BusinessSchool, setting the pace for large American enterprise in the post-war era.1
Against what Peters regarded as the terrible mixture of McNamara,Harvard and Drucker, Peters (Peters & Waterman, 1982) taught eight greatlessons. It is worth noting that these eight lessons were remarkably parallel toMao Tse-tung (1966) thought. Tom Peters battles against reactionaries andrevisionists by introducing eight ‘new’ phenomena against eight that are ‘old’.Peters would not normally be thought of as a Maoist but the libertariansynergies are significant. The eight great lessons of Peters and Waterman(1982) function as an archetype almost as powerful – and indexical – asMao’sthought (see Table 1).
Table 1. Mao’s and Peter’s Eight Great Lessons.
Peters Mao
A bias for action-active decision-making –
‘getting on with it’
The idea of permanent revolution
Close to the customer – learning from the
people served by the business
Learning from the masses
Autonomy and entrepreneurship – fostering
innovation and nurturing ‘champions’
Champion workers fuelled by Mao Zedong
thought to exceed production and harvest
targets
Productivity through people – treating rank
and file employees as a source of quality
Learning from the masses
Hands-on, value-driven – management
philosophy that guides everyday practice –
management showing its commitment
Value driven rationality – the overwhelming
superiority of Mao Zedong thought applied
through Red Guards leading the masses
Stick to the knitting – stay with the business
that you know
The emphasis on communal principles as the
basis of organization
Simple form, lean staff – some of the best
companies have minimal HQ staff
The attack against bureaucracy – Mao’s 20
lessons on bureaucracy in The Little Red Book;
as Mao said in criticism of the Soviet model,
‘Why does heavy industry need so many rules
and regulations?’
Simultaneous loose-tight properties –
autonomy in shop-floor activities plus
centralized values
Chairman Mao thought provides the central
values coupled with the autonomy of the local,
communal level Red Guards to implement that
thought
The End of Bureaucracy? 65
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
Unlike the Maoists, Peters did not employ physical violence but implicitlyhe did violence to the lives and careers of those whose jobs were subject tothe whims and strategies of corporate revolutionaries. Extensive layoffswere the tangible outcome of the cultural revolutionary message as preachedby management consultants such as Peters. Layoffs hollowed out com-panies, middle-class jobs and future dreams. With fewer employees manyorganizations lost resilience; often they lost knowledge they did not knowthey had. Costs were cut rather than innovations fostered. Stein (2001)argues that terms such as ‘de-bureaucratization’ conceal not only the cruelnature of many current organizational practices but also naturalize politicaldecisions as if they were the logic of institutions such as markets, economicnecessity and shareholder value. Given the present climate of cuts in therecessionary nations that have emerged from the global financial crisis, weare likely to see more this rhetoric occurring, justified as ever, in the name ofefficiency and effectiveness.
Peters’ rhetoric was aimed at the private sector of corporate America butpublic sector theorists, responding in part to the emergence of a new politicsin the 1980s, soon picked up similar ideas. In the 1980s, under the impact ofThatcherism and Reganism, public sectors became seen not as the bulwarksof a civil society but as an encroachment on market provision. Thenaturalization of markets was greatly aided from the 1980s onwards by thereforms that the Thatcher government initiated and the idea of the TINAtendency – that There Is No Alternative.
Some commentators on the left see the present cuts to the welfare state inthe United Kingdom as a continuation of these earlier policies under coverof the crisis bestowed on us by the bankers. There are other continuities withpast policies, however. One result of the years of Labour government thatended this year was that there was a disembedding of public institutions andpre-existing norms and machinery of the government. As Paul du Gay(2010) observes, the protocols of bureaucracy have been increasinglyusurped and due process surrendered to an emphasis on ‘delivery’ andtransformational leadership, in continuity with many of the emphases of theThatcher years. One significant casualty of this disembedding of publicinstitutions was the ‘disinterested’ public servant, whose vocation was theimpartial, impersonal and efficient execution of official duties, independentof any political or moral ‘enthusiasms’. The development of new publicmanagement (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992), drawing on elements of ‘publicchoice’ theory, the managerialist cult of ‘excellence’ and a belief that marketsor quasi-markets should supplant ‘bureaucracy’ in public administration
STEWART R. CLEGG66
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
that has been predominant in recent reform of public sector organization,has hastened the decline of the Weberian ethos further.
While today’s senior civil servants remain subordinate to the responsibleminister, responsibility for the implementation of policy has become muchmore diffuse as relations betweenministers and civil servants have increasinglybeen mediated by the actions of ad hoc committees, task forces and specialadvisors. Moreover, as evidence from the habits of the Blair governmentsuggests, when sofa meetings replaced cabinet meetings, the formal recordingof meetings and respect for bureaucratic protocol diminished markedly.Jonathan Powell (Prime Minister Blair’s Chief of Staff) notes that of anaverage 17 meetings a day at Downing St. only 3 were minuted. The spirit offormalistic impersonality and the ethic of responsibility gave way to‘responsive’ and ‘enthusiastic’ political appointees.
More especially, policy has become increasingly monitored through theachievement of targets and key performance indicators, simulacra that endup being managed more than that which they are presumed to represent.Many of these simulacra are deemed necessary because market reforms havecreated quasi-markets rather than markets proper. Thus, the marketreforms of the 1980s and 1990s were quickly followed by a proliferationof new regulatory controls, and recent years, in the wake of the globalfinancial crisis, have seen the return of the state as a central actor in theeconomic management of the advanced industrial societies. The social andcultural purposes of many public sector bodies have been expanded ratherthan contracted, precisely because societies have become more complex anddiverse and markets have failed.
IMAGINED FUTURES: THE END OF BUREAUCRACY?
From the late 1980s the critique of bureaucracy, which to this point hadbeen largely political, became embroiled in arguments about modernism andpost-modernism, a theme to which the present author contributed (Clegg,1990). Bureaucracy was seen as an essentially modern form of organization,based on differentiation and domination, which begged the question of whata post-modern organization might be. The fin de siecle provoked a complexdiscourse of endings in social science, premised in large part on the beliefthat the age of high modernity had given way to ‘late’ or ‘post’-modernity.
The sense that the advanced industrial societies had reached a historic‘ending’ was germane to Claus Offe’s thesis of ‘disorganized capitalism’
The End of Bureaucracy? 67
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
(Offe, 1985), and the master theme of discontinuity was reflected in the workof those who rejected the rationalist ‘control’ model of organization (Clegg,1990; Cooper & Burrell, 1988) and the rise of ‘the new public management’(Greenwood, Pyper, & Wilson, 2002; Hood, 1998). The increasing powerand ubiquity of information technology added to the growing sense thatbureaucracy was being undermined in the emergent ‘network society’(Castells, 2000). Manuel Castells’ work on the ‘network society’ and the‘network enterprise’ (Castells, 1996, 2000), from one of the world’s fore-most commentators on the social, economic and cultural consequences ofthe information revolution, provoked intense debate on the nature of thetransformations now under way in organizations.
Castells (1996) may be seen as the latest in a long line of technologicaldeterminists and fetishists for whom digital technology has become the altarfor a new secular religion of change. As secularized religions go, that of thedigital devotees is fairly apocalyptic and a little messianic. There was a past,irrevocably broken with through the advances of digital technologies, andthere is a bright sunlit future, a veritable New Jerusalem, just out of reachbut visible through the miasma of the imperfect here-and-now. Only moredevotion to newer and better digital technologies, an utter commitmentrequiring more dollars and tithes on the altar plate, can clear the presentmiasma. There are many disciples from the IT and consulting worldspreading this message. The New Jerusalem will be a robust, almost Quaker,Protestantism not a Catholicism, with its attendant hierarchy and bureau-cracy. The post-bureaucratic individual, lost in the lonely existence of theirsoul, digital virtuosi all, will communicate in a wholly unmediated and directway. No priests; no bureaucrats; just believers and their digital devices, theonly artefacts the new religious virtuosi need.
Themajor advantage of digital technologies for business and organizationsis their virtual possibilities for disaggregating existing designs. Increasingly,organizations are able to segment activities that are critical to their compe-titive advantage and to specialize those that are not elsewhere. The non-corefunctions, such as back-office accounting, telemarketing or programming,are outsourced to parts of the world where the wage is one-third to one-tenththe cost in the home market, dramatically reducing operating costs andincreasing competitiveness.
The ‘network enterprise’ thesis emphasizes collaboration, partnership andhigh-trust working relationships whilst neglecting the key issue of power. Thepolitical reality of corporate life is one in which a diverse range of hybridizedcontrol regimes allow power elites to devolve operational autonomy whilstretaining a streamlined and effective centralized strategic control over
STEWART R. CLEGG68
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
productive organizations. Separate, but related market, hierarchy, andnetworked modes of control are determined not by the abstract logic of anew informational paradigm, but by the ‘dynamics of domination’ that inherein the process of network formation. In these networks, the digital world ismoving fundamentally towards concentration, standardization and control.The digital revolution has led to an even tighter centralizing tendencyand dismantlement of the institutional pasts and organizational memoriesof a great many organizations.
The virtual organization, apart from its digital accoutrements, suggestsKallinikos (2006, p. 109), entailed the near-total dominance of marketvalues. Ideological project of marketization that stressed the virtues ofprivate sector models over those of the public sector was pursued vigorouslyunder cover of digital innovation; thus, in parallel with the technologicalchanges were a series of institutional changes from the early 1980s onwards,captured by the term the ‘shareholder value’ movement, which stressedthe primacy of returns to capital investment as the only mark of firmeffectiveness. One consequence was the development of impatient capital:from the 1965 average of US pension funds holding stocks for an average46 months, by 2000 this had declined to 3.8 months. The stock price came tooverrule other more traditional measures such as price/equity ratios and themost highly praised company in the United States became Enron – becauseits performance was so unbelievably good.Of course itwas unbelievable, aswenow know. During the 1980s and 1990s organizational change of previouslysolid business organizations proceeded apace such that the willingness todisrupt one’s own organization became seen as a positive market signal.
Whilst large complex organizations have become increasingly heterodox,what has emerged is not the ‘end’ of bureaucracy, but a more complex anddifferentiated set of post-bureaucratic (or neo-bureaucratic) possibilitiesthat have had the effect of undermining some distinctions previouslydeemed incontestable (e.g. market vs. hierarchy; centralization vs. decen-tralization; public vs. private sectors). Whilst there can be little doubt thatreal and significant change is under way, changes in the bureaucratic formcannot be characterized as a straightforward trajectory of historical decline,still less a necessary one.
The major difference from the bureaucratic organizations imagined byAston in their measures is the changing nature of contract relations.Contemporary contracts are less likely to relate a multiplicity of people to asingle organization and more likely to relate a multiplicity of organization ina complex value-chain. Activities that can be performed anywhere, such ascall centre work, or processing of basic accounting data, interpretation of
The End of Bureaucracy? 69
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
radiological data or the preparation of a manuscript for publication, can bedigitized and located in a much cheaper labour market. Wherever materialor immaterial matter to be worked on can be easily moved around theworld, outsourcing of labour can cheapen its production. Such work can beorganized globally so that it flows 24/7.
Outsourcing also occurs in organizations such as hospitals, sometimesoverlapping with medical tourism where wealthy people fly to countrieswhere health care costs are much lower for surgical procedures, or in themilitary (where, for instance, much of the work of the war in Iraq has beenoutsourced to companies such as Haliburton). The costs of activities arelessened by arranging for some elements of them to be done more cheaply byspecialists in these activities, either elsewhere where costs are much cheaperor in a less-regulated segment of the market than that controlled by specificprofessions or states.
POST-BUREAUCRACY
Power in bureaucracy was largely determined through career opportunities.An inability to fit in, to comport in the appropriate way or to simply blendinto the habitus was a sufficient reason, on many occasions, for a person’scareer opportunities to be questioned and perhaps restricted (McKinlay,2002). Even when, in many ways, the person might appear singularlyinappropriate as an organization member, if there was good fit in terms ofhabitus, their future was usually relatively unquestioned (see Kim Philby’s,1968 memorable account of Guy Burgess’ everyday life).
The question of power remains at the core of post-bureaucracy but it is nolonger habitus and career that structure it. What is distinctive about thecontemporary post-bureaucracy is that the major mechanism of the careerhas undergone a substantial change. In the bureaucracy, the career wasan enclosed phenomenon, classically contained within one organization.Post-bureaucracy differs significantly on this dimension. Careers becomeincreasingly discontinuous and project-based in post-bureaucratic organiza-tions. Increasingly they will be liquid careers, flowing like mercury, beforereconsolidating in a new plane of activity. The project – whether innovation,R&D, engineering, marketing or whatever – becomes the major vehicle fororganization networks and alliances and developmental tasks within specificorganizations, although, increasingly, these will involve team members fromother organizations. As discussed elsewhere, this shift signifies a need fornew competencies of emotional intelligence (Clegg & Baumeler, 2010) that
STEWART R. CLEGG70
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
are able to handle the issues of ‘swift trust’ (Meyerson, Weick, & Kramer,1996).
The person in post-bureaucracy is not the epitome of the trusting and thetrusted subjects as suggested sometimes. Lack of trust is the very reason whypost-bureaucracies’ organizational arrangements are somewhat authoritar-ian. As a hybrid, post-bureaucracies build bridges between domination andself-determination (Romme, 1999), in ‘the paradoxes and tensions that arisefrom enacting oppositional forms’ (Ashcraft, 2001, p. 131). The pressure toperform is intense, and business leaders implement underlying authoritarianmechanisms largely constituted by tight time-reporting schedules formilestones and progress in specific projects.
Taking together the characteristics of networks, alliances, collaborations,virtual relations, multiple stakeholders, liquid careers, financialization,increasing work in projects and an intensifying rhetoric of entrepreneuri-alism and the importance of swift trust, it is not surprising that the figure ofthe project manager should have emerged as the point at which many of thecontradictions of post-bureaucracy are concentrated. In such hybrid andoften unclear situations conflict and confrontation are inevitable, somanaging emotions becomes a crucial skill.
These project-based models gained impetus from the 1990s as new centuryUS business models were reinvented in terms of ‘financialization’ of valueand ‘flexibility’. The former meant the ascendancy of models of shareholdervalue and ‘incentivisation’ of executives through stock options and otherfinancial packaging; the latter meant the network model that emerged fromCalifornia’s Silicon Valley from the 1980s onwards, seen by many commen-tators as indicative of future strategy. If one compares it with the CorporateAmericanmodel, whose heyday flourished in the 1950s and the 1960s, there is aquite sharp contrast (see Table 2).
The core of the Silicon Valley model is its project-basis that depends forits success on a ready pool of known, mobile and highly technologicallyqualified labour that can learn and move fast. The project form is alsoencouraged by the roles that venture capital plays: risks could be spread andrealized with relatively low transaction costs. The strategy is one of backingideas that will disrupt, reconfigure or create markets, forming projects todevelop them, and rapidly realizing gains or moving on quickly. Theseproject-based knowledge networks seem to be quite specific to certainsectors of business activity, such as highly knowledge specific and highlytrained technological expertise in areas such as information technology,biotechnology and nanotechnology. Moreover, they rely on a specific kindof infrastructure of defence contracting, large pharmaceuticals or a
The End of Bureaucracy? 71
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
Table 2. Contemporary US project versus Corporate Models.
Silicon Valley Model Corporate American Model
Highly flexible small-firm start-ups able to
rapidly reconfigure the nature and
organization of core activities and skills
Large size
Limited diversification Diversified divisions
Rapid commercialization and speed to market
new products and services, exploiting niches
and discontinuous innovations, with
strategic competition against existing
capabilities – including those of the
innovating organization
The mass production of standardized goods,
mass marketed and distributed to largely
homogenous mass markets
Shallow hierarchies An extensive hierarchy of managerial
controls
Extensive network linkages externally Systematic centralized managerial
coordination and control of the
disaggregated elements of development,
production and marketing
Knowledge workers and creative industry
employees controlled by culture rather more
than structure, with the culture being
focused on ‘can-do’ and ‘change’, not
unionized
A largely proletarianized and unskilled
workforce, unionized
Highly responsive to rapid changes in markets
and technologies, with highly skilled
knowledge workers and knowledge networks
focused on particular projects that can be
rapidly developed and terminated
High development of mechanization limiting
flexibility and favouring long production
cycles
Value delivered through start-up focus so
that those who are in the ground floor can
get rich quick with initial public offerings
(IPOS) that deliver equity ownership,
with informed venture capital supporting
start-ups
Value delivered through a strong focus on
cost reductions through capital intensity,
(downwardly) flexible labour markets, and
outsourcing to suppliers who could be
beaten down on price
Workers who move fluidly from project to
project rather than building organizational
careers, who are able to operate in highly
dynamic and uncertain environments
Lifetime employment in the model of the
‘organization man’
Clustering of related industries and firms in
ecological proximity to one another, and
to major technology-based universities,
creating a ‘hot-house’ talent pool
Extensive supply chains and sub-
contracting, with contracting largely
based on ‘at-length’ hard money contracts
STEWART R. CLEGG72
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
sophisticated health-based industry ready to buy-in innovation, and research-based universities with either private, state or a mix of funding, to supplythe knowledge-based personnel. Hence, behind the new forms reside theold bureaucracies.
The post-bureaucratic hybrid creates a ‘loosened community’(Courpasson & Dany, 2003), in which relationships and groupings aretemporarily maintained, individuals’ destinies are more and more separated,and the institutionalised dialogues and interactions are operated throughsometimes uncertain and barely legible networks of control, of influenceand of friendship. Consequentially, there is far less opportunity for theformation of stable views of the person in situ. These tendencies can only beexacerbated by the collapse of the hyperflexible financial markets of the2000s in 2008–2009 and the reality of cuts, even as they are assuaged bythe rhetoric of entrepreneurialism.
In the hybrid political structures of post-bureaucracy, elites remainsharply differentiated from sub-elite members and the former distinguishedfrom the necessary minimal similarity of the latter population of knowledgeworkers, experts and professionals, with regard to values, demographiccharacteristics and types of aspirations. Post-bureaucratic organizationscultivate a culture of ambition and a method of circulation. As memberscycle through projects they strive for visibility for their achievements inmanaging the projects as innovative, creative and exciting but also as timely,on budget and dependable. Like Weber’s Protestants, they strive to showthat the state of leadership grace moves through them sufficiently to join theranks of the elect, or at least those elites who are currently elect.
Corporate leaders have a direct interest in shaping, grooming andeducating selected aspirants, constituting what might be called subjects withan appropriate comportment, etiquette and equipage, able to qualify asdisciplined elites who will have a career outside of the projects. Mostly, thesecharacteristics pertain to an ability to accept and work creatively with anexisting order and existing rules; thus, they go far beyond merely technicaland professional expertise. They are the new way of re-invigorating habituswhen organizational borders have become porous, careers liquid andprofessional identities contingent.
The world of projects directly influences elite power structures in con-temporary post-bureaucratic organizations for three major reasons. First,they differentiate between those likely to be able to aspire further andthose who will not. The latter will end up either specializing in projectmanagement or going back to their initial working environment. Projectmanagement therefore helps differentiate between pre-selected individuals.
The End of Bureaucracy? 73
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
Second, different kinds of top management decisions (such as resourceallocation, project termination, team leaders’ demotion/promotion) canshape the chances of those in the project roles. Third, project managementboth creates more complex elite strata to traverse and enables a route of socialmobility within the organization. Project management is premised on a highdegree of transparency of project performance. Creating a powerful networkof shared values regarding career and ambition also facilitates the activationand embodiment of common reference points that structure the attentionand commitment of project members. Such reference points include mile-stones, key performance indicators, profit-margins, annual performance,respect for deadlines, respect for budgets, deference to which is progressivelyinternalized as incontrovertible business and moral values, essential for thehealthy survival of the entire organization (Courpasson&Dany, 2003). Thesereference points strengthen the regime through weaving the social fabric ofallegiance for would-be leaders.
Bureaucracy is both being superseded by post-bureaucracy and not beingsuperseded by post-bureaucracy. While this may sound nonsensical it alldepends on whether one focuses on re-composition or decomposition. It isclear that in the new electronic panopticons of the call centre, often globallylocated on the margins of modernity, bureaucracy is alive and well in aparticularly centralized, standardized and routinized form. Here thebureaucratization of the shop floor has proceeded into the heart of thewhite collar, pink blouse and colourful indigenously attired digital factory,which we may refer to as the decomposition of bureaucracy. If, on the otherhand, one investigates the upper echelons of leaner and more entrepreneu-rially oriented organizations, then one might draw the conclusion that theywere, indeed, re-composed bureaucracies that had managed to turn the ironcage for many into golden chains for the few.
The theme of decomposition is redolent of extended supply chains,outsourcing, the virtual organization and call centres. The theme ofre-composition takes us into the world of new, but as yet ill-defined organi-zational forms. The shift to outsourcing and organizational disaggregationmay coexist with some very familiar politics of surveillance and control.Re-composed (or ‘refurbished’) bureaucracies feature a range of more inno-vative developments in which the project leader has superseded the centralfigure of the bureaucrat. The ‘politics of the project’ have become the arenain which the strategic interests of aspirant elites are played out.
It is in the land between that there lies the road less travelled. Here, aboveand outside the routines embedded in the digital factory are the innovation,construction, design and research projects through which young Turks
STEWART R. CLEGG74
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
circulate. Doubtless, many ‘post-bureaucratic’ elements and processes areretained as controls for those excluded from the internal career options suchthat a life in projects involves ‘the refurbishment of bureaucratic proceduresrather than their renunciation’ (Clegg & Courpasson, 2004, p. 542). Inno-vations such as ‘networks’ and ‘project management’ are, as Hugh Willmott(2010) suggests, extensions of bureaucratic modes of organization – but notfor all. In the words of Matthew (22:14, King James Version of The Bible),‘Many Are Called, But Few Are Chosen’. The zone in-between, the arenasthrough which individual recruits cycle and circulate, managing their careersas they manage their projects, becomes a panoptical space for the elites towatch and for the project managers to be aware that they are undersurveillance, never knowing whether this is the project that will lift them outof the in-between zone and get them over the threshold into the promisedland.
Since the post-Second World War era the idea of the organization wasassumed to be an equivalent theoretical and empirical object. (On thesedistinctions, see Bachelard, 1984 and Althusser, 1968.) Recently, thedialectics of re-composition and decomposition have sundered the presumedunity. The nature of reality is constantly in the process of becoming ratherthan merely being in a transcendent manner (Kornberger, Clegg, & Rhodes,2005). In order to understand the processes of organizing fully today, weneed to realize that organizing capabilities of focal organizations are oftenvested in the chains, networks, alliances and collaborations that they areparty to. These are traversed by a multiplicity of projects and panopticaldevices, organized around creativity and innovation on the one hand andstrictly defined key performance indicators on the other. The organization ismuch less than the sum of the relations and spaces it traverses. The centralityof relations of employment – the proxy for organization size in the oldaccounts – has been superseded by the centrality of relations of production,distribution, service provision and supply. Organization – conceived on theold model of bureaucracy – is decomposing into global supply chains,alliances, networks and projects and re-composing into core entities focusedon design and strategy, whosemembers are bound by beneficial golden chains.
BEING IN BUREAUCRACY AND BEYOND
We all learn to make sense of the situations we are in. However, just like afast-flowing river, these situations are often changing in imperceptible ways.Before too long we find that the ways we have been using to make sense
The End of Bureaucracy? 75
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
leave us out of our depth! Managers can find that what they took forgranted no longer helps them survive as well as it did in the past. Well-established direct techniques of the past, such as management by rules andinstructions, by oversight and surveillance, by command and control, on thepart of hierarchical managers, are changing. Today, what they seem to bechanging to is use of more indirect techniques, such as managing in andthrough vision, mission, culture and values, leading to a lot less imperativeinstruction and command and a great deal of more dialogue and discussion.When everyone can be connected to anyone everywhere, when the valuebasis of employees is shifting radically and when the organization laces itselfover the globe and employs many of the diverse peoples that the globe has tooffer, the old certainties are harder to hold on to. Organizations are, in somerespects, sedimented structures (Clegg, 1981): where there is sedimentation,we can expect to find fossils of an earlier era. Indeed, many organizations arelike this with different generations occupying different slots in the hierarchy,often holding on to different paradigms for organization and managementthat are, in part, generationally imprinted as devices for sensemaking. Aparadigm comprises a coherent set of assumptions, concepts, values andpractices that constitute a way of viewing reality for the community thatshares them, especially in an intellectual discipline, in which the views arewidely shared as a result of training and induction into the methods of thediscipline. However, all such paradigmatic formation is generationallyimprinted: that which one generation finds normal may not be accepted byanother; those post-war boomers trained in organizations of the Aston era,for instance, will seem needless bureaucracy to people brought up on socialmedia as a major mode of communication. Different generations areimprinted with different paradigms for organizing and managing thatconstitute different forms of sensemaking.
We can capture the implications of the generational and sedimentationalhypothesis by considering a classic of the boomer generation, TheOrganization Man (Whyte, 1960).
The organization man: If the term is vague, it is because I can think of no other way to
describe the people I am talking about. They are not the workers, nor are they the white-
collar people in the usual, clerk sense of the word. These people only work for The
Organization. The ones I am talking about belong to it as well. They are the ones of our
middle class who have left home, spiritually as well as physically, to take the vows of
organization life, and it is they who are the mind and soul of our great self-perpetuating
institutions. Only a few are top managers or ever will be. In a system that makes such
hazy terminology as ‘junior executive’ psychologically necessary, they are of the staff as
much as the line, and most are destined to live poised in a middle area that still awaits a
satisfactory euphemism. But they are the dominant members of our society nonetheless.
STEWART R. CLEGG76
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
They have not joined together into a recognizable elite – our country does not stand still
long enough for that – but it is from their ranks that are coming most of the first and
second echelons of our leadership, and it is their values which will set the American
temper.
The corporation man is the most conspicuous example, but he is only one, for the
collectivization so visible in the corporation has affected almost every field of work.
Blood brother to the business trainee off to join Du Pont is the seminary student who
will end up in the church hierarchy, the doctor headed for the corporate clinic, the
physics Ph.D. in a government laboratory, the intellectual on the foundation-sponsored
team project, the engineering graduate in the huge drafting room at Lockheed, the young
apprentice in a Wall Street law factory.
They are all, as they so often put it, in the same boat. Listen to them talk to each other
over the front lawns of their suburbia and you cannot help but be struck by how well
they grasp the common denominators which bind them. Whatever the differences in
their organization ties, it is the common problems of collective work that dominate their
attentions, and when the Du Pont man talks to the research chemist or the chemist to the
army man, it is these problems that are uppermost. The word collective most of them
can’t bring themselves to use – except to describe foreign countries or organizations they
don’t work for – but they are keenly aware of how much more deeply beholden they are
to organization than were their elders. They are wry about it, to be sure; they talk of the
‘treadmill’, the ‘rat race’, of the inability to control one’s direction. But they have no
great sense of plight; between themselves and organization they believe they see an
ultimate harmony and, more than most elders recognize, they are building an ideology that
will vouchsafe this trust.
Traditionally, the organizations that housed the ‘organization man’ wereneither very responsive nor flexible because of their bureaucratic nature.They had tall hierarchical structures, relatively impermeable departmentalsilos and many rules. Such organizations offer little incentive for innovationand, typically, innovation was frowned on because precedents went againstthe rules. Such organizations could hardly be responsive – they were notdesigned to be.
The heyday of the bureaucratic organization man was populated by the‘boomer’ generation, who are now slowly moving out of the workforce, to bereplacedwith people drawn fromGenerationsX andY. The boomers were thelast generation that might reasonably have expected to create a career asorganizationmen (and a fewwomen, although therewas a pronounced genderbias towards men: for instance, although women, unlike their older sisters ormothers, were not obliged to cease employment upon marriage, many weremore focused on home and family than career as the norm).
Generation X, broadly defined, includes anyone born from 1961 to 1981.In the West, Generation X grew up with the Cold War as an ever-presentbackdrop. During their childhood they saw the dismantling of the post-warsettlement and the advent of neo-liberal economics (such as Thatcherism)
The End of Bureaucracy? 77
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
and the collapse of communism. They often grew up in single-parenthouseholds, without a single clear or guiding moral compass. They had tonegotiate the hard years of global industrial restructuring when they wereseeking their first jobs; they experienced economic depression in the 1980sand early 1990s, and saw the decline of traditional permanent job contractsoffering clear career structures. Instead of careers they were invited to acceptinsecure short-term contracts, unemployment or junk jobs in McDonaldizedorganizations, or get educated. Many of them ended up overeducatedand underemployed, with a deep sense of insecurity. Not expecting thatorganizations will show them much commitment, they would often offerlittle themselves.
For Generation Y, born in the late 1980s and 1990s, sometimes toprofessional boomer couples that had left childrearing later than previousgenerations or, as a result of boomer males mating with much youngerwomen, may be entering into reproduction the second or third time around,bureaucracy aversion is intensified. Generation Y are captured well in KeithGessen’s (2008) ‘slacker’ novel, All the sad young literary men, in which oneof the characters, Keith, now in his 20s, reflects that he has no idea what willbecome of him in the years ahead. His college career had beendisappointing. He had kept waiting for someone to tell him what he shoulddo, should be, what particular fate he was fated for. Unlike the organizationman of the 1960s, no one did, and there were no obvious openings in whichfate could be predetermined. Joining a bureaucracy was less of an option,both aspirationally and realistically, than had been the case for theorganization men. There weren’t so many any more: contracting out,outsourcing and increasing privatization in much of the world had renderedless of them whilst also making such bureaucracies less attractive.
Young people born as Generation Y are the first digital generation forwhom the computer, internet, mobile, ipods, DVDs and the Xbox were a partof what they took for granted growing up. If they needed an answer to aquestion, they found it themselves rather than patiently waiting for abureaucracy to provide it for them. While Generation X was shaped byde-industrialization in the West and the fall of communism globally,Generation Y developed into maturity during the War on Terror, grew upreadingHarry Potter, and has enjoyed relatively prosperous economic times,in part because of the success – for the West – of globalization. Theemployment of Generation Y members offers real challenges for managersseeking to motivate and gain commitment from employees. The Y generationwill be more cynical than its predecessors and less likely to accept rhetoricfrommanagement that is not backed up by actions. ForGenerationsX andY,
STEWART R. CLEGG78
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
according to Sennett (1998, p. 25), there is a predisposition towards highuncertainty and risk-taking as defining features of the challenges they wantfrom work because they do not expect commitment. In part this is becausethey do not expect anything solid or permanent: they have seen casinocapitalism at close quarters as brands they grew up with moved offshore orwere taken over, or radically changed by new ownership, and so tend todistrust prospects of long-term or predictable futures. Using traditionalbureaucratic management control and command devices to manage peoplewho desire to explore will not be appropriate. Instead, the emphasis will haveto be on creativity and innovation, pursued within the frame of a project-based life, for a global transnational, if lucky. The more innovative of theseorganizations will seek out employees who are capable of problem solvingrather than having to refer any problem, deviation or precedent to a higherauthority. Such people need to be trained and engaged in styles of managingand beingmanaged that reinforce empowerment, using far more positive thannegative approaches to power.
Managing will mean more developmental work oriented to renewingstaff’s specific skills and general competencies rather than seeing that theyfollow the rules, issuing imperative commands and generally exercisingauthority. Managing will mean negotiating the use and understanding of newtechnologies, contexts and capabilities, and facilitating the understanding ofthose who will be operating with the new tools and environments. AsSandberg and Targama (2007, p. 4) note, citing Orlikowski’s (1993)influential work on Japanese, European and US firms, many technologyimplementation projects fail because of what the employees do – or do not –understand. Changing technological paradigms means that managers mustbe able to make sense of the new technology for all those who will use it.
New technologies attach a premium to a flexible, timely approach tocustomer requirements. In order that such flexibility can exist in anorganization, it has to be premised on ways of managing employees thatallow them to be responsive to customer requirements in developing productsand services. Especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries, from the 1980sonwards, the extensive adoption of strategies of deregulation, privatizationand contracting out, often on the back of significant changes in technology,led to profound changes in the nature of not only private but also publicsector work.
The young project-based employees who are depicted by Ballard (2001) inhis dystopian novel of future organization life, Super Cannes, work intechnological environments subject to rapid and radical change. Contem-porary employees, liberated from bureaucratic rules, are expected to be
The End of Bureaucracy? 79
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
multi-tasking, innovative, mobile and venturesome, with the ability tocooperate with people of various backgrounds and cultures. They are auto-nomous, informed, spontaneous, creative and able to adapt to differentwork tasks. Additionally, they have a talent for communication and arecapable of relating to others. Moreover, ideal productive subjects are activein continuing education and enthusiastic. Because of rising job insecurity,they accumulate social capital and cultivate expanding contact networks,which help secure continuing employment in changing fields of work. Theyare capable of building and switching emotional investments in a mode ofswift trust as they move from project to project. New competencies andskills are constantly required (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2007, see also Sennett,1998). More likely than not these managers will be working globally, gainingexperience in the international division of corporate labour.
A giant multinational like Fuji or General Motors sets its own morality. The company
defines the rules that govern how you treat your spouse, where you educate your children,
the sensible limits to stock-market investment. The bank decides how big a mortgage you
canhandle, the right amount of health insurance to buy.There are nomoremoral decisions
than there are on a new superhighway.Unless you ownaFerrari, pressing the accelerator is
not amoral decision. Ford and Fiat andToyota have engineered a sensible response curve.
We can rely on their judgment, and that leaves us free to get on with the rest of our lives.
We’ve achieved real freedom, the freedom from morality.
Unconvinced by his case, I said: ‘It sounds like a ticket to 1984, this time by the scenic
route. I thought that organization man died out in the 1960s’.
He did, our worried friend in the grey-flannel suit. He was an early office-dwelling
hominid, corporate version of Dawn Man who assumed a sedentary posture in order to
survive. He was locked in a low-tech bureaucratic cave, little more than a human punch
card. Today’s professional men and women are self-motivated. The corporate pyramid is
a virtual hierarchy that endlessly reassembles itself around them. They enjoy enormous
mobility. While you’re mooning around here, Paul, they’re patenting another gene, or
designing the next generation of drugs that will cure cancer and double your life span.
(Ballard, 2001, pp. 95–96)
Enormous mobility provides many different metrics to measure (dis)-satisfaction in the project one is currently in. Experience in discontinuousprojects discontinuously prepares for a series of new beginnings whilesimultaneously creating anxieties about swift and painless endings if oneproject fails tomorph into another, as one contract expires and another fails tomaterialize (Bauman, 2005). For those whose being is now less in organizationand more in projects, the idea of being an organization man or woman nolonger makes much sense, although the idea of becoming one, caught ingolden chains of privilege, may well function as a desire. Organizations asshells of and for experience no longer persist in any comprehensibly stable
STEWART R. CLEGG80
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
way as given forms for any significant period of time for a world of workin projects; network relationships, premised on contracting and markets,erode stable bureaucracies in both public and private sectors.
CONCLUSION
It is clear that organizations still exist as empirical objects. However, theirstatus as theoretical objects has been transformed. The theoretical object oforganizations, crystallized in the 1950s and 1960s, froze some elements ofbecoming. It captured in a series of snap shots a moment in the becomingof an empirical object. It was the age of the organization man, of thecomplete complex organization. Today it is less the organization and morethe processes of organizing which comprise the salient theoretical objects,constituted as specific practices such as outsourcing and supply chainsrather than a specific concrete thing.
Does bureaucracy have a future? Yes, indubitably – but it is one that isvery different to that which Weber imagined and which subsequentlyBeveridge (1944) and Aston (Pugh & Hickson, 1976) developed in their ownways. Universalism and meritocracy, as suggested by Beveridge (1944), havenow joined bureaucracy almost as terms of abuse, abandoned in the name oftargets, selectivity and efficient markets. More specifically, to imagine that ascience of organizations, as suggested by Aston, could predict the degree ofbureaucracy of an organization on the basis of simple contingency of sizenow seems to have been nothing but a delusion that took some fleetingelements of modernity’s management for granted as ontological universals.
Bureaucracy, in its literal sense, characterized by work in a career, with apension, and steady progression, seems now to be a diminishing and eliteprivilege, with elites having exponentially expanded benefits: in US corporatefirms the returns to the topmanagerial echelons exceed those of the average bya factor of 400% (Chang, 2010), for instance. Doubtless, bureaucracy willcontinue to flourish in all large, complex and personnel-intensive organiza-tions – but the pressures to outsource, downsize and contract out will notlikely disappear, as increasing numbers of members manage their identity,as entrepreneurs of the self, severed from the core bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy, as a mode of being in organization, has for many given wayto a far more liberal and ontologically insecure state. Such ontologicalinsecurity makes the future more open than the endless repetition ofroutines and rules that characterized bureaucracy, but it also makes it muchmore a matter of personal responsibility. Under bureaucratic modes of
The End of Bureaucracy? 81
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
responsibility when the present fails to conform to past expectations of thefuture, responsibility can be attributed to system failure, requiring systemreform, even in so far as any rogue individualism may have flourished asdeviance within the ordered universe. The more entrepreneurial theenterprise the more individuals will be held personally responsible for thefailures of the situations in which they find themselves.
The ethos that Weber saw as so characteristic of modern rational–legalbureaucracy – an ethos of responsibility best served by the character of oneschooled in a vocation – is much less evident than it once was in the age ofpost-bureaucracy. If we consider Weber’s list of qualities of bureaucracyonce more, post-bureaucratic ideas have compromised the notions of office,impersonality, codified rules, precedents and files. Doubtless, authority stillremains, albeit on a very different basis from that grounded in career; inaddition, while there would still appear to be clear elements of specializa-tion, legitimacy, hierarchy, credentialism, stratification and centralization,the ensemble that was bureaucracy has been broken in both public andprivate sector organizations. The knot that tied them together was careerand it is this concept, more than any other, that post-bureaucracy hasdisplaced and replaced with the ontological insecurity of the market as thepre-eminent institution. For young people facing this insecurity at the startof their working lives today, the future of organizations offers them manyopportunities to be liquidly modern; whether such liquidity is a stable framefor identity construction is another matter. It will certainly make life moreinteresting than in the old style bureaucracy but not necessarily morerewarding or stimulating than the pursuit of a chosen career with aforeseeable future. Increasingly, perhaps, looking back to the recession thatproduced punk, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones (1977) seem to have nailed it:‘Career opportunities, the ones that never knock’.
NOTE
1. Source: http://www.businessballs.com/tompetersinsearchofexcellence.htm,accesses 02/08/2010
REFERENCES
Ackroyd, S. (2010). Post-bureaucratic manufacturing? The post-war organization of large
British firms. In S. R. Clegg, M. Harris & H. Hopfl (Eds.), Managing modernity: Beyond
bureaucracy? (pp. 178–203). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
STEWART R. CLEGG82
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
Althusser, L. (1968). For Marx. London: New Left Books.
Ashcraft, K. L. (2001). Organized dissonance: Feminist bureaucracy as hybrid form. Academy
of Management Journal, 44/6, 1301–1322.
Bachelard, G. (1984). The new scientific spirit. Boston, MA: Beacon.
Ballard, J. D. (2001). Super-cannes. New York, NY: Picador.
Bauman, Z. (2005). Liquid life. Cambridge: Polity press.
Beveridge, W. (1944). Full employment in a free society. London: Allen & Unwin.
Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, E. (2007). The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso.
Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. London: Blackwell.
Castells, M. (2000). The rise of network society (2nd ed.). London: Blackwell.
Chang, H.-J. (2010). 23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism. Harmondsworth,UK: Penguin.
Clegg, S. R. (1981). Organization and control. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26, 545–562.
Clegg, S. R. (1990). Modern organizations. Organization studies in the post modern world.
London: Sage.
Clegg, S. R., & Baumeler, C. (2010). Essai: From iron cages to liquid modernity in organization
analysis. Organization Studies, 31(12), 1–21.
Clegg, S. R., & Courpasson, D. (2004). Political hybrids: Tocquevillean views on project
organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 41(4), 525–547.
Cooper, R., & Burrell, G. (1988). Modernism, postmodernism and organizational analysis: An
introduction. Organization Studies, 9(1), 1–12.
Courpasson, D., & Dany, F. (2003). Indifference or obedience? Business firms as democratic
hybrids. Organization Studies, 24(8), 1231–1260.
Czarniawska-Joerges, B., & Sevon, G. (2005). Global ideas: How ideas, objects and practices
travel in a global economy. Malmo: Copenhagen Business School Press.
Du Gay, P. (2010). ‘Without regard to persons’: Problems of involvement and attachment in
‘post-bureaucratic’ public management. In S. R. Clegg, M. Harris & H. Hopfl (Eds.),
Managing modernity: Beyond bureaucracy? (pp. 11–29). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gessen, K. (2008). All the sad young literary men. New York, NY: Viking.
Greenwood, J., Pyper, R., & Wilson, D. (2002). New public administration in Britain. London:
Routledge.
Hood, C. (1998). The art of the state: Culture, rhetoric and public management. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Kallinikos, J. (2006). The consequences of information: Institutional implications of technological
change. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Kornberger, M., Clegg, S. R., & Rhodes, C. (2005). Learning/becoming/organizing.
Organization, 12(2), 147–167.
Matthew (22:14),The bible. Retrieved fromhttp://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Bible/Bible.html
McKinlay, A. M. (2002). ‘Dead selves’: The birth of the modern career. Organization, 4(9),
595–614.
Merton, R. K., Gray, A. P., Hockey, B., & Selvin, H. C. (eds.) (1952), Reader in bureaucracy.
Glencoe: Free Press.
Meyerson, D., Weick, K. E., & Kramer, R. M. (1996). Swift trust and temporary groups. In
R. M. Kramer & T. R. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and
research (pp. 166–195). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Offe, C. (1985). Disorganized capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
Orlikowski, W. (1993). Learning from notes: Organizational issues in groupware implementa-
tion. Information Society Journal, 9, 237–250.
The End of Bureaucracy? 83
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)
Osborne, D., & Gaebler, T. (1992). Reinventing government. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.
Parkinson, C. N. (1955) Parkinson’s law. The Economist, November 19. Retrieved from
http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/management/displaystory.cfm?story_id¼
14116121
Peters, T., & Waterman, R. H., Jr. (1982). In search of excellence. New York, NY: Warner.
Philby, K. (1968). My silent war. London: Macgibbon & Kee.
Pugh, D., & Hickson, D. J. (1976). Organizational structure in its context: The Aston programme
(Vol. 1). Westmead: Saxon House.
Romme, A. G. L. (1999). Domination, self-determination and circular organizing. Organization
Studies, 20/5, 801–831.
Sandberg, J., & Targama, A. (2007). Managing understanding in organizations. London: Sage.
Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the New
capitalism. New York, NY: Norton.
Sennett, R. (2006). The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Stein, H. F. (2001). Nothing personal, just business: A guided journey into organizational
darkness. Westport, CT: Quorum Books.
Strummer, J., & Jones, M. (1977). Career opportunities. The Clash, CBS Records.
Tse-Tung, M. (1966). Quotations from Mao Tse-tung. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.
Weber, M. (1948). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. Translated, edited and with an
introduction by H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. In R. Guenther &
C. Wittich (Eds.), Economy and Society: An Outline of interpretive Sociology. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Whyte, W. F. (1960). The organization man. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
Willmott, H. (2010). Back to the future: What does studying bureaucracy tell us? In S. R. Clegg,
M. Harris & H. Hopfl (Eds.), Managing modernity: Beyond bureaucracy? (pp. 259–296).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
STEWART R. CLEGG84
Dow
nloa
ded
by M
AN
AG
EM
EN
T C
OL
LE
GE
OF
SOU
TH
ER
N A
FRIC
A A
t 07:
43 1
7 Ju
ly 2
015
(PT
)