Bureaucracy, we don't need no stinking bureaucracy

In an earlier blog, I identified the factors critical to a group reorganizing at a higher complexity level:

Environment – this really represents the resources available to the group:
o Are the existing resources able to support the move to increasing complexity?
o Will the environment be stable enough to support?

Population –
o Are there enough people, with the needed skills in the needed proportions, to support the next level of organization?
o Does the population see itself as having enough common interests (language, history, ethnicity, economic interests, common enemies) to organize in a larger context?

Leadership –
o Are there person/persons with the vision and charisma to organize the population around the idea of the next organizational stage?
o Does the leadership have the organizational skills to pull it off?

Cooperation/conflict –
o Is the culture of the group able to cooperate sufficiently to re-organize?

In writing my blog entry on the factors needed to move from a “tribal” level of organization to“chiefdom”, I realized that this may be the most difficult step an organization of human beings makes, in terms of moving to a higher level of complexity.

It appears, for a variety of epigenetic reasons, that the tribal level of organization is deeply ingrained in the human genome. Dunbar’s number (around 150 people), has been shown through several studies to have validity. Humans have problems personally relating to more than 150 people. This means that organizing around more people than this requires a communication system that connects groups of this size and permits them to work toward common goals.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number)

I believe this necessitates a bureaucracy to manage information, communication, commerce, economic data, rules and regulations, etc, etc.

Max Weber outlined the key characteristics of a bureaucracy:
1. specification of jobs with detailed rights, obligations, responsibilities, scope of authority
2. system of supervision and subordination
3. unity of command
4. extensive use of written documents
5. training in job requirements and skills
6. application of consistent and complete rules (company manual)
7. assign work and hire personnel based on competence and experience
These principles are inventions --- organizations did not always have them.
Today, we think of bureaucracies as inefficient and generally bad. In the Industrial Revolution, they were seen as marvelously efficient machines that reliably accomplished their goals. Over time, bureaucracies became enormously successful, easily outcompeting organizational forms such as family businesses and adhocracies. They also did much to introduce concepts of fairness and equality of opportunity into society, having a profound effect on the social structure of nations. (Borgatti, 2002)

All this has “duh” (as in – “ I knew that already”) all over it, but as OD practitioners, we don’t have the tools or understanding to address the fact that organizations face this developmental hurdle. How often do we identify instituting a bureaucracy as the solution to an organizational crisis? The ability of a growing organization to differentiate, specialize, and create a communication structure, with skilled individuals to manage these, is a critical factor in organization development.



Borgatti, Stephen P. ( 2002) http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/bureau.htm