Saying bye-bye to bureaucracy
By P. Lal

IN the wake of the Industrial Revolution some 300 years ago, the bureaucracy came out as a dominant mode of human organisation. It proved to be an effective tool of management in business organisations, in factories and industrial empires. In the government sector too, it showed its efficacy and bared its power to deliver goods, meet dead-lines and conform to rules.

According to Max Weber, the political thinker and social scientist who first defined bureaucracy and prophesied its triumph, three of the important characteristics of bureaucracy were permanence, hierarchy and a division of labour. A bureaucrat, would have a sort of a life-time relationship with the employer who, too, would find it immensely difficult to jettison him from his organisation, again on account of the operation of bureaucratic rules and archaic labour laws. Long association also bred loyalty. Termination of links with the organisation meant loss of means of livelihood. The bureaucrat was thus immobile, and deeply concerned with his economic security. He had to at all costs keep his job. For that, he willingly subordinated his own convictions to those of the organisation. His skills and knowledge remained static and prevented him from changing jobs.

A bureaucrat worked in a pyramidal hierarchy. Varying degrees of power clung to varying hierarchies. Decision-making was the prerogative of the top. The lower a man in the hierarchy, the lower was his self-esteem. He did not interact laterally. Rules forbade him from doing so. Thus, if the supply of paper ran out with a clerk, he would notify his supervisor-assistant who, in turn, would inform the section officer or the superintendent. The latter would place requisition with the stores-officer who would order the stationery-clerk to supply the paper. The former clerk who needed the paper would not deal with the supplier-clerk on a one-to-one basis.

Hierarchical power also helped the individual to be held in line. He looked within the organisation for rewards, and was meted out punishments when he did not conform. He soon learnt that it paid to conform. He thus became conditioned to subservience.

The organisation man also understood his defined role in the set-up, the work which he was required to do as notified by the rules, regulations and the orders. He was not to venture into anybody else’s domain and do somebody else’s job, even if he could do it better. He was faced by relatively routine problems and sure enough, sought routine answers. Unorthodoxy, creativity, enterprise and experimentation, were not his cup of tea, for they interfered with the predictability required by the organisation of its constituents.

The bureaucratic system worked well when organisations were static, challenges small, expectations low, knowledge limited and information confined to local areas. Turnover of her individual’s relations with people, institutions and ideas was also quite manageable. However, with the advent of the age of information technology some three decades back when computers came of age, knowledge burst upon the planet globally. What happens in one corner of the world now becomes known instantly in another. Internet has provided access to the common man, to information earlier available to specialists and professionals. High speed decisions are required to be taken by men and organisations. Expectations have risen, mobility has increased and globe-trotting business executives are taking breakfast in Singapore and lunch in London or Amsterdam.

In the advanced nations of the West, (notably in the USA) the bureaucratic structure is breaking down and is being supplanted by new systems for which no names have yet been coined. But the trends are unmistakable. The writing is clear on the wall. Bureaucracy is not for the future. Or, put differently bureaucracy has no future.

What is happening in the West would doubtless affect our country, for the social and economic forces now no longer operate locally. Their global effect is all-pervasive. Even if we shut our doors, as we are wont to the hurricane of change would lash at us and do its job. It is only a question of time, two decades at the most, less if forces of globalization prove stronger.

A professional now no longer wants to serve an organisation for his lifetime. His commitment is more to his profession and to the job in hand than to the organisation in which he finds himself for the time being. Likewise, he has a more enduring relationship with fellow professionals in other organisations. He is sure of his competence and keeps himself abreast of the latest in his field. He likes to switch jobs from one organisation to another and then to the next, not to better his economic prospects, but to satisfy his quest for the new.

Organisations are also changing. They are being restructured more frequently than before. Mergers and "de-mergers" of large industrial groups further contribute to lay-offs and re-distribution of the work-force. The trend is not yet so obvious in India but in the United States and Europe, this is happening at an ever increasing pace. In the former, according to the statistics published sometime back, over a three-year period, 66 of the 100 largest industrial companies reported major organisational shake-ups.

These developments have dealt a severe blow to one of the most important features of the bureaucracy — the individual’s permanent relationship with the organisation. However, more important than these, is another inthing in management — the task-force management — which is being increasingly employed all over the world and which is striking at the very roots of the bureaucracy.

As the tasks get increasingly specialised and short-term problems need quick and specific solutions, teams are assembled to tackle them. After the job is over, these are disbanded or de-assembled. Human components thereof are either laid off or re-assigned. Thus, the task-force team is temporary by design. And, we have a disposable or a transient man-force, the organisational equivalent of the throw-away or disposable plates and spoons.

Taking recourse to task-force management, also known as project management, is being increasingly taken by industrial groups, business houses, universities, medical institutions and even by government agencies and departments.

Thus, in a Research and Development Organisation, for example, a team of scientists would be hired and put on a specific problem for a specified period. After the job is over, members of the team would disperse, each perhaps to a different institution. In a construction company, a team of engineers and architects would be put to build a dam or a building, and would move on, after the work is finished.

The idea of assembling a group to work for the solution of a specific problem and then dismantling it when the job is over is not new. What is, however, striking is the increasing frequency with which organisations are now resorting to it.

Hierarchies are also collapsing. The reasons are plain and simple. The delay in making decisions costs money. In certain situations, it may even endanger life and property of a large segment of the population, or the territorial integrity of a country. Decisions in such cases require flow of information faster than before. Also, accelerated pace of life gives rise to many novel and unexpected problems, which require an ever increasing amount of information for their resolution.

Vertical hierarchies, typical of bureaucracy, cannot cope with such demands. The vertical chain of command is, therefore, being increasingly by-passed.

As the governance and management functions require more and more of in-puts from specialists — systems analysts, computer programmers, engineering specialists, operation researchers — the importance of the latter increases and their advice and opinion cannot be brushed aside by the top management. Thus, they acquire a new decision-making function.

Says Professor William H. Read of the Graduate School of Business at McGill University, USA. "More and more of specialists do not fit neatly together into a chain-of-command system and cannot wait for their expert advice to be approved at a higher level". They assume the role of decision-maker, they may well consult the ground level worker but would merely inform the top-executive who nods and accepts as the system benefits the organisation.

In such a situation, therefore, "man in a slot" performing routine tasks in pursuance to orders from above would give way to a "man in command of decision-making responsibility", working in an organisation built upon highly transient human relationships, where mostly temporary groups of men would perform their assigned tasks and then move on.

The three pillars of bureaucracy being thus no more, it would crash. Its demise was even predicted by Warren Bennis, a social psychologist and professor of industrial management. Said he, "While various proponents of ‘good human relations’ have been fighting bureaucracy on humanistic grounds and for Christian values, bureaucracy seems most likely to founder on its inability to adapt to rapid change". Further that, "in the next 25 to 50 years, we will all participate in the end of bureaucracy". That was said in 1965. The fifty-year period would end in 2015. Meanwhile, signs of bureaucracy cracking up are eminently evident not only in the industrialised West but in this country, too.