Bureaucracies, Bureaucrats and Technology

Lee, R.M. (1980). Bureaucracies, Bureaucrats and Technology. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-80-186

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Abstract

The term bureaucracy is laden with negative connotations. One thinks of large, rigidified organizations with baroque, ritualized procedures incapable of adapting to changing needs and conditions in the environment. In mentioning the term bureaucracy one usually also speaks of its means of perpetuation: the professional bureaucrat. These are usually cast as unimaginative, plodding individuals socialized into the rule system of the bureaucracy to the point where the rules themselves, and not the purposes behind the rules, become the reason and guides of their employ. In recent years, another force has appeared which threatens to spread, the phenomenon of bureaucracy even further; namely the implementation of these bureaucratic rules and procedures in the form of computer-based administrative systems.

The purpose of this paper is to review in somewhat more depth the nature and interaction of these three forces: the bureaucratic organization itself; the bureaucrats that populate such organizations; and the special impact of information technology on their operation.

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