bureaucracy

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When does bureaucracy become a problem in an organization? What can managers do to prevent bureaucratic problems from arising?

Bureaucratization is a state in which employees work increasingly by fixed routine rather than through the exercise of intelligent judgment. With bureaucracy, narrowness in thinking emerges. There is a proliferation of hard-and-fast rules and fixed procedures?wrongly thought to contribute to efficiency and quality control. With bureaucracy in place, the original goal of an organization fades into the background. Individuals within the organization begin building small bastions of power and devising ways of warding off any potential threats to their power. Change is usually interpreted as a threat.

Large bureaucracies generate a vast network of regulations and tacit "strategies" that define "appropriate" rules of conduct. They stifle creativity and innovation. Important questions are coldly received. Thinking that challenges the status quo is stifled. Innovative thinking is dismissed as irresponsible, absurd, unreasonable, or impractical. Rules and regulations become ends in themselves rather than vehicles for reasonable decisions. Thus, we see that bureaucracy really becomes a big problem in such circumstances when they lead to a state of rigidity and a lost sense of mission.

Source: http://www.phptr.com/articles/article.asp?p=29588&seqNum=5

Bureaucracy if often seen as a big problem when organizations grow in size or in other words, transform from a smaller company to a larger one. The larger organization also needs larger bureaucratic functions to handle the organization's routine activities like delivering the mail, handling the payroll, running the facilities, and obtaining and distributing supplies. As the size of these staffs increases, their efficiency and effectiveness become a major concern, and management is likely to establish even more bureaucracy to monitor, measure, and track ...