Table Of ContentELLIOTT
JAQUES
A General
Theory of
Bureaucracy
by the same author
The Changing Culture of a Factory
Measurement of Responsibility
Equitable Payment
Time-Span Handbook
Progression Handbook
Work, Creativity, and Social Justice
with Wilfred Brown
Glacier Project Papers
Product Analysis Pricing
A General
Theory of
Bureaucracy
ELLIOTT JAQUES
HEINEMANN
GOWER
Heinemann Educational Books, Inc.
70 Court Street, Portsmouth, New Hampshire 03801 USA
Gower Publishing Company Ltd.
Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GUI 13HR, England
ISBN 0-435-82478-3 (Heinemann)
ISBN 0 566 05302 0 (Gower)
©Elliott Jaques 1976
First published 1976
Reprinted 1977, 1981, 1983, 1986
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Jaques, Elliott.
A general theory of bureaucracy.
1. Bureaucracy. 2. Community. 3. Decentralization in government.
4. Pluralism (Social sciences).
5. Political participation. 5. Work. I. Title.
JS113.J35 1976 301.18'32 76-7380
ISBN 0-435-82478-3
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
PREFACE p a g e vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS X i i i
PROLEGOMENON: Metamorphosis of Bureaucracy and the 1
Question of Values
Part One: INTRODUCTION AND DEFINITIONS 1 1
1. Bureaucracy in Industrial Society 1 3
2. Role, Social Structure, and Certain Other Social Things
Defined 2 2
Part Two: BASIC FEATURES OF BUREAUCRACY 4 5
3. Bureaucracy and the Employment Contract 4 7
4. Managerial Accountability, Authority, and Dependence 6 2
5. Bureaucracy and Associations Contrasted 8 7
Part Three: AN EXPLANATION OF BUREAUCRATIC
SYSTEMS 9 7
6. Work and the Measurement of Level of Work 9 9
7. On the Nature of the Capacity to Work 1 1 2
8. The Stratified Depth-structure of Bureaucracy 1 2 7
9. Levels of Abstraction and the Stratification of Mental
Activity 1 3 9
10. Growth of Individual Capacity and the Dynamics of
Bureaucratic Systems 1 6 1
Part Four: SOCIAL JUSTICE AND BUREAUCRATIC
EMPLOYMENT 1 7 9
11. The Right to Abundant Employment and Individual
Opportunity 1 8 1
12. The Right to Participate in the Control of Change 1 9 0
13. Requisite Conditions for Employee Participation 2 0 6
Vi C O N T E N T S
14. The Right to Equitable Differential Reward 221
15. The Right to Individual Appeal 235
Part Five: FUNCTIONING OF BUREAUCRATIC
SYSTEMS 2 4 3
16. Operational Spine and Delegation of Tasks 2 4 5
17. Horizontal Role Relationships and Degrees of
Accountability and Authority 2 5 8
18. Grading, Career Progress, and Level of Aspiration 2 7 7
19. Elective Leadership and Managerial Leadership 2 8 8
Part Six: MODELS OF BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATION 3 0 3
20. Growth of Bureaucratic Systems 3 0 5
21. Direct Command Systems: Two- and Three-stratum
Hierarchies 3 0 9
22. General Command Systems: Four- and Five-stratum
Hierarchies and Above 3 1 8
Part Seven: PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE
CONTRIBUTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL
BUREAUCRACY TO INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY
IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES 331
23. Constitutional Bureaucracy, Alienation, and Community 3 3 3
24. Economic Competition Without Labour Exploitation 3 4 8
25. Status, Class, and the Open Society 3 6 1
BIBLIOGRAPHY 3 7 8
INDEX 3 9 4
Preface
For the past twenty-five years in the course of professional work with
social institutions as a social analyst' and with individuals as a psycho-
analyst, I have had the opportunity and the privilege to be granted that
access to the inner regions of social and personal life which professional
consulting relationships often make possible. That opportunity has
provided a running encounter with a rich kaleidoscope of interactions
between individuals within social systems. My aim in this book is to relate
this experience to the work and theories of others, and to build a general
theoretical construction of how social institutions and human nature affect
each other, with special reference to bureaucracy.
This social-analytic work has not been pursued in any spirit of raw em-
piricism. I have, however, always had a liking for seeking ideas and infor-
mation from the observation and teasing out of real-life situations and
from involvement in social change rather than from systematic experimen-
tal work. Since I shall be basing my arguments upon the richness of
qualitative data from single cases rather than upon controlled comparative
studies, let me set out what these cases have been. This display of sources
of data may be taken as a presentation of credentials, as evidence of
relevance of background and seriousness of intent, and as a statement of
entitlement to a point of view.
The Glacier Project and the Seven-year Test
The main source of data has been an extraordinary opportunity offered
by the Glacier Project. I have been able to work with The Glacier Metal
Company in an independent social-analytic role continuously since 1948,
when the project began. The project is thus, at the time of writing, in its
twenty-eighth year. For better or worse, it is possibly the longest con-
tinuous engagement of one social scientist in a social research project in
connection with the growth and development of one institution. The
chance to maintain what may perhaps be regarded as an exceedingly fruit-
ful collaboration with a single institution seemed to me to be one that it
' Sec E. Jaques (1965), 'Social-Analysis and the Glacier Project', and R. W. Rowbottom
et al. (1973), Hospital Organization (Appendix).
viii A GENERAL THEORY OF BUREAUCRACY
would be professionally and scientifically irresponsible not to take part in
to the full. I have accordingly tried to do so.2
Nearly every area of the organization and policy of this industrial con-
cern has been examined. New concepts and methods have been introduced
on the basis of intensive analysis involving discussions with many hundreds
of employees at all levels. These concepts and methods have been tested in
practice not over the months but over the years, and with continual changes
in the personnel involved, including four managing directors.
As a result of this long-term experience I have come to apply what I
think of as the seven-year test: that is to say, I have little confidence in the
validity of any new development until it has been in force for seven years. I
have seen — in various institutions — too many new methods tried, such as
the introduction of piecework, or of job evaluation schemes, or of co-
operative systems, or of group methods, for which claims are made on the
basis of follow-up studies carried out for months or perhaps a year to two
years after. Every bit of my experience suggests that these periods of time
are too short. The consequential effects and difficulties associated with any
one change or with any shortcoming in the change itself may not necessari-
ly begin to show for some years. They take time to work into the system.
Other Experiences
Since 1965 my experience has widened out considerably from the
Glacier Metal Company, although I have actively continued my work
there. Mention of these new projects may be of interest.
When Wilfred Brown became Minister of State at the Board of Trade, I
had the opportunity of working with' him between 1965 and 1970 as ad-
viser on the organization of export marketing. This experience was my first
direct contact with governmental organization. It gave me the chance to be
2 The results of work done have been presented in a number of publications, not only by
myself but also by a number of members of the company itself.
Wilfred Brown (now Lord Brown) was Managing Director and Chairman of the com-
pany from 1937 to 1965, and has written: (1960) Exploration in Management; (1962)
Piecework Abandoned; (1971) Organization; (1973) The Earnings Conflict; and, jointly
with myself, (1964) Product Analysis Pricing, and (1965) Glacier Project Papers.
John Collyear was Managing Director and Chairman from 1972 to the present, and has
recently been appointed Managing Director of the Associated Engineering Group of which
Glacier is one subsidiary company; he has written (1975) Management Precepts.
Derek Newman, Ralph Rowbottom, and John Evans were on the staff of the Glacier
Institute of Management (GIM) for varying periods. The first two wrote (1968) Organiza-
tion Analysis, and Evans has written (1976) The Management of Human Capacity.
My own books arising from the Glacier Project are (1951) The Changing Culture of a
Factory; (1956) Measurement of Responsibility; (1961) Equitable Payment; ( 1964) Time-
Span Handbook; (1968) Progression Handbook.
PREFACE i x
involved at first hand in the interaction between a government minister and
civil servants, and to work with the civil servants themselves.'
During this period I was also retained by the Permanent Secretary to the
Board of Trade to work on an organization analysis of the Export Services
Branch of the Board. This analysis went on over a year and led to an exten-
sive reorganization. It gave me access to a civil service organization at all
levels from cabinet minister and permanent secretary to junior ad-
ministrative and clerical staff.'
In 1965 I became Head of the School of Social Sciences at Brunel
University and learned, by making many mistakes, that universities were
decidedly different from industrial companies. The discovery that the
bureaucratic hierarchy is an inappropriate form of organization for
academic staff in a true university was a moment of illumination for me,
and is reflected in the sections of this book dealing with the unfortunate
tendency of industrial societies to bureaucratize everything. It is a notion
that I have had the opportunity to test in other universities in England and
in the United States, and as a member of the Consultative Committee of
the Nuffield Foundation's Group for Research and Innovation in Higher
Education.
At Brunel I have had the opportunity to take part in the development of
the Brunel Institute of Organization and Social Studies (BIOSS). Through
my work in the Institute I have become involved in a series of long-term
consultancy research projects. The most extensive of these is the work of
the Institute's Health Services Organization Research Unit, whose work
began in 1966 and is contracted to continue until at least 1979.5 This
project has come at a time when the National Health Service is being
reorganized as a whole after its first twenty-five years of existence. The
work on the project ranges from collaboration within the Department of
Health and Social Security with respect to the organization of the NHS as
a total system, to collaboration at the level of the hospital ward and the
general practitioner's surgery. The NHS is a vast and complex organization
with national, regional, and local authorities, giving a total range of family,
community, and hospital services. It is one of the largest and most complex
bureaucratic systems in the world, employing about 850,000 people — in-
cluding medical and dental consultants and general practitioners, nurses,
administrators, architects, engineers and works staff, physiotherapists, oc-
3 Some of the results of this work were published in A. Duguid and E. Jaques (1971),
Case Studies in Export Organisation.
E. Jaques (1972), 'Grading and Management Organisation in the Civil Service': and
Hansard (1969), House of Lords Official Report.
3 Some of this work has been published in: M. Kogan et al. (1971), Working
Relationships Within the British Hospital Service; R. Rowbottom et al. (1973), Hospital
Organization; and Health Services Organization Research Unit (1973), Working Papers
on the Reorganisation of the National Health Service.
