The Innovative Bureaucracy: Bureaucracy in an Age of Fluidity: The Innovative Bureaucracy (Routledge Studies in Innovation, Organizations and Technology)

246 Pages·2007·1.34 MB·English

by  Alexand Styhre

The Innovative Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy has been largely criticized throughout much organization theory
and management literature, having been seen as inefficient and incapable of
being able to respond to external changes. Contrariwise, Alexander Styhre
argues that an empirical study of bureaucracy underlines the merits of a func-
tional organization, the presence of specialist and expertise groups and hier-
archical structures.
Styhre examines the literature of bureaucracy and the new forms of post-
bureaucratic organization and shows that the discourse on bureaucracy includes
a number of competing and complementing themes. His two empirical studies,
of the Volvo Car Corporation and AstraZeneca, offer affirmative views of
bureaucracy and a final chapter, drawing on the bio-philosophy of Henri
Bergson, presents a vitalist model of bureaucracy, capable of both apprehending
its functional organization and its continuous and ongoing modifications and
changes to adapt to external conditions.
This book will be of great use to advanced students of organization and man-
agement theory, seeking alternative views and perspectives on bureaucracy and
its relative merits. It will also be of considerable interest to managerial strate-
gists and decision-makers world wide.
Alexander Styhre is Professor at the Department of Technology Management,
Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Routledge studies in innovation, organization and technology
1 Innovation in the U.S. Service Sector
Michael P. Gallaher, Albert N. Link and Jeffrey E. Petrusa
2 Information and Communications Technologies in Society
E-living in a digital Europe
Edited by Ben Anderson, Malcolm Brynin and Yoel Raban
3 The Innovative Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy in an age of fluidity
Alexander Styhre
4 Innovations and Institutions
An institutional perspective on the innovative efforts of banks and
insurancecompanies
Patrick Vermeulen and Jorg Raab
The Innovative Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy in an age of fluidity
Alexander Styhre
First published 2007
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library,2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2007 Alexander Styhre
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-96433-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-39597-6 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-96433-0 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-39597-7 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-96433-0 (ebk)
For Simon and Max
The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he
transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract: 184
All that we ask of the men is to do the work that is set before them.
Henry Ford, cited in Thompson 1969: 29
Contents
List of illustrations viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 The supplementarity of bureaucracy in management
thinking 1
2 The concept of bureaucracy 27
3 Affirming the fluid: debating post-bureaucratic
organizations 74
4 The innovative bureaucracy, Part I: the entrepreneurial
bureaucracy 108
5 The innovative bureaucracy, Part II: the science-based
bureaucracy 134
6 Bureaucracy in an age of fluidity: a vitalist view 167
Notes 196
Bibliography 199
Index 226
Illustrations
Figures
4.1 Market segment trends for consumer goods in Germany 116
4.2 Illustration of Volvo Cars’ new product launches, 1974–2003 120
5.1 Overview of the research process 141
5.2 The drug discovery research process 143
Tables
1.1 Schools of innovation research 14
1.2 The main feature of the three perspectives 15
2.1 Management ideologies, 1870–1992 36
2.2 Bureaucracy vs. “parallel learning structure organization” 58
Preface
It probably matters that I was born, raised and have spent most of my life in a
modern Western social-democratic country praising egalitarian values, and,
most importantly, spending a considerable amount of resources on the public
sector – but I have never been fully able to understand all the ready-made com-
plaints and critiques about bureaucracy in popular culture and the social theory
and organization theory literature that I have engaged with over the last ten
years. For me, bureaucracy is not part of the problem but part of the solution to a
range of social concerns and objectives. Without doubt, my own personal
experiences from reasonably well-functioning bureaucratic organizations cater-
ing a range of services in Swedish municipalities and the state administration are
not fully compatible with other’s experiences of bureaucracy. I have, over the
years, heard numerous complaints, anecdotes and more or less amusing stories
from my friends and colleagues about encounters with Belgian immigration offi-
cers, Italian university administrators, the Chinese railways, the Philippinian
police corps and a variety of other representatives of bureaucratic organizations
that have been deemed by my interlocutors to function less smoothly and trans-
parently than one may hope for. Furthermore, newspapers continuously report
about the presence of corruption, bribery, nepotism and oligarchies in most parts
of the world. Such news is discouraging for anyone having faith in public
administration, so I am fully aware that I may have been lucky to be able to
testify to my belief in bureaucracy.
However, this book is the outcome of my own inability to really understand
the problem with bureaucracy as such; isn’t bureaucracy just one type of organi-
zational arrangement whose content rather than form determines its outcome and
effects? What struck me is that it is, in fact, the very form as such that seems to
enrage both the proverbial “wo/man on the street” and the more theoretically
inclined social scientist. Contemporary everyday speech is infested with a rich
variety of derogatory remarks on bureaucracy and stories of how it fails to func-
tion or fails to provide meaningful work assignments abound. This veritable
mythology of the shortcomings of bureaucracy is shared between folk psychol-
ogy, popular culture and scholarly works. Moreover, what is confusing for us –
perhaps not too many, one may ask? – having positive experiences of bureau-
cracy is that most dismissive remarks on the subject appear to be based on what